Camping weekend

These are some belated pictures from JUNE! That was when we had our girls camping weekend. Since I've been so busy, they've been on the backburner for getting published. So, here we go:

This is Joelle's tent. Bonnie, Joelle and I slept in it.Here are the girls around the campfire.Deanna's making Jiffy Pop (which, by the way, takes much more than a jiffy)Good job Deanna!On Saturday, we headed west and then north, onto the Icefields Parkway to do a day-hike of 7kms up to Helen Lake. Here I am with Mel, at the trail head:There was a light dusting of snow on the trees and ground at the start of the trail, indicating what might wait for us above as we continued onward.The ten of us made a pretty noisy and slow moving group. With 10 people and nearly 10 cameras, we stopped a lot of time to take pictures. We had views like this to enjoy:Bonnie and Joelle enjoyed the views too!We continued hiking up the trail, taking a brief break at an old rock slide area.Soon, we reached the top of the first leg of the journey, and swung around onto the backside of the mountain, where lay a lot more snow than the front side.Looking back from where we came:And this is looking towards the mountains on the far side of the valley towards which we headed:Soon, the snow grew deeper around us, but we kept going, because it wasn't too bad yet and there were footprints mapped out for us to follow already. Most of the girls had good hiking gear or gators on, so their pants didn't get wet, however there were a few that were just wearing jeans and struggled on without complaining too much.

A few people had their legs fall through the snow and into hidden puddles, completely soaking their boot. Eventually as we trekked on, we found a good place to stop for lunch.Although it looks really scary and steep from this camera angle, the rocky area was pretty comfortable, although a wee bit exposed to the wind. We sat there to relax and figure out our next course of action, because the last leg of the journey was a steep climb up switchbacks to Helen Lake. We figured the snow might be worse at that part, but we couldn't really know - at least not until we saw two hikers coming down the mountain along the trail we intended to go up. Bonnie called to them and asked them if they made it to Helen Lake, and they replied that the snow got much worse and they didn't make it to the lake.

Thus did we decide not to continue further (to the relief of several of the girls, who didn't want to be the ones to suggest quitting first) and headed back down the trail.

To fill the rest of the day, we decided to go check out a bunch of the touristy lakes kicking around. First, we went to Peyto Lake:Then we went to Bow Lake:A little birdy in the tree near Bow Lake:And lastly, to Moraine Lake:It was pretty cold out by this point, so we were all bundled up.That concluded our Saturday adventures, aside from returning to camp and making some food while enjoying some wine. On Sunday, we ventured up to Johnstone Canyon and beyond, so stay tuned for more belated pictures.

More deer pictures than you'd ever need to see (but maybe you want to see them)

One of the mornings at my grandparent's house, a doe with two fawns wandered into the field behind their house and spent some time there eating and hanging out. Garrett, foolishly, gave me his camera with the zoom lens, and I went crazy taking some pictures. Here they are:Ah, deer. So cute!

Port Alberni

A few weeks ago, we drove down to the west coast and headed out to Port Alberni on Vancouver Island. Here are some of the pictures we took.

We took the ferry from Tsawwassen to Duke Point in Nanaimo right around sunset. Garrett and I went up on deck to watch the sun go down over the ocean. First of all, we were able to look back behind us to Mount Baker in the distance:And this is looking forward towards Vancouver and Point Grey:This is looking out west towards Vancouver Island.Here I wait, while Garrett takes his pictures of the ocean.The sun starts to set:And some cool tide lines show up:More sunset:Vancouver Island:We arrived at my grandparent's house quite late that night, and promptly went to bed. The next day, we went for a stroll out at Stamp Falls Provincial Park, just past Port Alberni.Here are the falls, with the fish ladder on the right side of the falls.There's my bro:Looking past the falls, down the river:And looking back towards the falls from farther down the trail:Once we reached the end of the civilized trail, a few of us climbed onward to see how far we could go. We got down to where the river opened wide up and saw some of the sockeye salmon splashing around as they headed upstream. It's pretty hard to get pictures of this, but I think Garrett did a fine job. If you look carefully, you can see the salmon:With all those fish around, it didn't take long for the eagles to catch on. They were up in the top of a nearby tree. At first there was just one, then another one landed, followed by a third that was circling in the air:We headed back after that, since we had some other stuff to do, but Garrett took this nifty little photo on the way back to the car. I really like it:After visiting and whatnot, we found out that the Tall Ships Festival was ongoing that weekend in Port Alberni, and promptly convinced my uncle Derrick to take us out in his boat the following morning to see the ships set sail. We arrived in the harbour a little early, so we drove around and snapped some pictures while the ships were still docked.There was a cool catamaran in harbour too. Apparently it was worth about 3 million dollars. Nice.
This is the Bounty, upon which most of the deck scenes in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies were filmed. She's a big girl:
Here's the boat crew! Garrett and Kyle:Kim, Dad and Uncle Derrick:I'm a sailor!Soon, the ships launched, but to our disappointment, they didn't put up their sails. Instead, they powered out on their diesel engines.On our trip back to the ferry in Nanaimo, we stopped at Cathedral Grove, which is an old growth forest on the side of the highway. Some of the trees are 600 years old! We walked through the short trail to see some of the trees. Here's Dad and Amanda:Some artsy shots from Garrett:Tall trees:Kim and Garrett in front of the largest tree:Looking up at the largest tree:The tree is THIS big!And lastly, on the deck of the ferry: