Friday, May 23, 2008

Life in the Boreal

Here's a few photos from life in the boreal forest. A beautiful sunset from the front yard.



Rufus and me on one of our nightly walks. Oh yeah, the sun does not set here until after 10pm right now.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Little House in the Boonies

I thought I'd throw up a few pics of the new place in Alberta for the summer. Also a few pics of Rufus! France and I are fostering a puppy with the potential to adopt him. He's darn cute. He's a yellow lab/golden retriever mix, with a little bit of husky too. We're having a great time with him. He sure likes to sleep a lot though!

La casita with the fire tower behind. I have to put on my harness and climb up there to work and make phone calls since that's the only place we get enough reception.



Rufus in his snow patch (it's melted now).



A view of the flat, endless forest from the tower.



Rufus snuggling with his Tiger.



Our potable water storage.



Generator on the left, storage shed on the right.



Solar Showers baby!



France's Garden.



El Bano.



Our Horseshoe and Bocce Ball Court



The shower. It can get a bit breezy!


La cocina.

Friday, May 9, 2008

Transitions

It's been a little bit since I last blogged, but there has been quite a bit going on. France and I moved out of Nelson, which has been a whirlwind of not so much fun since we both love the place. However, reality sometimes dictates life and the reality is that with no Canadian Work Visa and with France not being able to find helicopter work for the summer, it is, sadly, time to cast the net in other waters. So, we've plunked down in northern Alberta for the summer, an odd place for me, where France can make some money and we can get free rent. After that we'll be headed down to the States, probably Washington, so France can get her helicopter instructor's license. Meanwhile, she's saving for that program by working as a fire tower attendant in the boonies of AB (Alberta).

However, lets back track a little. Once I got everything in storage, moved out, and packed out in Nelson, I had to make a trip down to Washington state to get some warranty work done on my Honda. As I haven't really done any rock climbing outside since December when I was back visiting family in California, I thought it would be fun to get out and do some climbing in Washington. My friend Jen from Colorado, who is now studying in Vancouver, drove down to meet for two days of climbing. We climbed the first day at Frenchman's Coulee and then the next day in the rocktropolis of Leavenworth. Both places were great, but Leavenworth was incredible. There is so much rock it's crazy. However, because of the vast amount of rock, it's also a little challenging to find some of the routes and we ended spending most of our day in Leavenworth hiking around, trying to find routes, and then getting lost, oh, and then it started raining. Needless to say we didn't get a lot of climbing done in Leavenworth, but the climbs we did do were fantastic, especially Classic Crack. A fantastic splitter. Just what I wanted!

A view of perfect Mount Rainier from the road near Vantage, Washington.



A view of the Feathers at Frenchman's Coulee where we climbed for the first morning of our two day climbing trip.



Jen at the top of the second climb warm up climb we did.



Jen preparing to rappel.




A lovely view from around Leavenworth.



A fun 5.8 crack we climbed at Leavenworth.



Me at the base of Classic Crack after leading it.



Classic Crack. The gorgeous 5.9 handcrack in the center.