Saturday, January 10, 2009

Oceanside Christmas

Laurie and I just enjoyed two and a half weeks on Vancouver Island with family and friends and lots of snow. We encountered more snow there than Calgary and surprisingly the harshest road conditions we came across was traveling to Campbell River from Courtenay. We enjoyed the snow there very much. We built snowmen with my niece and nephew, went on some hikes, had a few good snowball fights and I had my first snowshoeing experience on Mt. Washington.

We had many quiet evenings with family and friends playing games and watching movies. But some of our favorite times were when we got out and enjoyed the beauty of the island. New years day was one of those times. We went out for breakfast with my family and then headed up Mt. Washington to enjoy the scenery there. Then we
took some fire wood to Goose Spit Beach and had a camp fire dinner. It was fun to watch the thousands of sea gulls fly overhead to the ocean to socialize. We also went on a couple of good hikes with our friend Sarah. She always seems to know where the most beautiful spots on the island are, even when they aren't the easiest places to get to :)

Our Journey back to Calgary was not as smooth as the trip to Vancouver Island. On the way out, the weather and roads were in good condition so we made the trip in one day but our return took three days. We had to stop in Hope our first night due to road closures from heavy rains and fog. I was okay with that stop once we discovered that the first Rambo movie was filmed there. The second day started out well until we heard that an avalanche by Revelstoke closed Hwy 1 so again our trip was halted in Salmon Arm. We were determined to make it home on the 3rd day and we did, but it didn't look too promising when we were stopped again for an avalanche. We ended up only having to wait a half hour for that one to get cleaned up. And we did get to see two military canons that were being used to trigger controlled avalanches.

Our preparations for going to Donetsk are coming along nicely. Our Visas were processed very quickly and funds have been generously donated so our next step is getting our tickets and figuring out what to pack for the Ukraine and what to pack in our storage unit.

Here are some pics of our trip...the last pic is a sea creature we found on the beach. Anyone know what it is?






1 comment:

Mini said...

Hi Bruno and Laurie, I like your blog. It is very nice and a good way to keep in touch on regular basis. Have a safe and good time at Ukraine. Love yoy, Mom and Lloyd