30 ain’t so bad

I can’t believe that it has been over a month since we last updated the blog… September has flown in and now the leaves are falling off the trees, and I’m wearing slippers again. Winter Is Coming…

So over the past month we have done very well for visitors… Graham and Ellie stopped by to see us on their travels across Canada. They are normally road bikers but we forced them to hire mountain bikes and explore some of the trails in Whistler with us. I think they even enjoyed it.

     

We hung out with more friends/fellow expats and enjoyed a bit of time pond dipping and stone throwing.

    

Nick got his truck! It will never replace “Snoop” the campervan, but it has certainly lessened the pain of giving him up. Nick hasn’t shaved since the truck arrived – there must be something about having a pickup and a beard…

I turned 30! And got lots of lovely prezzies. I really appreciated all the gifts, cards, messages and skypes – thanks everyone for making me smile all day 🙂

      

We took a little birthday trip to Tofino on Vancouver Island. Everyone had told us how beautiful and chilled out it is, and it didn’t disappoint. It’s a very small surfy town on the west of the island with beautiful beaches and little cafes.

There was celebratory drinking

    

Mainly of alcohol (although significantly less than my 21st, thank goodness!)

and the occasional coffee.

Although it is the end of the season the weather was sunny and warm. We took a boat trip to the hot springs and on the way our guide pointed out a grey whale, sea otters and sea eagles.

    

They have bear watching tours too, but since they roam around Pemby we don’t really need to do a tour.

Tofino has a lot of these signs. Fortunately there were no earthquakes while we were there!

    

Every night there was a beautiful sunset. We loved Tofino – would definitely recommend it to anyone thinking of coming out in the summer.

We’ve been wanting to go up the new Sea to Sky gondola which was just built this year near Squamish, so we entered the Sky Pilot trail run which took place on the trails at the top of the gondola. This was no normal race – there were ropes at some points to help you scramble up and down sheer rock face. I hadn’t really grasped that a total 600m of ascent meant that it would probably take me longer than a normal trail run. I just found this photo on a page of photos taken that day – I think my face sums up my feelings.

And then relief that it was over and some time to enjoy views out over Howe Sound below.

And finally, after ten weeks of living out of a bag, all our stuff arrived! All 73 boxes of it.

      

Absolutely terrifying – I had no idea we had that much stuff. A week on, the house is still in chaos but we are chipping away at it. It doesn’t need to be “perfect” until Nick’s parents arrive at Christmas, so we have a few months 😉

This weekend the sun came out for us again – and I got a chance to use my horse riding birthday gift. It has been more than ten years since I was last on a horse, and didn’t my bottom know about it the next day! Great fun though – something I enjoy that I had long forgotten about.

We also had visitors from Vancouver!

    

Andy & Mallory came up and did some hiking with us on Whistler Mountain. They are closing the mountain in a couple of weeks and it will re-open once the snow is lying. You can see the autumn colours starting in the background.

What a long update! Well done to anyone who is still reading. We are now taking bookings for spring/summer 2015… 🙂