February update...

It's been a long time since I've posted, and for that I do apologize. My life has been so busy, but the end of school is now in sight - at long last! If all goes well, I'll graduate during the first week of June :) It's been a long haul - this is the fourth spring term for me and I'm feeling a little burnt out at this point. Fortunately, I've only been taking one course as well as working with a supervisor to arrange my final practicum. Even so, there has been a lot of work.

In other news, Sean and I took two mini vacations late last summer/early fall. The first was a camping trip to Lightning Lake in Manning Park - about 3 hours east of Vancouver. We hiked, biked and enjoyed campfires - even met up with some friends who had been camping nearby and decided to spend the night at the same campground we were at. The weather was a little cool, but we were snug in the camper every night and only got rained on a little. In late September we drove north of here to the West Coast Wilderness Lodge in Egmont, so celebrate our 21st wedding anniversary. Again, we went hiking and visited the museum in Egmont, which is fascinating, and ate lots and lots of lovely food.

Christmas was a noisy affair - lots of family and we enjoyed watching our young nephews run and play. We also spent New Year's Eve with the family up at Whistler, which was a lovely treat. Along more mundane lines, I'm continuing to work two days a week at the Sechelt Library, a job I continue to love. There's always something new to learn and it's wonderful to part of such an important community service.

That's about it for now. Once school is done, I hope to resume a more regular blogging schedule as I resume my writing and hopefully, my reviewing.

Teresa

Sunday walk...

Sunday was a beautiful day, so we headed off on the motorcycle to a local park for a walk. Chapman Creek is a popular spot, so we were surprised to find the parking lot mostly empty. We set out and I discovered I had to stop fairly frequently to snap photos. Here are a few of them:

Sean

b/w photo of the rapids:

carved face:

Me:

On our return journey, we encountered evidence of a bear:

I also saw bear poop, but figured no-one needs to see a pic of that *g*.

Further along the trail we found the bear itself! It was across a small field, so it was quite safe to capture it digitally (click on the photo to enlarge it - you can see the bear's snout quite clearly):

After that excitement, we returned to the parking lot where Sean suggested we walk into Davis Bay for gelato (made here on the Coast). Never one to turn the opportunity to eat gelato on a warm, summery day, I agreed and we trotted off to share a medium cup of Wild & Reckless (vanilla with raspberry and ripples of chocolate). From there we walked back to the bike along the beach and rode home, with a quick detour down to the beach at Roberts Creek.

All in all, a successful outing. If you'd like to see more of my photos from the walk (and aren't on Facebook, where I've posted an album), email me privately and I'll send you a link :)

Teresa

Currently Reading: The Wheel of Fortune by Susan Howatch
Link of the Day: Davis Bay

Caught without a camera...

Grrr. Sean and I went for a great walk yesterday. There are several great trails within easy reach of our house and we ended up on a couple Sean had forgotten about. Both led us to a nearby creek, with spectacular views of both and a neat little footbridge. Then we climbed up a rock face (via a winding path - no real rock-climbing involved) to visit a gorgeous arbutus tree and gaze out over the Georgia Strait to Vancouver Island (where they had 30cm of snow on Saturday morning!).

We were out for nearly two hours and saw so many cool things I wanted to photograph, including old bridge pilings, a cool little foot bridge and a small waterfall. OTOH, it's not like they're going anywhere!

On the writing front, I have a couple of query letters almost ready to go, once I've picked over my one-page synopsis one last time. And I'm almost done with my judging duties for now.

Teresa

Currently Reading: The Breached Wall by Anita Burgh
Link of the Day: Online Scholarly Primary Resources

Sean and Teresa's most excellent adventure...

Sean wanted me to title this post "The Donner Party", but I decided that didn't quite fit *g*.

But first, a quick report on our Wigilia/Christmas Day celebrations.

We were up early on Christmas Eve in order to get the 8:20 ferry into the city. We walked on and were met on the other side by my f-i-l. After dropping by the hotel so he and my m-i-l could check out, we headed for Lonsdale Quay and then Sean's uncle's house, which has been in the family for many years. Almost everyone else was already there, so we were thrown right into the fray. Just the kind of Christmas family reunion I like - noisy! Sean's little cousins drew cards for everyone and after a while, my brother and sister-in-law arrived. Here they are with Sean:

Everyone had places to be, so just past 12:30 we all headed out and by 1:20, we were back on the ferry and headed for home. And not a moment too soon as the weather turned nasty. By the time we arrived home, it was really windy and rainy but we kept power this time.

Our Wigilia dinner was yummy. The evening did end with some excitement, though, when a chimney fire erupted. Sean took a pic of it:



Fortunately the roof was absolutely soaked from the rain earlier, so the house wasn't in danger, but it was pretty spectacular nonetheless. I'd never seen (or heard) anything like that before. The neighbours arrived just in time to see the end of it.

Christmas Day was very quiet - we opened stockings, munched on breakfast and opened presents. I received a puzzle and had to at least get the frame done before Christmas dinner *g*, while Sean readied our gear for our trek up the mountain on Boxing Day. As always, my m-i-l prepared a wonderful Christmas dinner, a veritable feast for the four of us, enjoyed by all.

Boxing Day dawned cloudy, a touch misty and cool, a perfect day to head up the mountain to visit our friends camping up there. We had rented snowshoes, a good thing too, as there was lots of fresh snow. A little too much on the road, for our liking and parking proved a bit of an adventure. But at last we set off up the trail. And I do mean UP. For the first 45 minutes the incline is quite pronounced as you climb the side of the mountain. The only time you go down is when you come to a drainage ditch (there are sixteen between where we started and where our friends were camping). Here are a couple of pics from that first section.

But at last we reached the lookout. Longtime readers of this blog might remember me mentioning hiking this same trail in June. A couple of the photos are taken from the same spots. The first one you see in that old post, corresponds with the one immediately below:

And here I am, checking things out with the binoculars:

We rested only a few minutes before soldiering on. The three biggest drainage ditches still awaited us - I actually had to crawl up the side of one of them *g* - not graceful, but I made it!

After that we knew we were getting close, but the fresh snow was very thick and deep plus the incline increased again, so it was slow going for a while. And, I admit, at one point I was about ready to cry uncle, but within five minutes we happened upon one of our friends out for a ski. Just knowing the end of the big climb was imminent gave me one last spurt of energy, though I did stop to take this photo, taken from the same spot as the second one in my June post:

Then we followed the others into camp:

We greeted the others, drank hot chocolate, ate lots of different yummies (including some of the chocolate we'd brought with us) and inspected the snow palace - a cool shelter they'd built out of blocks of snow and a big, big tarp:

The scenery from up there is breathtaking, especially in the winter. We could see for miles, over to the mountains on the other side of Howe Sound, up towards Whistler. Here are a couple of pictures of the view:

After a couple of hours, we put our snowshoes back on and headed down the mountain, after having been assured that the trip down would be MUCH easier and take about half the time. And it did! Not that we still didn't have to work hard - staying upright in the deep snow, even on snowshoes, was challenging. And the cross-ditches didn't disappear. But considering the slog up, the down was a breeze.

Alas, getting down the snow-covered road with the truck didn't prove quite so easy. The snow was very slushy, but also icy underneath. We had to back around another parked vehicle and in ensuring we didn't hit it, we ended up in the ditch. Luckily a really nice guy by the name of Rob, there sledding with his family, pitched in to help and used some of the tricks he's learned over the years in similar situations. I also got a cell phone signal long enough to contact my in-laws. Even so, it was well over an hour before we were on our way home. Sean thanked Rob on the radio yesterday and we hope he heard him!!

Despite all that latter excitement, we thoroughly enjoyed the day of snowshoeing and hope to get snowshoes of our own at some point. It's great exercise and you can't beat the scenery.

Wednesday was a much quieter day - we ran some errands when Sean returned from work, I glanced through the GH entries that arrived for me, then cooked dinner (turkey pot pie). After that, it was hockey while I worked on my jigsaw puzzle!

That's it for right now :-) I'm off to Nia in a few minutes, so I'd best get my a** in gear.

Happy Thursday.

Teresa

Currently Reading: The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick