Back in Canada!

After our 10 day long drive through eastern Washington we arrived back in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia and reunited with Harvey. Happy to be back.
Happy that Harvey suffered relatively few problems and even started first time!
Happy that the weather is mostly good.
Happy that I can see snow capped mountains from my bedroom window.
Happy that Chris has his bike back.
Happy that we're hiking again.

It's been a busy week since we got here. We've had a rental car since we got back (ok, actually we've had three!). We drove 7 hours over to Banff (to drop off the first car) From 18 degrees in BC we got to Banff and proceeded on to friends in Calgary in snowstorms and -5 degrees! Nice?! We then took a couple of days to drive slowly back through the Canadian Rockies. Which was great...until we drove over a rock in the road. Actually more like drove 'through' it. It messed up the underside of the car pretty bad and oil poured out in a matter of minutes. And so we ended up 500kms from the nearest rental car office so made our way back to Kelowna via Greyhound - Hence 2 days later we're on our third rental car! It's all good. It goes back tomorrow so we've been running around getting admin done with the convinience of the car.Have gone hunting for rocks in the road on some of the local forest service roads. (isn't that what rental cars are for?!) With good reason...We wanted to get to Myra-Bellevue Canyon Provincial Park (and Chris just won't take us along 8km of dirt road on the bike!). Primarily the Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) rails to trails route. The Canyon is beautiful - 3000ft above Lake Okanagan and as peaceful as can be. The trail through this particular part of the park is 12km long and features 18 railway trestles and a couple of tunnels - this was quite some feat of engineering of its time and is now preserved as a beautiful hiking and biking destination. Absolutely loved this place - we've been back twice. There's still so much snow up there right now - the first and last 5km of today's hike was in snow! And just 4km out of the city limits along the FS road we spied our first Canadian Moose!! (we have seen plenty of moose in the last 4 years, but given it's 'iconic' connection to Canada never one in this country!) Rather a treat!

We celebrated Chris's birthday on the 26th. By watching the MotoGP bike racing live from Japan at silly o'clock in the night, hiking the KVR and a nice home-cooked meal. Happy Birthday honey! (that's the birthday boy jumping for joy(?!))

Happy Easter!

Seattle gave us it's best for the Easter weekend - rain. Tons of it! And everything was shut. Which scuppered my plans for a bit of retail therapy before we head out of town and whilst Chris was watching the motorbike racing on TV (which was being held in the desert in Quatar and it got rained off! - unheard of!). Anyway...

To be honest we did a lot of sitting in the room today. Chris wasn't feeling great anyhow and eventually after a quick trip to Panera Bread for lunch and Walmart (ok, I was desperate to get out and to a shop of some sort!) I settled down to do some long overdue digi scrapbooking. This is the second of my class assingments from the 'Digi in Deep' class I took with Jessica Sprague. Fantastic class and excellent teaching style but I just didn't have the commitment to follow the class at the time so I'm playing catch up now. I'm pretty pleased with the results and with the extra time to prepare I unearthed this great old photo of Chris to pair with a more up to date one of him and his bikes!

Our 7th Wedding Anniversary

We hopped a flight to Dublin for our 7th anniversary weekend. (this is LAST weekend - I haven't had time to update the blog for a while!) After Ryanair cancelled the first flight we then had 9 hours waiting for the alternative, but we got there in the end! I'd booked an ideal hotel right off O'Connell Street in the centre of town. Perfect for exploring the city on foot. We didn't delay in heading out on our first night (in fact on all three of the nights we were there!) We enjoyed open mic live comedy in a pub, drank plenty of Guinness and Irish cider, caught up with 2 old friends of Chris's, took a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, wandered the cobbled streets of the Temple Bar district, sat and relaxed in the grounds of Dublin Castle, stuck our fingers in the bullet holes at the GPO building where the 1916 Easter Uprising took place, walked along the river Liffey and drank some more Guinness and Irish cider. Dublin is a beautiful city. We just enjoyed the short time we had wandering aimlessly. It's all very compact so ideal for strolling and plenty of pubs for some liquid refreshment en route - and they seem so attractive - all cheerfully painted and decorated - how could you not stop by!On our last day we took a bus tour out into Co. Wicklow moutains and the medieval monastic settlement of Glendalough. We lucked out on the weather - it was mostly dry and blue and we relaxed and enjoyed listening to the lovely dulcite irish accented tour guide! We also visited the village of Avoca and the oldest handweavers in the country - dating back to the 1700's. Their weaving was gorgeous - but far too expensive for us gypsies so we satisfied ourselves with lunch in the resturant instead!

But all of this was because 7 years ago Chris and I thought it wasn't such a bad idea to get married after all - and with 7 years of getting used to the idea it was one of my better decisions!! Happy Anniversary Chris! - 7 years, 7 different countries and not an itch in sight!