I Love My Family!! Pender Island, BC

Hey everyone! Look at me go! Posting twice in one night! It's 11:30, and I'm pooped after babysitting 3 monsters for 7 hours(aged 4, 1, and 3 1/2 months...yikes!), and then dinner with friends. I should be in bed. However, I figured that if I don't post these pictures now, I won't ever get around to it, so here goes!
The Lucas siblings and most of the cousins were able to get together this summer on Pender Island, just off Vancouver Island, BC. We had a great time reconnecting, getting to know each other as adults, and roaming the island...when it wasn't raining, which it did for 5 of the 7 days we were there! Gross. But I guess the reason it's so green there is because of the rain! It's quite beautiful :) It was also nice to NOT have the hustle and bustle of the city, or access to much other than simple necessities. I quite enjoyed it! It felt so clean and I felt like I could breathe normally out there. It was awesome! On our last night there, Duane and I were able to watch the whales! Man, that was SO COOL! We'd been watching from the house all week, and we'd seen one or two, but nothing like the last night, where there were 3 pods that came through the passage! Talking to locals, they counted 64 whales in total...don't ask me how you count them all, but apparently it's not normal for that many to travel together, and these folks have watched 23 times this summer, and that's the most they've EVER seen! We're pretty happy we went down to the whale watching place instead of staying at the house like everyone else! They came in pretty close, and a few even jumped for us! Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera(as it was getting dark), so I don't have photo proof, but Duane took a bunch with his camera. I don't know whether he'll post any pictures of them or not, but they were neat anyway.
Alright, here are a bunch of family reunion photos!
Ok, SO frustrating! I finish downloading pictures and decide I don't want to move them all, so I go to move the text, and now it's all underlined!! ARG!! I don't know how to fix it, and at this point I don't care. It's after midnight, my fingers and my brain aren't working together, and I'm going to bed. And this part that I'm typing ISN'T underlined. Get that. Oh, and all the pictures are out of order...and I took out all the "artsy" pictures and just added ones with family, and the one of the house we stayed in for the week. Enjoy!

--> side note, the busy husband fixed the problem in 10 seconds. For those of you who experience similar problems click the EDIT HTML tab and deselect the coding that comes just prior to the text you're finding is underlined. When moving pictures and whatnot sometimes blogger gets confused and accidentally links your text with a picture.

~K~

Kayaking the Broughton Archipelago

Does anyone know how to put pictures on this thing in any way OTHER than one at a time, all in a row?? ARG! I'm getting SO bored with it! I've seen people's blogs with fun collage-type mix, or whatever, and I'm sure Duane knows how. Thing is, I can ask him, but he rarely ever has time to help me. I have SO many pictures to post, but I'd have to make multiple blogs to fit them all in.
Anyway...for now, I'll post my favorites. Here are a few from the kayaking trip around the Broughton Archipelago north of Vancouver Island. We had loads of fun and TONS of relaxation! We got up stinkin' early every morning, though, and NOT being a morning person made that extremely irritating(just ask Duane), but we got to our new campsites early in the day(like, before lunch), so I was able to nap in the afternoon(if I wasn't too itchy..after Day 4...see last picture). Ok, that was a huge run-on sentence, but you get the idea. We got up early, paddled a couple hours, got to the new campsite, set up tents, etc, napped, ate lunch, napped, played cards/read, ate dinner, played cards/read, went to bed. Pretty much every day was exactly like that. I think we all handled it pretty well! ;) We came back refreshed, tanned, toned, and rather proud of ourselves(especially after blasting through the Blackney Passage and across the Johnstone Straight)...two of our most dreaded moments, which were handled with strength and sheer determination. The currents were strong and the whirlpools were avoided, thank goodness!Our first night's meal consisted of gigantic, delicously seasoned, fire grilled STEAKS!! Boy, were they GOOD! Aside from the fact that we didn't have plates, forks or steak knives, we did pretty well by eating off our paddles! :)


Ok, so this picture of my nasty leg isn't a favorite, but I had to post it to show everyone what my bee sting looked like on the last day. Not nearly as painful or welted as it was when I got stung on Day 4!! At this point, though(and every day after day 4), it was EXTREMELY itchy! I don't think I've ever been so itchy in my entire life. Sleeping didn't really happen during the night...so getting up at 5:30-6 every morning afterwards was slightly unbearable.
Anywhodoodle...that's that! I've got all my pictures also posted on Facebook, so if you have an account and you're my "friend", you might want to take a look there too!

~K~

Canoeing Weekend!

This weekend we went canoeing for the first time! Woohoo! We traveled out to the East Kootenays to Canal Flats.

Here we are...on the way to the put-in... At our put-in spot...We had lots of fun, however our trip was cut short by a day so we could come home and have an extra day to pack up for our sea kayaking trip. I'm sort of bummed that we had to miss the side trip to Lussier Hot Springs after our canoe trip (it would have felt good on the sore muscles!), but it's probably better that we were able to get a good night's sleep in our own bed. I am sore, sunburned and REALLY itchy; the mosquitoes were abundant, as well as some other little biting variety of bug. And maybe now that I'm sunburned, I'll actually have a little color in my skin! What an idea. Regardless, it's still mostly my top half that burned, and not my legs; they're really what needs some color!
I didn't get any pictures while we were ON the water because my camera was safely protected in my dry bag, so as not to ruin it if we dumped into the river. We had a community waterproof camera, as well as Kevan's digital camera that he had handy in a little protective bag in his life jacket. We'll swap pictures later, and maybe I'll get around to posting some of those; I haven't even seen them yet, but I'm sure they're bound to be interesting.
On our very first day after our put-in, brother Mike(who flew in from Ontario to join us on our trip) and his canoe buddy, Dennis, nailed a really big wave and capsized!! We all had tried to avoid the wave as much as possible, and I think what happened was that they had taken on too much water prior to this(their boat had a lot of gear, and Mike's not a small sort of guy!), and when they hit the wave(which happened to have a rock under it somewhere), it just sucked them and the boat right under! Duane and I were up ahead of them, so we didn't even notice until I turned around to check everyone out, and I saw two helmets bobbing in the water and no boat! I think, in the end, brother Steve and his girlfriend Karen, rescued Mike from the water, and Dennis just floated along holding onto the submerged boat until he got towed to an eddy where everyone had pulled their canoes out of the water. Duane and I were still up ahead, and had seen something floating in the water, so we frantically paddled our little hearts out to get to the "thing", only to find out that it was a stupid piece of styrofoam! ARG. Duane was right ticked! We had overheard that the guys had lost a piece of their boat, so we thought it might be something important. It wasn't, but we grabbed it anyway. The guys' boat had been nicely bent in half in the process of capsizing, so when they pulled out they spent some time banging out the dent and wrapping the middle of the boat in some extra rope we had all brought along. They had lost the middle support beam from under the middle seat of the boat, so it wasn't supported very well, but it all turned out ok in the end, and we were able to continue on down the river. That sure added some spunk to our first day out! We're just glad the guys were ok, and that we weren't going to have a severely wrecked boat that we'd have to leave behind! Duane and I took some of their bags onto our boat, as we had the smallest amount of gear, and a pretty light boat.
We found a campsite shortly after that...we had only been on the river about an hour before we set up camp...and relaxed for the rest of the night. At our campsite setting up camp...Drying clothes, etc...very typical...Hackey sack...also typical... Sunday morning we packed up and got on the river by about 11 AM, and our day was relatively uneventful. Nobody else capsized, the guys' boat held out all day, and we had a nice, relaxing paddle down the river. Steve taking an exhilirating swim in the river at lunch break...Every now and then there were some nice waves and converging rivers, which added some pep, but everyone did very well, especially considering that only two out of the ten people could be considered "experienced" paddlers! That river was pretty spirited for all us first timers! Yay us! We even got to see a small amount of wildlife while paddling, so that was neat. The drive home was also really good. It was a beautiful day out, and I had never been down that part of the highway before; it was really pretty! We got to see a bunch of bighorn sheep(minus the big horns) when we were just outside of Radium; they were all over the road. Man, did they look stupid just standing there staring at all the cars! There was a baby one, though, and it was pretty cute! :)
Alright..well, I think this is about all for now...and for the next month we'll be gone, so I will post about our BC visit sometime in August!

~K~