Nom Nom

Greetings Again Bloggies.

As you know by now our neighbors cat has become some thing of a self imposed guest. Since he does not eat here, or shit here ad we rather like cats he is generally welcome. Today I spied him earning his keep. He pranced out of the flower garden ,as I I was writing the Arrow Park post, with a big fat vole in his mouth. Which he ate. Nom Nom Nom.




I can haz crunchy bits.

Arrow Park

Greetings Bloggies.

I had a fun day. With so many of the people I was planning on looking on vacation today I too the time to get a way from the heat. I had my self a little adventure. I went out to Arrow park, where the Arrow Lakes is near its narrowest and when for a paddle, first up a creek then down a lake. I think I may have got too much sun. I had a good nap on a clay beach and saw a great blue Herron and some odd ducks. I ate good with cheese apples pickeled vegies. The water was calm and I was out and about for the better part of 6 hours.






Above, a series of clay banks and the troubles high water causes for the trees. There were many who had fallen off the bank. I even saw on which seemed healthy evan after having its root ball slide down the back and landed level part way down.

It occurs to me that a good kayak day is like a good day on a bike, you get to go out to new places go slowly an quitly enough that things don't go running off right a way. And with good pacing I can go most of the the day.

It was a good day. And yes I did go for a swim and yes that is my boxer shorts drying on my paddle.
They were wet not from any events happing to me out in the lake, but from some manuvering in a creek. I had gone up a creek past where I had seen motor boats turn back form, slipping between some trees and getting in to the creek proper, where it stopped looking like a flooded drainage. A few hundred meters upstream from there I found my self off of the main channel and getting in to shallow rocky waters. I has to get out and half float half carry the boat to a deeper side pool till I figured out how I was going to get out of there. I also got my shorts wet. I ended up carrying Wessel across the partly submerged gravel bar and getting back in to the boat in the main channel. It was calm enough that I could take my time.

After that I went down stream and pulled in to a little bay and had some cheese and pickeled vegies while keeping an eye on the Blue Herron.

A good day all in all.




 
 
Lunch and Where I ate it.


 
 

The Crossing

Greeting Again Bloggies.

On the last leg of the trip the weather picked up. We came to Shelter bay to find the upper Arrow lake showing meter high waves. There was a difference of opinion, my companion was nervous about the crossing and I was woo hoo its going to be Interesting. The wind was strong I got out of the car to use the out house and got sand blasted. It turns out that the lesser of the two ferries on that lake was moored because of the high seas. I figured it would be safe until the crew said it was not.




Once we got on the boat we were slow in getting started but it was interesting once we were moving, lots of lighting flashes and the gentle rocking of the boat. It was a good show. So here are some photo goodies from an interesting but not very interesting crossing of the arrow lakes

Travels

Greetings Bloggies.

It would seem that I can't keep my self in the same valley for a week. As much as this summer has been full of family visits its also been full side trips. The family visits are nearly wrapped up, the nephew is still about but the more exotic visitors are absent. I will be doing my own visiting in a week. Next week I will head to Vancouver to cat sit for my sister who is else where.

Before I head off that way I have to catch up on the things that have happened since the last post. A week ago today I left for a business trip, not my business, mind you. I got invited to be a copilot for a long drive and moral support. This trip took me to several new locals. Valemount, Jasper, The ice fields parkway, and back over Rogers Pass a route I do know.

During this trip I saw some ducks, lots of mountains, a few Glaciers, geology and more geology. I had not traveled through the Rocky mountains, I do find it a silly name for a mountain range. It raises the question, what other then rock would you make a mountain out of on this planet. Or is there something inherently more rocky about the rocks in those mountains. Are the Alps made of wood, is the Grenvillian orogeny made of cheese, were the Trans-Hudsonian mountains made of bakelite plastic. Really I don't get the name.

Aside from my issues with the name they are awesome. That wonderful mix of exposed strata, structure and erosion. Its wonderful how the folds and layers make the mountain building processes transparent. I would like to give a special thanks to the Atlantic Ocean, Thanks for growing for the last 250 Million years, with out your hard work we would not have this view.

A few highlights from the drive. Athabasca Falls, water that will eventually work its way into the arctic ocean.


Athabasca Falls

Icefields including the Athabasca glacier. There is really too much from this trip to fit in one post and I may just have to do a photo dump after I write this. It was impress during the coarse of the trip it was pointed out to me that we passed through the upper reaches of 4 of the largest drainage basins of country. The trip started in Columbia River basin, moved on to the Thompson, which flows into the Fraser. At Valemont we moved back in to the Columbia basin, the town borders on the Kinbasket Basin, controlled by Mica dam. At the Junction from highway 5 to highway 16 we caught up with the upper reaches of the Fraser.
After Jasper we were in the Athabasca basin which joins the MacKenzie system draining an absolutely huge area. And if North america needed any more drained we passed into the Saskatchewan, which drains a hugh area before joining Hudson Bay.



Some Glaciers on the Ice Fields Park way

Now after all this its time for me to try to sort through the photos, now more the 5000, over 300 from this last trip and to find some goodies for this bit of adventure.

Mount Fitzwhatamigig




The Natural Bridge on the Kicking Horse river a nice place but don't go to Emerald Lake its a trap.

Birth Day

This post is a week old

Or Rather covers events that happened a week ago but I have bee so very busy adventuring to get new content that I have not had the chance to share said content.

So as many of you know a week ago today was my 30th birth day. I am now officially old and have to act responsibly, I have not yet had to turn my head and cough. It turned into a better day then was planned. I did not have much expectations, after having a very good prebirthday get away I figured that was it for the fun. I was wrong. Thanks to the visiting family, now based out of Calgary rather then some far off land we had people to enjoy the occasion with. With the presence of young children a birth day could not be ignored.

So the day starts with my receiving a heavy box. It has in it an interesting gadget, a manual pasta maker. A beautiful italian made beast in stainless steel and exotic alloys in the rollers and pasta cutters. It has been some time since I have gotten a gift that so accurately reflects my interests, which strongly include food. Food + Gadget is better then either by them selves.



Later that day we headed to the beach. We assembled the HoutFleet (two canoes and my kayak Wessel) on the shores of the Arrow lakes at Madonald Creek south of town. During the corse of the day I was able to play with the before mentioned kids as well as explore some of the lake. I had a great little trip to a inlet on west side of the lake that has remained too far out of reach.





We started to leave the beach as the weather turned, a wind blow in from the north west bringing up white caps. I has the bright idea of well since there are others here at the beach I will take a little more risk. This was waves that I would not normally play in but I could stay close to shore and all I wanted was to get a feel for things. I got the feel and some more.
I was not able to test the idea that its possible to surf with a Kayak but I got close. Then I got thrown from the boat.



It should be pointed out that when I headed off into does waves that I deliberately did not put my spray skirt on. I know that would leave the boat open to flooding, which I did get some of. There was greater reason for my not waring it. As I had said the seas were rough. I wanted out and out fast. Rolling was a real possibility, it did happen, but with out the skirt on I did not end up upside down, I bailed out sideways and was able to swim to shore towing the upside down boat with me.

It was interesting.

That was not the end of the birthday. It was capped off with the surprise cake, in chocolate, and a vigorous singing of happy birthday.

That Unclean Feeling

Forgive me Bloggies For I have sinned.

Some of you will get this and the rest of you will just have to smile and nod. To the one or two other Mac users that read this blog this entery is for you.

As you should all know by now I have plans to attend BCIT's Geographic information systems diploma program in September. In order to get a head start on things I ordered a couple recommended books from Amazon.com. I did not expect the books to come with demo software, but they did. The crown jewel of that is a 180 day trial licence of ESRI's ArcDeskTop. The full licences is painfully expensive. Do not consern your selfs over what exactly this software does what is important to note is that it is the same environment as is used at BCIT and is common in industry.

This proved to be the first time since I have had my Mac where I have had to admit that OS-X can not do every thing. Non of this software runs on a Mac. Some calls and inquiries were made. I got some wide ranging cost estimates for what it would take to get an Windows Xp copy. I considered the option of forking out the cash for a dirt cheap Acer laptop. In the end I found an Xp service pack 2 disk and thanks to the fact that the computer its running on is now off line due to hardware issues I was able to install the licence with out a hitch.

Okey there was a hitch but that was my own. It resulted in my back tracking and starting from square one. I should point out here that I am not installing Xp as a full on replacement or overprinting of OS-X but as a second OS. I have now what is called a Duel Boot Machine. Which means in english if I hold down a special key when I reboot the computer I get the choice between running windows or OS-X.


Windows Xp complete with warning my system might be at risk


Which leaves with windows right where I want it, safely in a corner where it cant heart any one. So now I can run the demo software in windows, do all my day to day stuff in OS-X and carry all around in a resonably attactive slim peace of white polycarbonate.

It does make me feel unclean just a little. But I know that no mater what Windows does I still have a whole other operating system to keep things running.

Downie and Fluffy

Greetings Bloggies

I have an a glut of photos to share with you all and a few stories to share. Some specifics will be censored.
I went away for my this weekend. It was an idea brought fort as away of observing my 30th birthday which is on tuesday. So a road trip was had. The trip went up to Revolstoke where two nights were spent. The first day started with a home cooked meal here before heading up the lake/hydrologicresuvare/river. That leg of the trip ended with out much done. I did discover that I had passed by that place before on my way back home from my job at Gold stream 5 or 6 years ago.

My Gold stream summer did influence our choice of detour. Though going for a hike was on the table the idea of a drive took hold first. This went as far north as the Downie loop which was beautiful and full of RV's. RV's tucked in every where. Not bad for a section of landscape that has no services.





Lunch was had at a nice bakery with the soup winning points for presentation.
Other adventures were had. The hike was given up on when the trail head proved tricky to find and the heat made swimming a more sensible thing. Revolstoke has a little mucky puddle for a swimming hole but it was a good break from the heat of the day.

That day was wrapped up with one of the best meals in along time. Its too bad I did not order it. But the Three cheese ravioli with beef in wine sauce was MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. Excellent. I was surprised to find an eatery of that quality in a town of that size and even more surprised at just how good it was. It happens rarely but one can get blissed out on food. If you are in Revlostoke visit the Woosely Creek Cafe. Don't think about the price you can get lesser meals at greater cost in lots of places.

A walk was had to try to burn off some of that yummyness along the shores of illisilluit river near where it joins the Columbia. Very nice.

I nearly forgot to say why the second part of the title is Fluffy. Though I know that town is famous for snow I did not expect it to snow when we were there. No we did not have any odd weather but the cotton wood fluff was so extensive that in some places it formed drifts.


The Mouth of the Jordan River where it meets the Columbia.



Wild Cherries. Not sure if escaped argricultural or choke cherries.


Below, The Columbia Bridge, The Dam and the Downie Creek






I had worked just up steam of here on a job when I was a student so it was good to go back and revisit that area.

Tech Excess

Greetings Bloggies

A note. I was informed that the phrasing of the post was as stated by my informer, "mean". That was not my intent. It really should have been an essay on the consequences of adopting technology in a peace wise manner. The collection of phones is just the best example of that. My folks and for that mater the local infrastructure have been adopting technology in a peace wise manner. That is in contrast to my self who has done that to a much smaller extent only because of my youth and the fact that most of the tech in this conversation existed by the time I left home.

In that light its only natural that a communications solution would be interesting, In this case features were added, as I said peace wise. At any given moment in time no one device was able of meeting the system needs. Choices built around cost have lead to a system that now has three phones, all with there own specialty. The answering machine the cordless and the call display all live in the same area and all have moved in to fill a need as things happened. Perhaps in the future there will be a brick to replace the answering machine once we get voice mail in the area. I got the brick idea from a stand up comedian. Till then I will watch and see how the set up evolves. And I will always flinch when three phones with different ringers go off just slightly out of sync.

More Adventures

Greetings Again Bloggies

A week ago today I had the chance to visit Nelson after that visit I had the choice to take a different route back to Nakusp. Rather then the default of heading up the Slocan valley I headed north north east. First to Kaslo intending to head back over the summit separating that town from New Denver. This remained my plan until it was brought to my attention that it would be cool to visit the Duncan Dam which I have not seen in years. Thats its own story. So the detour was made. The dam was there, my camera was believed to be absent at that moment.



Lardo River Lunch Stop

The original plan of heading back to Kaslo was abandoned with the thought that no time would be saved by going back the way we came which was a longer trip then I had thought it would be. The round about way was taken. High way 31 north was taken parallel to the Lardo river and after the river ended up along the side of trout lake.



Trout Lake where the Lardo River starts. 180 degrees from there and you are looking at the river


The other side of Bridge and the river


I discovered my camera some where after the half way point of this detour tucked away in a bag where I had stowed some food stuffs. The food brake was had on a pull over at the edge of the river next to an out crop that had some medium grained metamorphic rocks that resembled the geology near Gold Stream to the north of there. The plants also started to be mores similar but for different reasons.

The Old Trout Lake Gas Station

Sever animals were spotted on that trip, A few Mule deer, one of which was young buck with two prongs, a grouse hen and chick, the chick had learned to fly and was still fluffy. The mother was playing dumb. A bear was spotted as we left Trout Lake and headed towards the Galena bay ferry, I have a photo of where the bear was. It was a big fellow.



A different bridge for fun

The trip took longer then it suggested, but with the views being that good and my suspension and clearance not being very tough or very high respectively slow was good.

Adventures

Greetings Bloggies and a happy Canada day though a little late.

So I I had the chance to spend Canada day with some very nice people. Those nice people and their fabulous dog Boomer took me with them on a little mountain adventure. We took a road on to a large chunk of private nature with all the papers needed to say we were allowed in there. Thanks to the newness of jeep used in this adventure every ones bladder remained calm. The dog showed the most visible enjoyment of the trip. Sticking his head out the window for much of the drive






We passed more then one slide several areas where the shade and altitude had protected the snow. The slide had only recently been cleared from the road and in one spot had shot part way out of a stream gully. Several white tail and mule deer and one bear was spotted only the mule deer made it on to the camera. It is a testament to the company I was in that I had learned to tell the difference between white tail and mule deer, perhaps in the future I will tell the difference between them when they are in a pot too.







There are plenty of pretty mountain pictures I will through in a few for sport.