Oregon Coast camping

We spent a recent weekend travelling down the Oregon Coast with some friends. Up until last week, the weather in Vancouver had been sweltering, so we were quite happy to be driving in an air-conditioned car and to go somewhere where the temperatures were a bit cooler. After crossing the border, we spent the night in a hotel in Olympia. The next day, we drove down to Waldport where we were camping. Unfortunately, our campsite was a big disappointment - too cramped and with no privacy. It felt rather like camping in someone's front drive :) The next day we moved to a much nicer campsite just up the road and were a lot happier then. The weather was mixed, and it had a tendency to drizzle gently on us every evening, but we had lots of good food and campfires, and even got in some beach time. The sand down on the Oregon Coast is fantastic; it rivalled Hawaii in quality I think, especially in the Oregon Dunes area. Other places we really liked were Astoria and Cannon Beach.

I've uploaded some pictures of our trip to Flickr. I hope to get hold of more photos at some point from our friends' camera too.

Camping at Goldstream Provincial Park

We spent last weekend camping on Vancouver Island at Goldstream Provincial Park. We went with some friends of ours and had an excellent time. Highlights included:

• A super-hot 4 hour hike around the park, with several wrong turns thanks to some bad trail maps :/
• A freak thunderstorm, that cut short one of our evenings as we had to retreat to our tents to avoid getting a bit wet.
• Ma Miller's pub just outside the park entrance - cold beer was soooo welcome after a long walk in the sun.

You know the drill - photos on Flickr.

Fireworks 2009

The annual Celebration of Light fireworks displays have been and gone again. Steph and I watched two displays this year - Canada and the UK - both from the beach on English Bay. We missed the two weekend displays (South Africa and China) as we were away on camping trips. If you are interested, you can visit the official site for more info or watch the displays on YouTube - I might do that to catch up on the ones that I missed. We took a few photos at the first event, which are now on Flickr.

My Mum and Gran visit, and other things

I've uploaded a whole heap of photos to Flickr from the recent visit from my Mum and Gran. I think they enjoyed their holiday here in Canada, though sometimes I think perhaps they sent each other a bit crazy - too alike I think :) These are just the photos from the time that we all spent doing stuff together - my Mum has loads more from their coach trip to the Rockies!

They had very good weather for their holiday, barring one day when they arrived and the last couple of days before they left, which were rainy. Since then, the weather has returned to being scorching hot again. I think this might be about the best summer I've seen here in Vancouver in 4 years, and it isn't over yet.

Last weekend was the Strathcona Gardens open day and plant sale. This is the place where we have our allotment, and Steph has been helping out a lot with the plant sale this year. On the Saturday she probably spent 7 hours there helping with the set-up, and I joined her later on for about 4 hours. It was hard work, but fun. On the Sunday, Steph helped with the actual sale itself too, for about 5 hours. I decided to take it easy that day :)

We are thinking about holidays whilst the weather is so good. There's a chance we might go away next weekend for camping on Vancouver Island with friends, but we're not yet sure if that will happen. We are also planning a camping trip down to the Oregon Coast with some other friends, which might be in a couple of weeks. Hopefully it will happen, but we need to get off our bums and sort it out!

We saw Up last night at the cinema, which is a great movie. I think it might be one of my favourite Pixar films. Tonight, we are going to watch an outdoor showing of Ghostbusters with friends, and having a picnic tea. Ought to be very pleasant.

The annual Celebration of Light fireworks displays start this Wednesday too, beginning with Canada. The UK are one of the countries competing this year, which will be interesting to see. I reckon we'll be down there as usual, oo-ing and ah-ing with the rest :)

Lynn Canyon walk

I've uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr from a walk we did at Lynn Canyon a few weeks ago, with our friends Chris and Orla. This was our second trip to Lynn Canyon, but this time we actually walked a decent distance - last time we got lost without a map and did a tiny loop that only took an hour :)

Allotment action!

Latest photos from the allotment are now on Flickr. Thanks to lots of sun recently, things are really rocketing skywards. We're already eating kale, chard, and mustard greens from the plot which make some great summer salads. Nice.

Summer Sun

A while since the last post, I see. Too many things to do now that summer is here.

For about the last four weeks, it has been dry and sunny weather non-stop which has been wonderful. We've been making the most of it with lots of cycling, sunbathing and picnics :) Steph has gotten back into swimming at the outdoor pool on Second Beach too.

Unfortunately we've both been sick recently, with a weird cold bug that had mild symptoms but a long and lingering cough. Steph was worse than me, and is only finally getting over hers after three weeks or more. I've had my cold for probably two weeks and I'm just about over it now. Poor Steph had to sleep on the sofa for a couple of nights as it helped her to stop coughing! And she missed a whole week of super-hot weather because she was too sick to go out.

We had a couple of nice meals with friends to celebrate birthdays - one at Brix which is fine dining I guess, and one at The Naam which is a casual vegetarian restaurant with great food. Both were excellent.

Steph did a day of kayaking a few weeks back with friends Conor and Sandro. The weather was good and they enjoyed it, but getting back proved to be really hard thanks to head winds and a rising tide. There are a few photos on Flickr, though sadly none of Steph! Since then, she has discovered a website which shows the tide times and levels for Deep Cove, so in future she'll be checking first to make sure it is a good time to go.

Other big news is that my Mum and Gran are arriving on Tuesday for a fortnight's holiday in Vancouver. They are looking forward to it, and so are we. Expect to see a deluge of photos soon from our tourist adventures :)

Spring sunshine

A couple of months since our last post, and spring has arrived proper. We've had a few weeks of sunny days, although with some cold winds too. Still, the dry weather and sun has been most welcome.

Our big weekend in Whistler was absolutely great. There were 20 of us staying in three separate places, including one larger house where we cooked food for everybody on one evening - excellent fun. We completely lucked out with the conditions too, as the snow had been thin and hard the week previously but it snowed pretty much non-stop for the whole long weekend we were there, which meant lots of fresh snow every day - we couldn't have asked for more! I've uploaded a few pictures and a video from that weekend - wish we had taken more of our friends though!

Since then, we've been spending a lot of weekends out shopping for food, or cooking food, and always eating food. Yes, we love food. We've made some of our old favourites like lentil and turkey stews, some cracking pizza slices, and a fab mac and cheese. Steph also made a Linzertorte (a kind of almond tart with raspberry jam) that is gorgeous. Last night we also knocked up a lamb curry made from happy lambs from an organic butcher we discovered. Yep, we're not going hungry. Fortunately the good weather means we are getting enough exercise to stop us getting fat - I am still doing gym class twice a week, plus plenty of walking to work (about 40 minutes), and Steph has been swimming and taking yoga classes.

The allotment is coming along slowly. We've had some kale already which is nice in salads, and the garlic is growing very well. This month, Steph and her friend Marissa will probably harvest the remaining kale, and plant a bunch more stuff (vegetables and greens) that they've already started in pots, so fingers-crossed they will do well. There have been a bunch of failures so far, with some of the winter crops not coming up, but it's a learning experience so there's no real loss. I've uploaded some photos of how things are doing taken at the middle and the end of April.

Just this last week, my friend Matt who I have known for years has been visiting Vancouver with his friend Lee, and we met up one evening for food and lots of gassing about what we've all been up to. It was great to catch up after several years.

One last bit of photographic goodness with this post - some pictures and a video from a recent walk we took in Lynn Canyon Park.

Trip to Cypress Mountain

We went to Cypress Mountain on Saturday with our friends Conor and Brit. They both snowboard, and Steph skis of course, so they went off and did their thing in the Downhill area. I got dropped off in the Nordic area and did some snowshoeing in and around the cross-country ski trails. It was sunny and bright in the morning, but clouded over as the day went on. Thanks to a heap of snow last week, the conditions were great for everybody - skiing and snowboarding was good, and I had lots of soft fresh snow to tramp through. It was good practice for our big weekend in Whistler we have arranged for March.

I took a couple of photos and a few videos, and I've uploaded them to Flickr.

Wedding photos

Here are the pictures we took at the wedding of our friends Jon and Marissa last weekend. The civil ceremony was outdoors at Locarno Beach, and the weather even decided to cooperate, being bright and dry - hooray! Afterwards, there was a reception at Radha (a great vegetarian restaurant near Downtown). All in all, there was much rejoicing.