Exploring the Couv

So I've been spending the last 2 weeks hanging out in Vancouver. A quiet 2 weeks as my best friend who I was staying with, Julie, was at work most days. It's been good exploring the city, mostly on foot. The next few posts are some of the interesting things I've done.
Firstly I took a long walk (about 10km) around what is known as the seawall. Was a lovely sunshiny day and I had no place to be. Julie met me at the halfway point for lunch. It was interesting watching all sorts of people walking, running and biking. I even stopped for a bit and read a book (called Quiet which I highly recommend for anyone interested in trying to understand the power of the Introvert).

The Rockies

Because I enjoyed the drive so much here are a few more photos.
Wish you were all here!
R

Calgary

Calgary was a very relaxing break for us. Julie's parents live on top of a hill with sweeping views over rolling green fields with cows and horses, a river in the distance and on a clear day you can see the mountains on the horizon. It's just outside of Calgary, and not far from the town centre at all. While staying there I learnt how to drive the tractor, and mowed some of their very extensive lawn, and I also got a lesson in how to catch a mole (using over sized mouse traps buried in their burrows).

It was also the Calgary Stampede. There are many aspects to this two week long festival (they claim it is the greatest outdoor show on earth). One is that everyday somewhere across Calgary a community group will be putting on a free pancake breakfast to anyone and everyone. Free breakfast...I'm in. So we went to two. One was quite miserable as we stood in the rain for 45mins to get our pancakes and eggs, while the poor musicians were singing their hearts out on stage. The other was much classier with boot scootin and even some native aboriginal dancing too, and warm sunshine. All very yummy food...and it's free!

The stampede itself was amazing, especially considering the fact that 2 weeks beforehand a lot of Calgary was completely under water (100,000 people evacuated in the worst flooding the city has ever seen). The theme this year was Come Hell or High Water. The stampede reminds me a lot of out shows around Australia, but with bigger hats and belt buckles involved. There is also much less of a consumer mentality as I didn't see any show bags at all. Lots of sideshow alley type games, a few rides, but the big focus is the rodeo. Julie and I got standing room tickets and watched men riding bucking horses and bulls for 3 hours. It did make me wonder who thought of this as a sport in the first place. I'm sure it must have been to impress a girl. My favourite to watch was actually the women's barrel racing and they also have a team event for kids. They are in teams of 3 and the object is for one of the team members to get on the back of a 'wild' miniature pony. Most of the time was spent with 3 kids grabbing onto a rope and being dragged along the ground after the pony. Very hilarious and the kids looked like they had a ball. We also went to a show with Superdogs, which are rescue dogs who have been highly trained to do all sorts of tricks like dancing and going through obstacle courses. I tried my first bison hotdog...like a regular hotdog but with a few extra spices. I did have the opportunity to buy pretty much anything deep fried, including coke, but declined. There was a lot of country music played (apparently some pretty big artists come for it but none the day we were there...at least none that I had heard of).

We spent the rest of our time in Calgary visiting some neighbouring towns, going to a Turkish festival and visiting Julie's relatives. Was a very fun and cultural experience. We drove home again through the Rockies and it was once again amazing. I don't think I would ever get tired of those views.
Back to Vancouver.

I travelled through some mountains

So I know it's been quite a while since I posted. I arrived safely into Vancouver where Julie met me. We went and had dessert at her boyfriend's house and then it was early to bed. The next night after Julie arrived home from work we took off on our long road trip to Calgary. To avoid Friday morning traffic we camped for the night in a town called Hope (such an uplifting name for a town) about 2 hours east. This time I had a sleeping mat and it was wonderful!!! We camped right near a lake that backed onto some mountains and were told by other campers that the raccoons were out in force so not to leave any food around. We didn't see or hear any, so they must have been scavenging somewhere else.

The drive through the Rockie Mountains was spectacular...both ways. We got an early start and soon saw a couple of hitchhikers so thought we would be the good samaritans and pick them up. The 2 girls, turned out to be 3 girls (one was sleeping in the bushes) who were French Canadians from Quebec, all uni students who were going north to do tree planting. Apparently this is a very popular summer job in Canada. You go north and re-plant what the logging industry has cut down...you get paid around 15c per tree and they told us they were working with a guy who was planting 4,000 a day. Sounded like back breaking work to me.  They proceeded to give us a VERY French history lesson on Canada and play us French revolution music...and then fall asleep with the controls so Julie and I had the pleasure of listening to it for 2 hours. We dropped them off at another town, deciding not to get the name of the musician off of them, and continued on our beautiful route to Calgary. The mountains are so rugged with so many oooohhhh, ahhhhhhhh moments along the way. Evergreen trees, glacial blue waters and wildflowers out in abundance.

We arrived in to Calgary around 10pm to a very warm welcome by Julie's parents. They live on 4 acres just outside of Calgary town. It's a beautiful house with an amazing view.

I hiked up a mountain

I had done a whole post on my last day of hiking and it then disappeared into the atmosphere. I am about to head out to Calgary for the stampede so the post will have to wait until I return. There are photos below to tide you all over until my return.
A picture says a thousand words anyway, right?

Catalina Island - Bob's happy place

Monday was Catalina Island day. We took off on the ferry from Newport Beach for a day in the sun. I sort of expected it to be a bit like Rottnest, but like everything else in the USA it is much bigger, with a much larger population. Was so relaxing sitting on the beach. Kari and I thought we might go do some snorkeling as it's supposed to be amazing there. So we walked over to the dive spot and I tested the water with my toes. No thank you! My feet almost instantly started feeling numb so there was no amount of convincing from Kari that would get me in the frigid water. I even tried to see if my toes could get used to the temperature, but after a minute in there I thought I would save myself a visit to the hospital to be treated for hypothermia. Kari decided to jump in anyway (you know it's cold when the divers with their wetsuits on are still squealing like little girls when they get in). So I watched Kari from a wall up above and minded her stuff while she braved the arctic temperatures. Bob and Ilene came over as Ilene was keen to snorkel also...until she felt the water and then decided she probably didn't want to risk heart failure.

We rented a little golf buggy and Bob gave us a tour of his happy place. Was interesting zooming up and down the mountains and he showed us where he has been zip-lining before.

We headed back in the late afternoon and finished off a very relaxing day with dinner on the end of Newport Beach pier, at a place called Ruby's (a 50s diner). It was Bob and Ilene's 41st wedding anniversary so Kari asked the waited to give them a hot fudge sundae.
Was a lovely end to a very relaxing day.

Only in LA

On Sunday my friend Tammy picked me up and we drove up to LA to attend Mosaic's church service. They are going through a series call Free at the moment and Hank spoke on how loving others sets us free. He asked 2 improv comedy actors to come out on stage and act out love scenes from movies (they had to make it up on the spot as they didn't know what movies he would call out). Was so hilarious. Good music, great message and a lot of fun to be back. It was a very hot and hazy day and unfortunately Mosaic does not have air-con so it felt like I was detoxing in a sauna. Afterwards, Tammy headed home and I go to stay and catch up with my friend, Joby, who serves there. We had lunch at a nearby cafe and caught up on our lives. Was a really fun afternoon.
Mosaic is right on Hollywood Blvd so I walked along to Chinese Mann's Theatre and saw the stars on the sidewalk, and the strangest people. Where else would you see a guy with 2 huge snakes draped around him and people dressed up in all sorts of costumes, wanting you to pay $1 to have your picture taken with them? I then realised the time and rushed off to catch my train home. I was hoping that I would get to take some great photos of the beach on the way home...except that the train line runs through the armpit of LA with the inspiring scenery of backyards and storage facilities. Will picked me up at the other end of the line and we went to dinner at an Aussie meat pie shop that I found with my friend Andrea. It even serves Bundaberg Ginger Beer.

Was good to be back at my 'home' church.