dogsledding and more

Hi everyone, hope the christmas celebrations went well. We had a great lunch at a nearby restaurant - drank a bit too much wine and ate a bit too much, but hey it's christmas. :-) The cool thing about the day was that it was snowing! Very fitting we thought.
Yesterday (boxing day) we went dogsledding. This was more strenuous than we thought it would be. You see, you have to give the dogs and the sled a push to start, and help them up the hills with your feet. The dogs were really cute - not the traditional husky types - but a mixture of hounds, cattle dogs and part-huskys. Our first team was a little on the slow side - only 6 dogs, so we swapped with another couple and got an 8 dog team. Power! hehe The scenery was really beautiful, we were mushing on an old logging trail, about 100 km out of Jasper. It was freezing cold - we thought we'd lost our toes at one stage. :-)
Tomorrow we are going skiing with an Aussie friend - Geoff has never done this before, and I haven't for about 7 years, so I'm sure we are going to be hopeless! We are looking forward to it though.
We have extended our stay in Jasper for few nights and have cancelled our Banff stay. We are planning on going to Edmonton on the 30th of December for a few nights. It has the biggest shopping mall in the northern hemisphere, apparently. We are then going onto Calgary for a bit. We hope to do Banff after that.
So that's it for now.
Love El and Geoff

Merry Christmas Everbody 24th December

We finally made it to Jasper. It is about -4 degrees or so and lots of snow around. We had a nice train ride from Prince Rupert with a stop over in Prince George-the scenery was really cool. On the train a couple of canadians were saying that there was not much to see with all the snow, but it was the snow we were interested in. The food on the train was pretty disgusting. We were supposed to stay with David and Elizabeth on the 22nd but they had problems with their plumbing so they took us to a friends house. Their friends ( a french-canadian Jacqui and her partner Lutz) ran an interesting B&B about 15 minutes out of town. It was an A-frame house and we stayed right up the top. It was only a short stay but we may try to get back there later. The b&B was quite interesting, they had a doghouse that was like a greenhouse to stop the dogs from freezing. El stacked it on the stairs.
Caught a train in pitch darkness at 8.30am on the 23rd. Sun doesn't come up until about 9.30am and sets around 4pm so we have short days. Arrived in Jasper at around 5pm local time(now in mountain time). The rockies are spectacular. Never seen so many mountains. Last night I had buffalo for dinner and el had some chicken. Also had a few drinks sitting in front of a wooden fireplace- was really cool. El set the alarm for 1am so she could ring her family at her dads place.
Today we are having a good look around Jasper and hope to get up to the ski areas sometime while we are here.
Hope everyone has a great christmas and a happy new year. We will try not to freeze. We have to buy some supplies for the next couple of days cause shops are shut for christmas.
Seasons greetings
Love Geoff and El

Tuesday 21 December

Hi everyone!

Once again, it has been about a week since we have written. Time does seem to go really fast! :-) At the moment we are in sunny (not) Prince Rupert. This place isn't called the city of rainbows for nothing!

Since we last wrote in here, we have spent a few more days on Vancouver Island. We were staying with friends, and they took us for short local trips. We went to a couple of Provincial Parks and saw some impressive falls. We could not get over the amount of moss on the trees and the cliff faces. The mossy trees look like creatures out of a cartoon! We also went to see Cathedral Grove. This is a section of old-growth forest with trees that are over 800 years old. In 1997 there was a big wind-storm that uprooted alot of these trees. They have left the blown over trees where they lay and they are interesting to observe.

On Saturday we took a bus up to the Northern tip of the island, to Port Hardy. This trip took a little over 5 hours and we went through some amazing scenery. Up north there isn't much civilization, mostly firs, lakes and lots of mountains. At Port Hardy we caught the ferry that would take us to Prince Rupert. This trip was something like 24 hours. The first part we were sleeping in our lovely little cabin. It was really noisy due to vibrations in the ceiling and walls. It was quite choppy on the water and El was not feeling the best, to put it nicely. The next day the waters got calmer as we entered the inside passage that would take us to Prince Rupert. This boat trip is apparently very popular in the summer, with all the wildlife around. We managed to spot some porpoises and some whales playing around in the water. :-) The scenery was spectacular as well.

So now we are in Prince Rupert and have been for two days. Yesterday was quite bleak and rainy. We went to the Museum and saw an impressive display of first-nation people artifacts. One thing we really both love is the argillite (heat treated stone) carvings that these people do. Very expensive though - and heavy. Might get some yet. :-)

Tomorrow we are leaving early and catching the Skeena Train to Jasper. We have an overnight stop in Prince George where we are going to be staying with some friends, before we head off again the next morning. Once we hit Jasper, we are going to be there for 5 nights. Will be awesome to have a white Christmas.

Anyway, time to sign off.
Love El and Geoff

Tuesday 14th December

Oops, sorry have been a bit slack and haven't written in here for a while. Tonight we are in Victoria (the Southern end of Vancouver Island). It is still wet and cold - we get really excited whenever the sun comes out!! Before that, we were staying with friends in Qualicum Beach, which is about a third of the way up the island. They took us out to Denman and Hornby Islands, which are very scenic. We walked around a Provincial Park and saw sea lions and seals playing in the waters. No bears yet. :-)

Prior to staying at Qualicum Beach, we were in Vancouver. While we were there, we walked around Stanley Park (it is a large park sticking out into the harbour) and took a million photos of the beautiful scenery. We also went up to Grouse Mountain Resort and had a play in the snow. For the most part it was just "freezing rain" falling from the sky, but I think we got a few snowflakes as well. :-) We tried out ice-skating and we both looked ridiculous with our metal pusher thingys to keep our balance. :-) We decided to retire to the chalet for food and warm drinkies. :-)

We also checked out Vancouver Museum which wasn't overly big or interesting. We went to the Royal British Columbia Museum yesterday here in Victoria and THAT was impressive. They had a very interactive setup of the history of the European settlers and some cool indian artifacts.

Today we have been wandering around looking at the British Architecture of the place. We went out to Craigdarroch Castle. It is a massive 4 storey place with 17 fireplaces. Built for some rich coal guy in the 1800s. Not a bad place. :-)

We have been walking everywhere and hope to be super-fit one day, but alas, we keep trying out Hershey Bars. There are so many different types! No Crispy Kremes yet but we keep looking. Our accents must be thicker than we think. We asked for a lemon, lime and bitters at a bar, and got funny looks. The barman thought we wanted a lemon lime and guinness. That would have been nice. hehe

Tomorrow we are back up to Qualicum Beach to have another look around up there. Depending on the weather, we may go out on a scenic boat trip on Thursday.

We will talk later. :-)
Geoff and El.

Tuesday 7th December 2004

Finally made it to Vancouver. We are extremely jetlagged and so over aeroplane food. We spent a night in Papakura in New Zealand with El's cousin Lilian. We had a nice brekky and the local tour before catching an 8hr flight to Honolulu. The Honolulu airport was crappy and our flight to Vancouver was delayed. We then had to catch a 6hr flight to Vancouver and this flight was the most boring ever. Air Canada seats were very uncomfortable and the food wan't much chop either. Vancouver is cold and wet. It is good "huffy" weather and we are wandering around in big coats and boots. At 2pm it seems like 6pm because it is so dark. Mountains around vancouver are covered by clouds but still seem magnificent. We had a quick look around but will investigate things further when we adjust to Vancouver time. Streets have a cool feeling cause of christmas decorations and the real winter look of the place(no leaves). Our hostel seems nice enough and is close to everything. Gonna get something to eat and hit the hay soon-too much crappy food and not enough sleep-we need to recharge the batteries.

preparations

hi

we are leaving brissy tomorrow, just testing out this blog stuff to see if it is worthwhile. :-)