At least Nicholas is having fun riding his bike in the misty rain

We had planned to go to Victoria today which is on Vancouver island, but we got up later than planned, (7:30) so decided to do that tomorrow. Instead we opted for activities around the camp ground. After a breakfast of bacon, sausages, eggs, mushrooms and onions, pancakes and coffee we took a bike ride through the trails to the lake where we had earlier seen signs for canoe rentals.
Later, Nicholas and I went back there and rented a canoe for an hour and let me just say this, a 7 year old is not much help when it comes paddling a canoe against the wind. Give him his dues he did paddle as much as he could. The day finished off with a movie , thanks to the MacBook and external hard drive and taking some good photos of Nicholas in the woods. Plus a few beers.

Day 4 took us to Stanley park in Vancouver. After stopping at a visitors center and picking up a brochure we decided that we could spend all day there. The aquarium was the first stop and if I had to give one piece of advice for anyone visiting there it would be, "wear shorts and a t-shirt in the tropical center!". It was do frigging hot and humid on there that my lenses for my camera fogged up and I couldn't take any photos. There were some nice colorful birds and butterflies in there, but they all came out with that wedding fuzzy look to them. The rest of the aquarium was pretty good with sea otters, dolphins and buluga whale enclosures. They also had a frog exhibit.
After the aquarium we headed up to the minature railway for Nicholas. This was better than some small railways I have been on. They tried to keep you entertained while you pooter around at 3mph.
By this time our feet were beginning to hurt so we sat in the park while Nicholas with his abundance of energy played in the playground for 20 minutes.
A good way to see and get around the park is in the vintage shuttle buses. They look very old fashioned from the outside, all colored in reds and green with gold lettering. And they are actually very old fashioned on the inside as well with wooden seats covered in a thin cushion. I swear the windows were going to shake themselves out at one point. The upside is they take you around the park stopping at various points of interest. We took one from the aquarium to the marina and another from the totem poles back around to the aquarium again. By this time it was getting Kate and we all were getting hungry so we headed home.
One thing I should mention that I have noticed throughout this trip is that Rogers cell coverage is crap! U haven't travelled this trail before with another carrier so i can't compare it to anyone but from around mount robson on til kamloops we had no service and then it was only edge speed, which we soon lost again until we hit chiliwack. You may have noticed this blogs being a day later than the info I am giving (it's actually Wednesday today not Thursday). This is due to not having service just outside of maple ridge, a area outside of Vancouver. I admit, we are half way up a mountain surrounded by trees but still, we're not that far from civilisation. We gave to wait till we go half way down to Hera our iPhones chime over and over again not only signalling ghat we have text messages but we have service once again.

Late last night, after reviewing the campsite and the hassle we had getting here, we decided that we were going to stay here fir the remainder of the trip. It really is a nice camp ground. The trees are covered in moss giving them an eerie old world feel to them.
Nicholas and I rode our bikes on a short trail that led down to the beach. I'm planning on going back again but with my DSLR camera. There was an ominous mist hanging over the lake with just the tops if the surrounding mountains poking through.

Well the morning if day one started off early. We got up at around 7:00am and tried to finish off the last few things we had to do before our trip. Well as it turned out we had a lot more to finish off than we thought and didn't end up leaving until 10:30am.

The driving went quite well and went surprisingly fast. Nicholas was kept entertained and the traffic was moving well. We made a stop in Hinton for gas and the mandatory bathroom break. We, (and by we I mean me) were able to drive as far as a provincial campsite just before Kamloops. That's where we ended day one. I recorded an audioboo here of the lovely bird chorus.

Day 2 started off good and went downhill from there. We set off from our campground and headed in to the mountain pass. We took some amazing photos of misty rainclouds covering the tops of the mountains. We made it as far as Hope, BC before we needed gas. I mentioned to Shauna to remember the way we entered Hope as this was the way back to the highway, which is the way we duly drove out. The thing is it turned out to be the way back to the highway going back towards Kamloops! Luckily we were able to only spend a five minute detour turning around and we were back on our way towards Vancouver.
Next came the passing of Chiliwack. Passing it was fine, but just after we had a phone call from my friend Dan. He gave us a tip from his brother about some good campsites in Mission. Somewhere during the conversation, information got muddle and wires hit crossed and we ended up parked at the side of the road fumbling with our free AMA roadmaps. It was after fifteen minutes of fumbling that I embarrassingly remembered that Shauna and I both have iPhones. iPhones that both contain google map applications. We entered our current location and where we wanted to go and were off again. What followed, I won't go in to in great deal but all I will say is that I don't ever want to see highway 1 east or west, highway 7 east or west or the stupid gold bridge leading in to Coquitlam ever again. It really was like the scene from national lampoons European vacation where Chevy Chase is driving around London and keeps pointing out big ben and houses of parliment as he "just can't get over!".
Day 2 ended we us finding another provincial park, Golden Ears, only to be told there was a fire ban in effect so we couldn't have hotdogs for tea. Sandwiches it was for us. See you on day 3.

Now I finally am web 2.0'd. After a long time of not joining in with all the social networking tools that are available us, I resisted the urge until I crumbled under the pressure and signed up for facebook. SInce that day I have cancelled my facebook account twice. The latest craze to sweep the pages on the internet is something that I have known about for over a year but never really saw the reason behind it. Twitter, basically for those of you who do not know what Twitter is, it's a tool that lets you update your friends on what your are doing right now... in 140 characters or less. I think a lot of the draw behind it is quite a few celebrities have embraced it and quite often post updates on their whereabouts or activities. Stephen Fry, Jonathon Ross and Philip Schofield are probably the best known for those of you living in the U.K. U.S. president Barrack Obama is on there as well, but I'm sure he doesn't actually update it himself. So as you can probably tell where this post is heading. Yes, I am now on Twitter and you can follow me by searching for deejaydoubleyoo, (notice the 2 o's).

Well I am following a mac guru by the name of Leo LaPorte. While viewing his recent updates I noticed that he used a service called PixelPipe. It turns out that this application updates several services at once. As you can see the previous post is of a bunch of flowers I took with my new camera. Via a plug-in in Aperture I am able to upload that photo to my blog, my twitter account, my flickr account, my youtube account and many many more if I chose to add them such as facebook, Vimeo, Friend Finder, Photobucket and myspace to name just a few. I have also downloaded the iPhone application from PixelPipe as well which gives me even more connectivity.

Sometimes I think I might love technology too much.

Well I think this is a good example of how screwed up the worlds weather is becoming. Today in Edmonton we are expecting a high of +8*c and according to Dominic Burns from the Chris Moyles show on BBC radio 1 in England, they are expecting a cold snap that will make it feel like -7*c. A total reversal in what is normally expected.

I shouldn't really complain about the weather here as so far the winter has not been that bad. We have had 2 freezes where the temperature dropped to a frigid -40* but only for a few days at a time. Let's just say the brass monkeys around here won't be having any new monkeys.

Cheers.

I think I've had enough of the snow. It was a novelty when I first came to Canada but now it's just a pain in the arse. Maybe because I don't snow board or ski that I hate it. Maybe it's because stupid people pile all their snow from their drive ways and cover my cable boxes even though there us a sticker on the box in plain view indicating that it is against local bylaw to cover it with dirt, snow or shrubs! And don't get me started on shrubs.