Car #3

As previously mentioned, we traded in our Ford Focus as soon as we got home from Alberta. We are now onto our THIRD car since arriving in Canada in January. This time it's a 2002 Nissan Sentra. We hope THIS one will last...


Link to car #1
Link to car #2

Birthday bash

On 28th July, we went to a surprise 30th birthday picnic for Gerard. This was at Cates Park in North Vancouver, right on the river. It was a lovely evening with good food and friends (and volleyball for some) in a beautiful, peaceful setting - all the more appreciated for being midweek.

It was also our first chance to try out our new (secondhand) camera - which explains why there aren't many photos of people at this event! For the camera buffs among our readers: it's a Nikon D60. With 10x zoom. :) See if you can spot any improvements (we hope) in the photography in this blog from now on! ;)


Happy birthday Gerard!

Salt Spring Island

The Saturday after we returned from Alberta, 25th July, we went to Salt Spring Island with Myla and Rosanne, and there met up with Rosanne's old roommate Lynnea and her 2-year-old daughter Lysia. We hadn't even heard of Salt Spring Island until we were invited to go there!! It's one of the little islands nestled on the mainland side of Vancouver Island, and we reached it via a couple of ferry rides.

Views on/from the ferry...


Sights after disembarking the ferry...


Our destination was Salt Spring Island's Saturday Market in Ganges. The market has a rule that vendors must "make it, bake it, or grow it" themselves. The island is also very obviously home to many creative artsy types, and/or those who enjoy an alternative lifestyle, so it was some of the best people watching we have yet seen here - and that's saying something. It was a great day!!

Out and about at the markets...

Alberta road trip, Post 7: Around Red Deer

We spent the next few days relaxing and exploring Red Deer while hoping our car would be returned to us in a condition capable of making it the 1100km home. :)

On Saturday we went to the Red Deer Farmers Market, which totally impressed us since it was about 15 times the size of the one we frequent in Burnaby!



Then Linda gave us a tour that included a drive-by of the elementary school she teaches at - currently undergoing a 6 million dollar renovation - and some other sites of interest around Red Deer.



We also drove out to Sylvan Lake, where we had some delicious icecream from The Big Moo, and marvelled that the entire population of Alberta would attempt to fit along the one lakeshore whenever they have a rare beach-weather summer day...



Back at her house, we looked through Linda's photo albums from her year in Australia, and her book of memories of teaching my class - my Easter poem was on the first page!





That evening we went to a BBQ at the home of Linda's best friend, Wendy, and her family, whom we'd met on Thursday night when we popped in after leaving our car at the mechanic. At the BBQ were: us, Linda, Wendy, her husband Jeff, their younger son Riley (their older son had left on Friday for a tour of Europe with his marching band), Susan (Friday's tour guide and also Wendy's cousin), and Maxine (Susan's sister and the only one we hadn't already met).



At the BBQ we enjoyed a bison burger they made especially because Ben wanted to taste bison (it's just like beef, only drier) as well as lots of other yummies - thanks Wendy et al! Then we had a bit of a concert on the back deck, with Riley and I taking turns to play my guitar. When it started raining, we moved to the downstairs music room where we were able to add a drumkit to the mix. :) Overall, it was a wonderful evening and a highlight of our time in Red Deer. Thankyou to all involved for going to such effort and making us feel so welcome!







On Sunday, we were very fortunate to be able to spend the day at Didsbury convention, 45 minutes away, which we had not known would be on until Megan and Justin told us a few days earlier. Linda very kindly gave us a ride to convention. As well as Megan and Justin, Roscoe and Janessa were there too, so there were a few people we knew! It was a wonderful day.

That evening we caught a ride back to Red Deer with some folks that had been introduced to us for this purpose: Lori and her 16-year-old twins, Reid and Trent. Lori turned out to be the sister of the lady whose home we go to on Wednesday nights. :) Once back in Red Deer, they invited us to their house for a coffee, where we met the older son, Dane, his girlfriend Erica, and some other boys from convention who'd come for a visit. Around 10pm, Lori drove us back to Linda's house, but we ended up having such a great conversation that we sat in the car talking to her until after midnight!! And we have since seen them all again at our own convention here last weekend, where we also met Lori's husband Orlyn and their daughter Lana. What a delightfully random way of making new friends!!

On Monday, Ben ended up helping Linda buy a new computer and all the paraphernalia that goes with it, and while he was setting it up and showing her how it all worked, I made dinner. Our original plan had been to drive back to Salmon Arm on Sunday, stay overnight there, drive home on Monday, and be back at work on Tuesday. But on Monday afternoon we finally got our car back from the mechanic, only to learn that they had (1) not found the problem, and (2) not been able to get the car to act up despite driving it 60kms!!!

So on Tuesday we set off to drive the entire way home. We drove about 5 hours before the car started playing up again. Then, from 11am until nightfall, it was frequent cool-off stops (but do you think we could find any shade?!), many kilometres driven along the road shoulder at low speed, and one scary incident when we stalled in a uphill slow-lane with concrete barriers beside us and a large truck on our tail. Approaching Kamloops around 4:30pm, I phoned a mechanic there and made an appointment for the following morning, resigned to missing another day of work.



However, once we reached Kamloops, the car seemed to be doing a little better, so we decided to charge on homeward. But leaving Kamloops, just as the car was doing its lurching-along-losing-power routine, we saw a Ford dealership. We raced in and asked them whether someone was free to look at our car right then while it was actually playing up. During the day the problem had finally become bad enough to throw some error codes in the car's computer, and the "check engine" light had come on, so we hoped that would help identify the problem.

In 5 minutes, the Ford folks had hooked it up to their computer and were able to tell us that the problem was the fuel pump. We were advised that if we wanted to keep driving that evening, we should keep the fuel tank full and drive when the weather was cooler. This we did, and we made it home by 10pm that night, more than 15 hours after leaving Red Deer. I might add that the wonderful people at Dearborn Ford in Kamloops refused to charge us anything for their diagnosis and advice. That's customer service!!

The next morning, Ben took a half-day off work and traded our car in for a 2002 Nissan Sentra. The dealer can fix the old one for much less than it would have cost us, plus we wanted a car with air con after experiencing a 12-day driving holiday in >30 degree weather (and another summer here still ahead of us)!

...And that was our Alberta road trip. Hope you enjoyed coming along! :D

To view more of our Alberta road trip photos:
Click here to go to the album overview page.
Click here to start the slideshow where this blog post begins (Sat).

Alberta road trip, Post 6: The Badlands

On Friday, Linda and her friend Susan took us on a fantastic sightseeing road trip. In the morning, we drove 2.5 hours south-east of Red Deer, leaving behind the flat green farmland and entering Alberta's Badlands (cue spooky music). The topography of this area will be best revealed through our photos (further down in this post) rather than words. It's very stark, with visible layers of colour (tan, brown, maroon) in small round hills, few if any trees, and sparse and sturdy vegetation (spiky grass, cacti etc). I really loved it as it was so different and unexpected!

We came upon the Badlands suddenly, dropping from beautiful lush farmland down into a valley the Red Deer River flows through, and from the valley onwards the land was as described above. We crossed the river on a small ferry/barge - I still can't believe a man's entire job is to steer that ferry back and forth across a 30- or 40m-wide river all day long, for just a couple of cars each time! But I just read that the Bleriot Ferry has been in operation since 1913 and is one of the last sailing ferries still used in Canada, so I guess preserving the past is the reason for not simply building a bridge. :)



After crossing the river, we came across this tiny little roadside church that seats 6 people. It's not used regularly and is a bit battered by the elements (and tourists), but some other people who stopped there just after us said that they had friends who renewed their vows in it!



Our road trip destination was the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology at Drumheller. This is one of the world's leading palaeontological research centres, and due to being located in the part of Canada where more dinosaur species have been discovered than anywhere else in the world, it has a collection of over 120000 dinosaur fossils. Before checking out the museum, however, we did the museum's Badlands Interpretive Trail walk. These photos should give you a good idea of what Alberta's Badlands look like, as explaining its various features was the purpose of the trail...

This is the Royal Tyrrell Museum:

The view from the trail:

Us with Linda (left) and Susan:

And with Linda in front of some hoo doos (more to come on these):

After the walk, we ate a yummy picnic lunch (courtesy of Linda) before heading into the museum.



The Royal Tyrrell Museum was quite interesting and well worth a visit. We saw lots of fossils, read lots of information, and watched the museum's palaeontologists hard at work in their laboratory. My favourite exhibit was an enormous fossilised shell about a 1m wide and vibrantly colourful. The only [non-human] living creatures we saw in the museum were a glass tankful of Giant Tropical Cockroaches over 2 inches (5cm) long!! Oh, and a spider or two I think, but the cockroaches are what have stuck in my memory...







As we were leaving the museum, I bought a postcard that pictured a group of hoo doos, and as I was fascinated by them we asked the museum staff where we could find them. It turned out they were not far away, so we set off on a hoo doo hunt, and on the way we stopped in the town of Drumheller for some ice cream and a quick squiz at the "World's Largest Dinosaur" (Drumheller's claim to fame). You can climb up inside it to a viewing platform in its mouth, but we gave that a miss this time. :)



Then, on to the totally awesome hoo doos! Here's a quick explanation: "Hoo doos are eroded pillars of soft sandstone rock, topped with a resiliant cap. The cap protects the softer rock underneath from eroding as quickly as the surrounding rock". At the site there was a museum official keeping watch to make sure people behaved themselves - we could walk amongst the hoo doos but not climb on them, for obvious conservation reasons. Here they are - slews of hoo doos for you!











Other people were climbing all the way to the top of the hill in the background of the photo below. We weren't quite that energetic (it was a hot day!), but Linda and I left the two even less energetic ones at the bottom and walked part of the way up, until it started feeling slippery. :)





After we had sufficiently photographed and admired the hoo doos, it was time to start heading back to Red Deer. What a great day - thanks Linda and Susan!!

To view more of our Alberta road trip photos:
Click here to go to the album overview page.
Click here to start the slideshow where this blog post begins (Friday).