I arrived here by (super small) propeller plane this afternoon and since Wagga Wagga is too small for it’s own airport, it leases the military one about 12km out of town. Good for the airport shuttle business, not so good for the broke backpacker. The airport shuttle charges $20 for a one-way trip into town and that’s pretty much the only way to leave the airport unless you’re a pilot. The airport shuttle mister was nice enough to put me in the most expensive and oldest bar/hotel west of Sydney. I guess I should have done some accommodation research beforehand instead of telling the guy to drop me off wherever he wished. The shuttle bus driver’s brother-in-law probably owns the place.

I’m in a three bed room that still has the furniture and bed spreads from the 60′s on the second floor of a bar in the dark end of town. Nice. Speaking of “nice”, I’ll spare you the details of the water in the kettle, the smell of the beer fridge or the plumbing in the shared bathroom (all probably haven’t been used since the 60′s). On second thought, I might sleep with my shoes on tonight, and hopefully I won’t get pink eye from the paper thin plastic covered cotton ball that replaced my pillow.

The town itself is nothing to brag about, there’s one main street which I walked about 12 times this afternoon. I think if you’re going to visit Australia, there’s not really any point in going any further than maybe 20 minutes from the coast, any coast. Inland Australia looks like Northern Ontario but worse (not Muskoka for you southerners, I mean half a day drive North of Muskoka). Towns are an hour apart from each other and haven’t even heard of one another and most people I passed on the street today looked like derros, riffrafs and bogans.

Looks like the only thing that this town seems to be doing right is keeping up with their stock behind the bar. I guess there’s not much else to do here between 4pm and 11pm but drink. On that note, I’m going to head downstairs for a couple brewskis before heading to bed.

Next stop is the Tumbarumba caravan park; where I will be calling “home” for the next month. (And it’s not “Tomb-ba-room-ba, it’s Tumm-ba-rumm-ba – I was corrected half a dozen times in the past two days).

Apparently Tumbarumba is pretty hard to get too… from anywhere. The little town of Tumbarumba is located near a national park a couple of hours away from two other little towns (Albury and Wagga Wagga) and a little further from Canberra. I was on the phone for a while today calling the visitor information centers in Tumbarumba, Albury and Wagga Wagga trying to figure out how to get there. The one guy in Wagga Wagga didn’t even know where Tumbarumba was and it’s only an hour away and the one lady from Albury didn’t have a clue how to get there without a car when it’s only an hour and a half away. And to top it all off, the guy from the Tumbarumba visitor information center didn’t even know where the bus station was in his own town of 1500 popultaion.

I finally contacted some half competent people from the train station in Wagga Wagga and figured everything out. I’m going to fly with Qantas tomorrow morning from Brisbane to Sydney then Sydney to Wagga Wagga. I’m going to have to find somewhere to sleep in Wagga Wagga for the night then catch a bus (which I’m not even sure exists) to Tumbaumba Friday afternoon.

In Tumbarumba, all the tree planters stay in cabins in a caravan park. The cabins have three bunk beds each and there is a common kitchen as well as common bathrooms. The cost is something like $15/night. I’m actually pretty excited to start work (ask me on Tuesday and I’ll probably be over it). I haven’t worked since January and haven’t tree planted since the summer of 2007. I’m pretty sure the land here will be a little better than in Timmins, where I used to plant, but it’s most likely going to be colder and they are definitely going to be longer weeks as we plant 12 days in a row instead of only five.

This contract in Tumbarumba is only for a month, but I’m hoping to be able to plant for other contracts afterwards. It would be ideal for me to plant for 3-5 months. This way I could make enough money to travel for another six months or so plus be able to qualify for a second working holiday visa.

We were checking our resting heart rate in the living room for fun tonight and apparently I’m super unfit. So I’m a little scared to see how I cope (physically and mentally) working 12 days in a row since I’ve been sleeping in for the last five months.

Since I got back from Newcastle about a month ago, Brent, Phil and I have gone fishing quite a bit. We leave when Phil gets back from work and stay out until the sun goes down. We usually get a few hours out there. Don’t forget it’s winter here right now, so sunset is usually between 5:30 and 6:30.

Sometimes we fish off of a jetty, sometimes we’re in a boat, sometimes we’re fishing off the beach and if the tide is low, we’ll often walk out into the ocean and fish in water knee or waist deep. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the latter since there are crabs and stuff out there that I would hate to step on and piss off.

We catch fish more times than not. Just recently I caught a 59cm flathead in the Scarborough marina. I had never caught a flathead before and had no idea how big they get but apparently that was the biggest flathead Phil and Brent had ever seen.

My flights to and from Darwin were unfortunately at ridiculous hours. I got into Darwin at 1:30am, so by the time I got off the plane, got my bag, got to my hostel and checked in, it was a little past 3am. That said, I slept in till 11am the first day I was there. My flight back to Brisbane was even worse, I went out drinking with some Dutch, German and English people before catching a 1:45am flight in a pretty tipsy state. I ended up getting into Brisbane at 6am after not being able to sleep on the plane. By the time I got the train and the bus back to Redcliffe it was almost 9am. So as you can imagine, I slept till the afternoon.

My hostel in Darwin was really nice. It had a two layer pool, a jacuzzi, a pool bar and a really big pool deck all on a rooftop. I was staying in a 6 bed dorm room and had to share a bathroom. I met some really nice people from mostly European countries. I spent a lot of time either reading by the pool or playing pool volleyball with a soccer ball with others from the hostel. Our hostel was on the busiest  road in Darwin and every so often, we’d accidentally launch the ball off the roof onto the road. One of the restaurant owners took a knife and popped our ball after getting a wet soccer ball land on the tables of his restaurant a few times too many.

I took a half day fishing charter my second day in Darwin. We went out into the Darwin harbor and caught quite a few fish. The biggest ones were 40cm cods and blue bones. The guy from Colorado snagged a 10 foot shark, but after fighting with it for a while, the shark left with the hook and bait.

I went on a tour on my last day in Darwin. We first got to hold an 8 foot Python. It was all fun and games until the thing tried to eat my wiener. After that I quickly gave it back to the handler since those snakes are capable of eating cats, dogs and small dingoes whole. We then went on a boat and saw some crocodiles jump out of the water to get food from a rope. The first one we saw was the biggest croc in the Adelaide river. He’s 8 meters long and is close to 100 years old. The locals call him “Hannibal” because he’s so tough he even eats other crocs. After the crocs we went swimming in a couple different waterfalls. We weren’t able to swim in one of them because the rangers spotted a croc in it a couple of days prior.

I didn’t drink until my last night in Darwin, which proved to be a bad idea since I was pretty tipsy checking in for my flight. I don’t know if I mentioned Jetstar charging me an extra $80 last time I flew with them. But once again Jetstar gave me a hard time. This time the lady wouldn’t let me check in since I only had my drivers license and no passport. I argued with her for a while telling her I had taken  half a dozen domestic flights in the past 4 months and never needed my passport. Anyways, after a while she gave in while giving me attitude. Once in Brisbane, my bag was the last to come out on the conveyor belt and I was sure that Jetstar lady from Darwin had sent my bag to Honolulu or something on purpose for arguing with her. That could have been dangerous for Brisbane Jetstar staff since I hadn’t slept in over 24 hours and all I wanted to do was get home and go to bed.

The tree planting contract doesn’t start until June 8th, so I still have a few weeks before I head down south (I plan on heading down at the very beginning of June so I can settle a bit and meet people before working). Instead of sticking around Redcliffe, I decided to squeeze in another trip before I leave. I  booked 4 nights in a hostel in Darwin on the northern tip of Australia. I chose Darwin because even if it’s almost winter here in the southern hemisphere, Darwin still gets a high of 32 celsius, which I can definitely live with. The flights to Darwin are at odd hours, so I booked 4 nights, but I’ll be gone for 6 days.

Darwin is known for it’s crocodiles, so I’m going to try to find a tour where they show you wild crocs or maybe go to a croc farm, which they have nearby. Either than that, I haven’t really planned much, I usually like talking to backpackers at the hostels and visiting some tour booking shops before deciding what to do.

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We went for a quick bite to eat before heading to the water park and then spent a good three hours going on all the slides. It was on a Wednesday, it’s getting a little colder and it’s off season right now, so there were barely anyone around and we didn’t have to wait in line. I could just imagine this water park being super busy and having to wait hours in line on a weekend in the summer. The rides were pretty sweet, some of them a little intense. There was one where the lifeguard told me to tuck my chin in, thinking I was tough, I dismissed her suggestion and hurt my neck once hitting the water after pretty much free falling in a tube with Ben’s weight pulling us down. That said, this water park is definitely not just for kids, we’re both in our mid twenties and we still had a great time. My favorite ride was the race one where you can race others down the slide and get an official placing. Of course being much heavier and having a superior technique, Ben won every race.

Starving and not ready to pay an arm and a leg for lunch at the water park, we went for some sushi downtown before going golfing with Shane. The golf course we played on was interesting. The first three holes were less than 200m combined and the back of the course was really poorly lit so it was hard to see our balls once we hit them. I had a pretty shocking game, I lost three balls in one pond and doubled the course par. I’ll blame it on the rental clubs and use Shane’s excuse : “you only play as good as the clubs you’re using”.

After golf we got some burgers and headed to Ben’s place where we played Simpsons Monopoly over a few beers. Owning three quarters of the board in less than an hour, I racked in the cash and dominated in monopoly for the first time in over a decade. “You have to spend money to make money” as Ben would say.

The next day, Ben and I got some pies at a bakery for breakfast then met Metsy and some of their friends at the beach. Before hopping on a train back to Brisbane in the afternoon, we had lunch and a few beers at a surf club. All in all it was a great couple days and the Gold Coast never disappoints.

My job searching was pretty easy, I googled “treeplanting in Australia” and found a company that plants in New South Wales and is looking for planters for their May-August contracts. Tree planters in Australia plant in much nicer land than what I planted on a couple of summers ago in Timmins and also get paid more. So I’ve been in contact with them over email and it looks like I’ve got a job for the next four months. The boss rents out houses in the town (I forgot the name, it’s in an email) and only charges his planters $280/month rent. They supply all your planting equipment but you have to buy your own food and I’m going to have to buy some steeled toed boots and all that stuff.

I haven’t worked since January, so I’m looking forward to working and seeing the bank account go up instead of down. They said the average planter makes about $300/day and top planters make upwards of $450/day. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but we plant 7 days/week so I’m sure I can make some good coin.

I’ll write more about this tree planting business once I get more information, but I just wanted to give you guys a heads up. I told Brent and Phil about me maybe moving away for four months and they were pretty shattered. It’s great fun living with them in Redcliffe, but there’s no way I could make as much money in so little time if I got a job here.

While in Newcastle I also got to see another of my old Whistler roommates Callan as well as some of my old Whistler co-workers from lift ops.

Although Newcastle is a nice coastal town with many nice beaches, it’s a working town which strives on it’s coal industry. In fact, it’s currently the largest coal exporting harbor in the world.

The first three nights were spent drinking quite a bit, enough to make us lay off the booze for the remainder of my time in Newcastle. In fact, for my last couple of days, even the smell of beer would almost make me sick. I didn’t even want to think about the next time I would drink. But we had some good nights on the town as well as some good nights just hanging out at Chris’ sisters house playing pool in the garage.

One of the many highlights of my trip to Newcastle was playing a round of golf with the boys. We hired two carts and hit the golf course with force. I hadn’t played golf in over two years, and I’ll be the first to say that I had quite a few chocking hits. But Chris and I managed to make a dollar for the game against Callan and Gavin.

I flew to and from Newcastle with Jetstar this time instead of Virgin and the day I left, they charged me an extra $80 for checked baggage (my flight was less than $80) which I was sure I said I would have when I bought the tickets. I argued a bit with them but I was late checking in and only had a few minutes to get to my gate so I gave in and handed them my credit card. Never flying with Jetstar again.

My last day in Cairns was spend crammed into a little rental car with three other solo backpackers I met at my hostel. We drove about 300 km’s that day and made a huge loop south of Cairns. We drove from lake to lake and waterfall to waterfall to swim and take pictures of the wet tropics. We really wanted to see a crocodile, but since we were in a 900cc Dihatsu Charade that maxed out at 60km’s/h, it was probably a good thing we didn’t spot any.

I was having so much fun in Cairns and met such great people that I was even thinking of getting a refund on my buss pass and just spend two weeks there. But I thought it would be best to keep going, because that’s what nomads and globe trotters do, they never settle down. And good thing I did, because I had just as much fun and met even more people in Airlie Beach and Hervey Bay. My camera broke in Cairns, or rather, I broke my camera in Cairns as well. So I had to buy a new one, which set my budget back quite a bit because Cameras are the type of thing where you don’t want to go cheap, because you get what you pay for.

After a fun 12 hour bus ride where the air conditioner broke half way, I got to Airlie Beach soaked in sweat. My hostel in Airlie Beach was a little more expensive, it was $28 per night and I stayed 4 nighs. What was cool about this hostel was that i was in a 6 bed dorm with ensuite and every single night I had five new roomates, so I got to meet a lot of people. I went out pretty hard for a few nights to the bars and clubs. It reminded me a lot of Whistler since it was a resort town and 90% of people there were backpackers and tourists. If I was a local, I would definitely walk around with a big bag because without one, you’d feel out of place. I spent most days at the local lagoon and most nights meeting new people over a beer or two… or three to twelve. One night I was drinking with some Israelis, the next some English, Scottish and Irish and the next some Swiss.

While in Airlie Beach, I took a day trip to Daydream Island in the Whitsundays for $79 (lunch included). That was pretty cool. Maybe not worth that much though. It would be cool to get a job at a resort on one of the Whitsunday islands. I think it would be like Whistler, where you live and work on the same resort and get to see how everything works behind the scene. I might look into that actually. Airlie Beach had the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, and a lot of European ones, which means they didn’t mind getting topless. Haha.

After sun bathing for 8 days in a row and starting to look like an oreo cookie (I think I’m the darkest I’ve ever been), I took another long bus ride to Hervey Bay. It was an overnight bus so I got to save a night of accommodation, however trying to get comfortable on a 13 hour bus ride is torture, to the neck mostly. I tried to lay across both seats without having any limbs in the aisle (because we were warned) but it seemed like every position I was in I had the lump between seats either digging into my spine or sides. Hervey Bay is bigger than I expected. Looks a lot like Redcliffe. My hostel was nice. I was in a six bed dorm room with ensuite for $22/night for two nights. During my full day in Hervey Bay, I took a day trip to Frasier Island for $159 with two other Canadians I met in my hostel. The latter is the biggest sand island in the world which is also home to a 125km beach. Said beach is also a recognized highway that has a 100km/h speed limit.

I took the bus back to Brisbane on April 26th and am flying to Newcastle on the 30th for a week to visit some friends I met in whistler.

My new plan is to leave for Cairns tomorrow and do that bus trip I had planned earlier. I’m going to try to get back by April 30th because that’s when my friend Pilley is coming back to New Castle on the East Coast for a week and I’m planning on going to see him while he’s there.

So if everything goes as planned, I’ll be gone up North till the end of April then gone to New Castle till the beginning of May, just before my second attempt to go camping on Moreton Island with Phil on the second weekend of May. Then I might look into finding work for a few months.

Thursday night Brent and I went into the city (Brisbane) for a house party. I knew quite a few people there and also met a lot of people, so it was a really good night. I hadn’t been to a house party in a while, so that was pretty cool, and much cheaper. The next morning we drove back to Redcliffe and since we only got about three hours of sleep, we just relaxed all day. Brent slept on the floor in front of the TV and the rest of us just sat around not doing too much.

We woke up really early on Saturday and went hiking in the glass mountains near the Sunshine Coast. We wanted to climb Mt Beerwah, the tallest of the glass house mountains, but it was temporarily closed due to erosion and rock slide. So we drove a little further and found another mountain to climb. Plan B turned out to be Mt Ngungun. It’s not as long of a hike as the others, but we still found ourselves out of breath, so it was good hike all together.

After the hike we went kayaking in the ocean. We started in the canal near Brent’s parents’ house and went out exploring. We wanted to go in a little river from the ocean but it was low tide and too shallow. So we ended up just getting out of our kayaks and walking around in the mud looking for fish and stuff. They showed me some pretty cool looking fish and we found a huge crab which we poked and annoyed with a stick for a bit.

Saturday night we stayed home and drank with some Germans I met in Tasmania. We took the same tour around Tasmania a couple of weeks ago and they were in the Brisbane area so they came over to Phil and Mel’s and partied with us for a few nights.

Sunday we went to the beach and just hung around there for most of the afternoon trying to sweat out all the tequila and beer we had consumed the night before. We tried to play some touch footy and gridiron (american football), but we were only five, so we ended up kind of mixing the two games up and creating our own game. We also played some soccer and volleyball before Phil almost took an old lady’s head off with the soccer ball. After that little scare we decided to call it quits.

Sunday night we stayed in again and drank a bit, but not as much as the night before. We were all pretty tired. Today is Monday and we are just cleaning the house and relaxing again. I’m leaving for my 5 day solo camping trip on Moreton Island this afternoon. It’s raining right now at 10:30am but i’m only leaving at 3:30 and it’s supposed to be nice for the rest of the week.

I hop on a Barge in Brisbane on Monday the 13th in the afternoon and come back on the same barge Friday the 17th in the morning. For a passenger, the barge costs $45AUD. I’m camping on the west side of the island (facing the mainland) in a campground called “The Wrecks”. My camping permit cost me $20AUD for four nights, which I think is a pretty good price. The camping on Moreton Island is quite basic. Some campgrounds don’t even have toilets and water and require you to bury “stuff”, haha. Some are only accessible by 4WD or boat. The one where I am staying offers semi-potable water (they recommend you boil it for ten minutes), has cold showers and port-a-loo style toilets I believe.

I’m going to bring my backpack, a hiking bag, my new two man tent and some food. I’m going to try to keep the food as simple as possible since I want to keep everything fairly light and I don’t have a camping stove or anything. I’m thinking of just bringing a cooler bag or something with some fruit, granola bars and stuff to make sandwiches.

I plan on spending my five days on the island hiking, going to the beach, checking out the sand dunes and the ship wrecks. There are plenty of things to do around the island, so I’m sure I won’t get too bored. I’ll have to remember to bring a book though, because I’ll be camping alone.

This week will be fairly cheap. I’ve spent $65AUD on my barge pass and my camping permit so far and still need to buy food which will cost around $50AUD. So I’ll be spending less than $25 a day for the five days that I’m camping.

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For pedestrians, the barge to Moreton costs around $40 for a return ticket. Since It’s low season here at the moment and for some months to come, I might hop on to Moreton on a Monday and camp there till the Thursday or Friday. A camping permit costs around $20 and Campsites there only cost about $4/night and there’s plenty of outdoor stuff to do on the Island to keep busy and active.

I would bring my own food and try to keep it simple and light such as sandwiches and fruit. They have cold showers in the camping area, so I would be able to keep clean. I also have a sleeping bag which I brought from Canada.

I still have a lot of research to do before leaving but I’m already pretty excited.

This tent will also be useful if I decide to go back to Tasmania because if I do go back, I plan on renting a car once down there and camp and hike around the island on my own instead of with a tour.

Then I thought maybe going to Papua New Guinea , but I started reading up on it and it said it’s not safe for foreigners to walk around during the day and especially not at night. So that kind of turned me off the whole PNG experience.

So then I thought I’d travel in the north of Australia since it’s getting a little colder and the north would still be quite warm in April. So I decided to fly to Cairns, stay there until I’m bored of the place, then hop on a greyhound back down to Brisbane. A 2000km Greyhound pass costs $360AUD and Cairns to Brisbane takes over 30 hours. The cool part about this pass is that it allows me to hop on and off the bus until I’ve traveled 2000km (Cairns to Brisbane are 1700km’s from one another according to google maps). Stopping here and there along the way would definitely give me the opportunity to see more cities and towns along the north east coast of Australia as well as check out the great barrier reef in more places than just Cairns. I plan on stopping in the following cities/towns along the way: Airlie Beach, Mackay, Agnes Water, Bundaberg and Noosa. I’m thinking of leaving for this trip in mid-April and being gone for around 3 weeks.

That said I’ve been extremely lucky having generous friends all over Australia since unlike other backpackers, I hardly spend any money for a place to stay or transportation. If I was on my own, I would have to pay for a hostel bed every single night and take buses from city to city. However, I’ve only paid for roughly 12 nights accommodation in over 60 days and have been paying almost 1/10 of the price for my flights.

So far, I have been spending on average $58 Australian dollars per day. Not bad considering I’ve visited   a dozen cities, took three tours totaling 9 days and took almost half a dozen flights. If I keep spending as much as I have in the first two months, I still have enough money to last another 5 months before working. However. I think I’ll start working sooner than later because it’s going to be winter here soon and I think I’d rather work and settle down a bit during winter than summer.

We were 7 people on the tour. There were two germans, two tawanese, one french, one chinese and yours truly, a half cast. We traveled counter clockwise from the west coast to the east coast of the island and stayed in three different hostels. We did a lot of hiking in the rain forest and in the mountains. We also got to swim at two different beaches, one being the most secluded beach i’ve ever been on. It took us over an hour to hike between two mountains to get the wineglass bay on the north east coast. The water was really cold at both beaches, one reason is because it’s Fall right now in the southern hemisphere and another is because the water comes from Antarctica. We also saw some really nice waterfalls, crossed a couple suspension bridges.

During the tour, we went to a cheese factory, a place where we got to taste 50 different types of honey and a salmon farm where we tasted some really good smoked salmon. On the last day of the tour, we stopped at some place called animal world, it was like a zoo but they only had the animals who could be found in Tasmania. There I got to pet and feed some kangaroos, wombats and tasmanian devils.

I definitely want to go back to Tasmania to do some more hiking, biking and camping. Next time I think I’ll rent a car and do things at my own pace. Tours are really cool because you get to meet a lot of people, but I would have liked to have more time to hike.

I think I drank every night I was in Tasmania, so I think I’ll take it easy for the next couple of weeks. Maybe until my next trip. For the latter, I’m planning on either going to New Zealand before it gets cold so I can do some more hiking and biking or maybe go up north to Darwin, Cairns or even Indonesia.

Nick

Hobart is a little city compared to the others I have visited around Australia so far. The International Airport of Hobart actually only has three gates, barely big enough to accommodate international flights. Hobart’s population, waterfront location and history actually remind me of my hometown of Kingston in Ontario. However, there are many aspects of the city which also differ from Kingston. Although Hobart is surrounded by water on one side like Kingston, the former has mountains only kilometers from the waterfront, which Kingston lacks of. The whole city is also built on hills. It seems like you’re always walking uphill or downhill when in Hobart, and since the University campus is about a 30 minute walk to downtown, I was walking a lot.

Since I was staying on a University campus surrounded by students, we spent many nights drinking. Luc’s got a lot of great friends which I got to meet and staying on campus made me miss the student life a bit. Until they locked themselves in their room to study that is. Their school in only a fraction of the size of the University of Ottawa and it seems more like a close knit community as opposed to the big Universities we are used to seeing in Ontario or Canada.

Overlooking Hobart from 1472 meters above sea level is Mount Wellington. I took a 3 hour tour on my second last day in Hobart. I got dropped off at the top of Mount Wellington with a couple other Australians and Englishmen with a mountain bike, a helmet and a tour guide. It was a cold and wet day so there was quite a bit of fog at the top of the mountain. Having rained the night before, it wasn’t the best conditions if you didn’t want to get dirty, but pretty awesome conditions to be biking downhill in the mud. We rode down the mountain then through the city all the way to the waterfront. I was a little confused biking because their brakes are opposite ours in Canada. Having done quite a bit of biking in Canada, I would naturally slam on the right brake to lock the back tire to skid, however Australia, the right brake activates the front brake. Needless to say, I almost went over the handle bars a a couple times.

Nick

I’m leaving Monday March 16th and plan on staying there for at least a couple of weeks. Luc lives in an apartment style student residence and said I could crash on their couch. Tasmania is known for it’s natural beauty and as a haven for outdoor activities. I bought a lonely planet travel book for Australia and New Zealand yesterday to read up on hikes and tours. The island is pretty small, you can drive across it in less than a day, so I might even look into hiring a car for a few days.

The reason why I’m going to Hobart right now is because Luc’s school term just started and he’s not too busy with homework and labs at the moment. We’ve also been getting rained on quite a bit here in Redcliffe due to Hurricane Hamish, so hopefully I can find some nice weather down south.

Nick

Brent, Phil, Shane and I play on the same men’s team every Wednesday. Last Wednesday we we lost 10-6 but I got my first “Try” (goal/touchdown). It’s a little hard for me to pick up since in rugby, you’re not allowed passing it forward, however in football, which I grew up watching on TV and playing with friends, most passes are done by launching the ball forward. Also, most passes are done underhand and the play moves horizontally on the field instead of forward. Offsides are still quite confusing to me and other little rules, but I’m sure I’ll pick it up quick enough.

I’ve been getting into their sports since arriving in Australia. Most of my friends are sports fans and are answering all my questions. I went to watch a National Rugby League game a couple of weeks ago and watch a lot of cricket on TV. We are going to go Lawn Bowling soon as well. The latter is like bocce ball but a little different since the balls have weights on one side so you have to make them curve. They don’t really watch hockey, baseball, football of basketball here, they grew up playing different sports as us in Canada.

Nick

Speaking of TV’s on the wall, the Australians seem to be a lot more into watching sports as Canadians. There seems to be cricket games and rugby games in every bar, shop, restaurant, etc. I understand many bars and restaurants have TV’s playing sports on them in Canada, but I’ve never felt so overwhelmed and surrounded by sports as I am here.

Nick

Shane and Ben from the Gold Coast also came up to party a few nights since they hadn’t seen Pilley or Cal since Whistler as well. It was nice to see the 8 of us together again 18 months after we all met in Canada.

These past 6 days have been like one long party. We polished off hundreds of beers and had on average 5 hours of sleep every night. I haven’t drank so much since my frosh week in University I think. I’m looking at pictures from this past week to help me remember all the stuff we did but most of it involves drinking. I think the only part of the week where we weren’t drinking was when we were sleeping and when we went up to the Sunshine Coast for the afternoon. Pilley and I went bowling at 10 in the morning and even then we ordered some beer.

We had a beach day in Redcliffe and hosted a huge fry up (BBQ) for Phil and Mel’s house warming party. We bought something like 60 Sausages, made our own rissols (burgers), roasted some veggies, bought some salad, etc. There were almost 20 people here that night and we still have left overs 3 days later. The Australians love their fry ups.

We had nice weather until the last day, so we took the train into Brisbane city and went to the casino since that was the only indoor activity the 5 of us could think of. It was actually a lucky afternoon for me at the casino. First I played three games of roulette and two of my three numbers came up. Those odds are 36-1, so I was up quite a bit at the very beginning. But then I lost some money playing blackjack with Brent. I was still up over $100 leaving the casino though. I also won a bit betting on greyhounds at the bar earlier this week. So even though my liver is suffering from this past week with Cal and Pilley, at least my wallet is in fine form.

Nick

Although Shane’s place is also in a great location, it’s the complete opposite of Ben’s. Shane lives in the mountains away from the beach. His back deck overlooks the city and you can see the ocean on the horizon. His street is really steep and curvy and covered with cool looking trees and weird sounding birds.

They were both great hosts and tour guides as they showed me around and made sure I had a great time. Ben works at night, so he was able to take me swimming at really nice beaches along the coast as well as jump off rocks at some fresh water rock pools. We drove down to New South Wales for a day to go surfing in Byron Bay and had variety of great food and drinks along the way.

I got to see some pretty cool things that week. Once in Byron Bay, we drove a little further down the coast to see the most easterly point of Australia’s mainland. I was also there for the Quiksliver Pro competitions where all the greatest surfers including Kelly Slater competed to be the best of 2009. I also had the privilege of seeing Surfers Paradise’s nightlife as we did a little pub crawl along Cavill St on the main promenade and got to see the tallest residential building in the world near Ben’s place.

All in all it was a great week packed with adventures and new experiences and I’m looking forward to visiting again. Brent and I are planning on going back down this weekend for Shane’s roommate’s birthday and their house warming party. It is a theme party where the theme is “geriatrics”. So we’re going to have to go get some costumes sometime this week.

Nick

I am now back home in the cold surrounded by mountains of snow on every corner…

Nick will keep the roadtrip alive for me!!!

Darcey

• prilosec omeprazole feline

I have a few friends from the Gold Coast that I met in Whistler last winter, so I’ll be able to catch up with them and get to see that area of Queensland. I had the privilege of seeing Shane the first weekend I arrived in Australia but I haven’t seen the others from the Gold Coast since Canada Day in Ottawa. I’m planning on staying down there for a week. My friends from Redcliffe Phil, Mel and Brent will come visit and party in the Gold Coast Friday-Sunday, so I’ll be able to get a ride back up the Coast to Redcliffe with them.

We’re also looking in climbing a mountain in the Gold Coast area. We all had a blast climbing Mt. Tibrogargan, one of ten extinct volcanic mountains in the Glass House mountains National Park, last week that we’ve been looking into climbing some more in the area. It just so happens that there are quite a few National Parks near the Gold Coast and next week would be a great opportunity since we’re all going to be there.

The mountains we were planning on climbing soon are Mt. Beerwah (the tallest of the Glass House mountains family and twice as tall as the one we climbed last week), Mt. Tamborine in the Lamington National Park and Mt. Warning. The latter is an extinct volcano that erupted more than 23 million years ago. The climb is 8.8km’s return. Just to give you an idea, Mt. Tibrogargan’s summit climb  was 2.5km’s return and took us two and a half hours.

Nick

We’ve been packing all morning taking stuff apart and shoving stuff in boxes. It should be an easy enough move tomorrow since there are a lot of people helping and they don’t have much stuff. As for me, I have a big backpack and a little one which will take all of 5 minutes to pack. Gotta love living out of a bag.

Tonight we’ve got tickets to see the Brisbane Broncos rugby league team play the Canberra Raiders in a pre-season game held here in Redcliffe. Should be pretty exciting. Speaking of rugby, the touch footy league starts next Wednesday and Phil and Brent want me to give it a shot so that should be interesting. They’re team is made up of a bunch of their friends, so it should be fun.

atrovent

Our friend Ben from the Gold Coast said he might pop up tomorrow for lunch, so it will be nice to see him since I haven’t seen him since Canada day in Ottawa.

Nick

After waking up Brent from his hung over nap, Phil, Nick, Brent and I went to visit the Glass House Mountains where we climbed Mount Tibrogargan. The Mountain was almost 1000 feet high and steep. It was a lot steeper than I expected. It was more of a climb than a hike. A sign warned us that the climb should be done only by experienced climbers and extremely fit people. None of us had climbing experience and I wouldn’t say we were extremely fit but we made it to the top. It took us 2.5 hours to get up and then back down again. The climb was fun and coming back down was even more fun. We got to see the fruit farms and other surrounding mountains. We had a great day!

Darcey

We hadn’t really spent much time on the beach since we arrived in Australia, so we hopped on a train Thursday morning and headed to a beach in Adelaide. It was pretty windy once we got there so we raided a few gift shops and headed back to the city. That night we went out to a bar near our hostel with a friend I met in Whistler who lives in Adelaide. Not to be rude, but Adelaide didn’t have much to offer. We might have had some high expectations because we had so much fun in Melbourne and on the road trip and wanted to end the week with a bang. But that bang turned out to be both of us deciding we wanted to leave Adelaide as soon as possible.

Our Australian cell phone is a friends old one. It’s not one of those Zack Morris phones or anything where we wouldn’t even be able to bring it as a carry-on, it just doesn’t let anyone hear you and plays tricks on you. That said, we had some trouble contacting/misunderstandings with Mel while trying to book our flight out of Adelaide. So after an excellent IKEA breakfast, we just showed up at the airport Friday morning without really being booked on any flight and called Mel. She booked us on the next flight to Brisbane (thanks Mel) and within minutes we were boarding the 10am flight back to warm weather and restaurants open at reasonable hours.

Nick

 

 

The road trip from Melbourne to Adelaide was awesome! We we’re on the road for three days in a mini bus and stayed in two different hostels.  On the first day we got to go to Bells beach. One of the top 5 beaches of Australia. That day we also got to see the twelve apostles, see some koalas, go swimming and chill with our new friends. The hostel was nice. We played cards and had a few drinks. The second day was just as fun as the first. We got to visit some waterfalls, hiked up a mountain and got to pet some kangaroos. We then went to a farm where some kangaroos usually hang out. We fed them, petted them and even got to see an albino kangaroo.  Nick was so pumped to feed the kangaroos! The third day we went spelunking. Cave exploring. The caves were cool. We had to fit through some pretty tight spots! One of the girls almost got stuck. We then went to visit a winery and got to have some free samples. We had a good trip. The drive was nice. We got to see a lot of wildlife like kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, emus and weird looking birds. The only downer about this road trip was our tour guide. On the last day she got mad at us because we were not entertaining her and she was bored. She then yelled out that she would play some crappy music because she was so bored. The music was loud! The Ipods were useless.

Darcey

Melbourne had two big highlights. The Crown casino in Melbourne is the largest one in Australia and we definitely know how it looks like inside. We ended up spending almost 11 hours in there Saturday night (we played at the same Blackjack table for over 4 hours and left the casino at 6am.) Don’t worry, we all either won a little money or broke even.

Melbourne’s second highlight was the St. Kilda Festival. We didn’t even know it was happening until we got there and we’re still not too sure what they celebrate. However, what we know for sure is the streets of St. Kilda (a suburb of Melbourne) fill up like the streets of Ottawa fill up on Canada day. It was an awesome experience and we’re glad we were there to participate.

Nick

Before lunch we stopped by the Botanic Gardens where we saw some cool trees, weird looking birds and big spiders! We ate lunch in an air conditioned mall along Queen’s St. before raiding literally dozens of gift shops.

In the afternoon, it was so hot we found ourselves crossing the Brisbane River for the third time of the day to dip in the lagoon in South Bank. This place is amazing, it’s a man made lagoon and beach in downtown. So you can swim in a huge salt water pool and catch some rays in some white sand while staring up at high rises and hearing beeping cars passing by.

Our ride back to the suburbs was fun. We took a train from downtown Brisbane then hopped on a bus to get just a couple of blocks from Phil and Mel’s house. We had a little trouble getting on the bus however, still not used to the coins here, it took Darcey and I a good 2 minutes trying to pick out $5.80 from our combined pocket change. The bus driver seemed to be getting fed up and we were holding the bus back so we gave up on the change and just took out a $5 bill and a $1 coin.

Nick

Yesterday I added a post saying how we probably wouldn’t be driving for a while because it’s just so confusing having to drive on the left. Today however we worked up the courage to try it. Our trusty friend Phil let us drive his car around Redcliffe. It was tricky, but we did it!

Darcey

Another weird difference that I would have to get used to if ever I were to drive here is the lack of stop signs. Most intersections do not require you to stop. You simply have to yield. There are a lot of round-a-bouts and there is no turning right (left over here I guess) on red lights.
This said, I won’t be renting a car for a while. I’ll try to master the push bike first.

Darcey

That said, Mel and Phil were going to Melbourne this weekend so Darcey and I and our friend Brent decided to join them. Since all three others work in Brisbane during the week, Darcey and I will be taking a three day bus tour from Melbourne to Adelaide where we’ll be taking part in some activities and adventures organized by the latter. We were told that the drive from Melbourne to Adelaide was an epic one, so we’re both looking forward to the scenery as well as the good times who will inevitably fall out. Darcey and I will visit Adelaide for a few days by ourselves and Phil and Mel will fly back down from Brisbane to Adelaide to meet us for the following weekend, that of February 13th-15th.

Our friend Luc from Timmins will be in Melbourne so we’re going to try to meet up with him and our friend Glenn who we met in Whistler lives in Adelaide, so hopefully we get to see him as well.

We’ll be back in Brisbane by next Sunday and will most likely be thinking of planning a second trip.

Nick

We’ve done so many cool things this past weekend that I don’t even know how to start this post. Friday night we went to Marty’s (one of our new friends) beach house in Sunshine Coast. The beach is 30 seconds away from the house. Very nice location. That night we drank some beer and went out to a nearby bar. Saturday we visited Sunshine Coast and the nearby mountains where we went for a small hike and swim in the waterfalls. The forest is very tropical and different.
Saturday night we went to Mel’s parent’s for a BBQ. The Australians love their BBQ’s. I’ll admit I think I love them just as much as they do! Before dinner we went for a swim in their pool and had a few beer on the patio. The dinner was great! We had some homemade Pavlova (Australian cake) and homemade cheese cake for dessert. Mel’s parents are very nice. I can’t wait for the next BBQ.
Sunday morning we went to the flea market. We had some mini Dutch pancakes. They didn’t fill us up so we then went to the Humble Pies for a meat pie. Meat pies are everywhere here in Australia. We then went fishing, tried to catch some lung fish but nothing. Later on in the day we went to the botanical gardens and to the park for a little game of touch footy. We ordered dinner from a local seafood shop and ate our fish and chips on the beach. Nick and I had for the first time in our lives a deep fried pineapple. We also tried some shark. It was good. We ended the weekend by watching a movie here at Phil and Mel’s. 

Darcey

Despite our flight from Singapore to Brisbane being delayed about an hour and customs being pretty hectic due to many planes arriving at the same time in the same terminal, our friends Phil, Mel and Shane from Whistler were still waiting for us patiently and greeted us with a warm welcome. From the airport, we drove to Redcliffe (a little suburb north of Brisbane where they live). They showed us around Redcliffe before heading to their apartment. All three had to go to work as it was Thursday morning and Darcey and I were pretty jet-lagged, so Darcey and I just relaxed indoors until the afternoon.

After work, our friend Brent which we also met in Whistler came over and all six of us started BBQing and drinking. We BBQued some steak, sausages and SHRIMPS ON THE BARBIE! We bought two cases of “XXXX Gold” beer for $56 Australian, which converts to roughly $44 Canadian, not bad eh?

After dinner, they took us to see some wild kangaroos. It was in a swamp like field so we couldn’t get too close, but we could see a couple from a distance. Our first night was a pretty relaxed one since Darcey and I were pretty tired from our trip. I think we even went to bed before 9pm.

Nick

Three days after leaving Toronto we arrived in Brisbane.  We left the 26th and arrived here the 29th.  Emirates was a very good airline to fly with. On our first flight (13 hour flight) we got three meals. Very impressive meals. Also the drinks were free. We only had the one glass of wine because we didn’t want to get bloated and have to fart the entire way. Our first stop was in Dubai. Dubai is the fastest growing city in the world. Nick and I visited the city by taxi. We paid $65 American for a cab ride that lasted more than 1 hour. He brought us to all the cool spots. We got to see the Marina, the 7 star hotel, the tallest building in the world and the palm tree shaped island. The buildings are huge and covered in lights. Because the city is growing so fast, there was construction on every corner. The city was unreal! We then flew to Brisbane via Singapore. It took us a while to get through custom and get our bags. Our friends Phil, Mel and Shane we’re anxiously waiting for us at the airport. It’s nice to see them again. We are now at Phil and Mel’s in Redcliffe just outside of Brisbane. Finally in Australia.

Darcey

Darcey

Danny won’t be coming along this time because he is in Ottawa working for the government but he plans on going to Australia next year sometime.

On January 26th, 2009 Darcey and Nicholas will be leaving for Australia.  It’s going to be a heck of a long flight but they will make an overnight stop in Dubai where they will spend a few hours visiting.  Their work visa is good for a year but there is no fixed return date at the moment.  Who knows when it will end.

 

 

 

Due to the lack of time and the absence of internet connection, we haven’t been able to put up any posts since Pittsburgh. Here’s an update of our progress. The Pittsburgh game was awesome. They won against the flyers and we got to see Crosby score a sweet goal. Even though the arena is the oldest in the NHL, we had a blast at the game. In Ottawa and Montreal we had friends and family come join us for our last two games. The Ottawa game wasn’t very exciting. They didn’t play good. Boston won that game. The Montreal game on the other hand was the total opposite. It had to be the best game we saw. The fans there are loud. They love their Habs! Montreal won the game.
We ended the road trip with a little detour to Sudbury where we partied with friends, had BBQs and watched more hockey on TV. Now we’re back in Timmins and will be planting trees for the summer.
The past 8 months have been unreal. I had the time of my life on this road trip. We got to see a lot of cool things and make new friends. Thanks to everyone who followed us on our trip and we will see you soon.
PS. I’m so pumped that the little truck made it the entire way!!

Darcey

Last night we arrived at our campground near Washington, PA. We rented a cabin for a couple days. We needed a place to stay until the Penguins game tomorrow night. The cabin is quite cozy and the people here seem friendly. Last night we watched the game on a big screen TV with the owners from the campground. They are pretty cool. The guy comes from Sudbury and the girl from Thunder Bay. He told us a bunch of hockey stories from when he was young. Today we’re taking it easy and tomorrow we get to watch the Penguins play the Flyers.

Darcey

The other day when we went to Wal-Mart, Danny and I noticed that they had some really good deals on food. We bought a massive sandwich for $5. We split it and couldn’t finish it for lunch. The left over’s served as a bedtime snack that night. We also bought $5 of lunch meat that will last us for a good 4 lunches. To my surprise, the Wal-Mart had cookies that my mom use to buy when we were kids that I can no longer find in Canada. I was more pumped than Paul (my oldre bro) with his new snowblower and a foot of snow. The cookies were awesome. They were so awesome that my head would explode if I even began to blog about how awesome they were!
Anyways, the food was cheap and the junk food even cheaper. A normal price for a chocolate bar was 50 cents. Maybe that would help explain the high percentage of obese people in the States. Thank you Wal-Mart for helping us save money on our trip.

Oh yeah and today i bought a towel for $1.50. Not bad!

Darcey

 

  Although there were no trolls we still had to pay ridiculous tolls. It seems as if we had to pay for every highway we drove on between Minneapolis and Pittsburgh. When we first stopped at a toll booth, there wasn’t anyone there to take our money. There was a sign indicating that we had to drop $1.50 into the basket coin counter and then there would be a green light indicating that we can drive off. We didn’t have enough American coins and Canadian coins didn’t work so we took off with the light still being red. As we left, the high-tech cameras took a picture of our license plate. I feel like such a rebel! I hope they don’t find us. When we got to the second toll both, we drove through it barely slowing down. The next day, I thought we were done with the toll booths. But no, they were all over the place and this time with gates. We couldn’t be rebels anymore and skip-out on not paying. Luckily for us, this time there were people working at the toll booths. We were able to pay with bills. Our tolls ranged from $10.50 to $0.15. I almost started laughing at the girl when she told me I owed 15 cents. I find it funny how they back-up the traffic by making cars stop in order to collect 15 cents. All these unexpected expenses are really hurting our budget. Not really, but Mom if you’re reading this post you should probably send us some cash incase we have more tolls to pay on our way home or incase we decide to pick up a few cases of beer at the duty free shop. P.S. Hopefully we run into Toll Booth Willy or at least get the opportunity to see a troll.

Darcey

The Xcel Energy Center is the arena in St Paul where we watched Minnesota Wild vs Vancouver Canucks.  Minnesota played really good and Vancouver played poorly.  The end result of the game was Vancouver losing 4-0.  It was still fun to be there even though Vancouver lost. The arena is fairly new and the nicest one I saw so far. We had seats in the upper section and the view was awesome. I was really impressed.  Would have been more impressed if Vancouver would have won, but it’s all good. We had lots of fun

Darcey

Yesterday we said goodbye to Canada and hello to the States. It took us a while at the border. They made us get out of the truck, asked us questions and searched the truck. It took at least a half an hour. They didn’t find my half empty bottle of vodka I had brought with me from whistler and didn’t make us toss out the beef Jerky. So… not bad! We drove through North Dakota and part of Minnesota. There wasn’t much interesting things to see on our way here unless you love prairies and fields field with nothing. We did see a Budweiser factory, a Kraft factory, many U.S. flags and a sign advertising a K.F.C buffet. Ah! A K.F.C buffet! That would be so gross. All you can eat K.F.C. Only in the states you’ll see that. They probably have an ambulance ready in the parking lot.

Darcey

This morning, after eating a bowl of cereal and saying goodbye to our four legged friend Jojo, we left Calgary and made our way towards Regina. Along the way we saw a few interesting things. The first cool thing was the world’s largest tepee, ok maybe not that cool. After that, we passed by Rouleau, Saskatchewan, where they film the show Corner Gas. We had done this on our previous road trip but this time there wasn’t much to see. I guess they board up the buildings and take a break from filming for the winter. Shortly after leaving Rouleau we saw what looked to be like the start of a small tornado. It was nice and sunny on one side of the truck and on the other there was a dark cloud that got lower and lower to the ground until it touched it. As we passed through the dark cloud there was a light snow. It was cool, but it was obvious that there wasn’t going to be a tornado. It was just too nice of a day. We ended up driving further than Regina to shorten tomorrows drive. Tonight we sleep in Estevan, Saskatchewan near the U.S border.

Darcey

 

 

Last night the Calgary Flames took on the Vancouver Canucks. Danny, Steph and I took the C-train to the game to avoid getting stuck in traffic near the Saddle Dome (arena). A few Calgary fans on the train got their beer taken away from the transit security. Haha, transit security! They thought they were so tough! They were dressed in black and were wearing sunglasses, Men in Black Style. Their main objective – Check everyone’s transit pass! No one rides for free on their watch. It gave us a good laugh.
The game was intense. For the most part of the game Calgary was losing. Vancouver was out-shooting them like crazy in the first period. After the first intermission Calgary smartened up and started playing some good hockey. The final score was 3-2 for Calgary. They took the lead late in the third and managed to keep it for the win. I’ll have to admit, our seats were a little further than expected. Even though we were not anywhere near the front, we were still able to see the game perfectly. The action was not only on the ice. There was almost a small fight that broke out between some fans in our section. The one fan was apparently spilling beer on another fan on purpose. Eventually security took care of it.
After the game, we went to the near by casino for a little betting. Danny won 40$, I lost 20$ and I think Steph lost 20$. Our last night in Calgary was a good one!

Darcey

 

Yesterday, Danny and I drove from Calgary to Edmonton to watch the first hockey game of our road trip. We arrived in Edmonton a few hours before the game and scored a free parking spot near the Rexall Place. The Edmonton Oilers took on the Minnesota Wild. It was an important game for the Oilers. After an intense 3 periods of hockey, the Oilers won 5-3. The game was great; we even got to see a guy get kicked out for being drunk and sneaking in some liquor. Poor guy! Oh, and we got some free Oilers memorabilia for singing up for an Edmonton Oilers master card which we will never activate. Fun times in Edmonton!

Darcey

We’ve been in Calgary for about a week now. Our stay here has been great. I haven’t eaten this good in a long time. Our dinners this week compromised of a huge ham, a massive pork roast, T-bones steaks and salmon steaks cooked in with lemons and asparagus. Steph made us a huge omelet for breakfast one morning and yesterday we went to a Vietnamese restaurant for a big bowl of soup and spring rolls. Being that it was a long weekend and that we hadn’t seen our cousin Steph in a while, we had to drink a little bit of beer. Steph’s friend showed us how to make a drink called “crowned float”. It contains Guinness and Strongbow (apple cider). We learnt the secret to mixing this drink so that the Guinness stays on the top and the Strongbow on the bottom. The secret involves a bent spoon. Other than the eating and drinking, our visit in Calgary was spent driving around the city, doing a bit of shopping, watching hockey games and movies, playing the drums and the guitar and finally playing with Jojo, Steph’s nice little dog. Today, Danny and I are going to Edmonton to watch the first hockey game of the road trip. We have our sandwiches made and are almost ready to leave. We come back to Calgary after the game.

P.S. Thanks mom for the parcel of chocolates you sent us. The chocolates are almost all gone.

Darcey

We got a new buddy for our way back home.  Paul won’t be alone now. The new buddy’s name is Phel. Phel is a little kangaroo with an Australian flag. Phels name comes from our friends Phil and Mel who gave him to us on our last day in Whistler. The little Australian will travel half of Canada thanks to Phil and Mel haha.

Once again, while driving, the weather was nice. We drove from Golden to Calgary. It took us about 3.5 hours. We stopped to take some pictures in Lake Louise. It’s cool that they have hockey rinks on the lake. It’s just too bad we didn’t have skates. We are now in Calgary for a week. We are staying at my cousin Steph’s place. I hope he doesn’t make us party to much.

Darcey

 

 

 

 

The drive from Whistler to Golden was just as we remembered it, pretty frigging sweet! The roads were nice. There were a few snow covered spots but no avalanches and we had my bad ass truck to keep us safe. Once in Golden we stayed at our friends, J-F and Chantal’s place. Check out the pictures of their house, they scored a good deal by living there. We had supper with them, pork chops and pierogies, and had some beer for St-Patty’s day. We treated ourselves to a beer called Thirsty Beaver. It was ok. It’s brewed in Kelowna. I guess we bought it because the name sounded cool. After having some drinks at J-F and Chantal’s we went to a local pub for some green beer. We ended the night by eating chicken and wedges at the 711. It was a good trip and a St-Patty well spent with our friends in Golden.
P.S. Look at the size of that Potato Masher!!

Darcey

So far, my last week in Whistler has been awesome. I have to admit it, I will miss this place. Two of my last four working days were spent skiing on Blackcomb. On Wednesday, because it wasn’t busy in the warehouse, my boss let me go skiing pretty much all day. It had to be some of the best skiing conditions I have seen all winter. There was a lot of fresh snow in the alpine since it was closed the previous day due to high winds. Yesterday, my last day of work, I got to ski again pretty much all day. Once done with the skiing I made my way back to the warehouse where we had some beer. Last night, we had a going away party in the lounge here in staff housing. I lasted till 10pm and then passed out as soon as I hit my bed. I guess maybe I was tired from the skiing or maybe it was all the beer I drank. I’ll say it was the skiing. Today, as soon as Danny wakes up, we’re going up on Blackcomb to get one last good day of skiing. Tonight, I’m going for some drinks with friends from work at Merlin’s. One of the managers told me earlier this week that he would pick up the tab!! As much as I am sad to be leaving Whistler, I’m getting excited for the road trip back home.

PS. We will keep everyone informed with what is going on through many posts on the website on our way home.

Darcey

  

 

 

 

 Thursday night was pretty awesome!  I went to the Vancouver Canucks game with two guys from work.  Vancouver matched up against the Nashville Predators.  After the first 30 seconds of the 1st period I was scared a little bit since Nashville got a power play.  I wasn’t scared for long because the Canucks scored short handed.  The first ten minutes of the game was intense. The score after ten minutes was 3-2 for Vancouver.  The first period ended 4-2 for Vancouver.  The rest of the game was really awesome and Vancouver out shot Nashville 45 to 22. The final score was 6-2 and in the last minute of play there was a big fight. A bunch of players got into it and everyone was cheering, I was pretty pumped myself. This Hockey game got me really excited and now I can’t wait to watch the other 7 games on our way back home.

On the 22nd of April, Philip, Melanie, Brent, Shane and I will be catching a plane to San Diego California. There, we have a 30 foot RV waiting for us. We will spend the next 14 days traveling around California in this RV. First stops are Los Angeles and San Fransisco along the coast. We will then head back down to San Diego taking in-land routes passing through a couple national parks. We will stay in San Diego for a few nights until three of our British friends (also from our floor in staff housing) Thomas, Douglas and Laura join us after taking their own Californian road trip. Renting the 30 foot RV for two weeks will cost us about $950 each including gas and campground costs.

On May 8th (approx), we plan on all crossing the U.S./Mexican boarder together by bus. We will only be in Tijuana with our British friends as we have different priorities than they do in Mexico. While we Visit 9 towns along the pacific and Gulf Coast, they plan on visiting towns more in-land. Our 9 stops in Mexico are as follows: Tijuana, Cabo San Lucas, La Paz, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Puerto Escondido, Veracruz and Cancun. We plan on taking the bus everywhere in Mexico as our Primary mode of transportation. We will however hop on a over night ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan. Once in Cancun, Approx 6 weeks after being in Tijuana, we plan on taking our separate ways. While Philip and Melanie will catch a plane to New York, Brent and Shane will catch a plane back to Vancouver and I will make my way back to Toronto.

I say this Trip will last approx 8 weeks because we plan on staying in Mexico until our funds run out, and we estimated it would take about 6 weeks after California for us to all be broke. As for me, While in Whistler, I have managed to save about $5000-$6000 for this trip and plan on getting back to Toronto in mid to late June with a couple hundred left.

Those are the plans for now.

Nick

Last Monday, Shane, Nick and I went up on Whistler to do some skiing. It was a really nice day. Given that it was President Week in the States and Reading week here in Canada, the mountain was really busy. The line-ups to get up the mountain were huge. On the bright side, the sun was out. I’m sure it must have been anywhere near 6 degrees. We decided to cut the skiing short and to go have a BBQ in our backyard (on the ski run behind our place) for Shane’s B-day. We drank some beer, had some hot dogs and sausages and watched people ski down Blackcomb Mountain. We even got to see a few people crash and fall. Don’t worry, no one got hurt. We finished the day by going to Crystal Lounge (sports pub) for Karaoke night. Another fun time in Whistler!!

Darcey

 

 

This week we were lucky to have our good buddy Luc come visit us. Luc is moving to Tasmania for school and decided to spend a week in Whistler before leaving. He finally got to relax after working overtime every week at the mine for the past 5 months. We went out to Longhorn’s for local’s night and partied in Staff Housing. I’ll admit it, Luc was lucky. He got to ski on one of the nicest days we had so far this winter. On Luc’s last night here, after walking around the village for half an hour, Luc, Nick and I found the Thai restaurant we were so desperately searching. The food was awesome! Overall, we had a good week. Thanks for the visit Luc and good luck in Australia.
P.S. I won at Poker (10$ buy in) and Luc got third. Not bad!

Darcey

If you had to chose the winner of a race down part of the Blackcomb Mountain and one person was on a toboggan, a second on a downhill bike and a third on an air-mattress, who would you chose to win? One night, while chilling in the lounge, we thought it was a good idea to see exactly what would happen in that given situation. Ben took out a toboggan, Josh took out his downhill bike and Danny took out his air-mattress. Once outside Danny noticed his air-mattress lost a lot of air because of the cold weather. He was doomed before even starting the race. Ben’s toboggan looked like it can lead him to a win. When interviewed, he said “this toboggan has been built by 1000 different scientists from 1000 different locations”. This was no ordinary sleigh. Josh with his full body armour looked like he can fall from a cliff and still get back up without a scratch. To make things more challenging, the race took place in the dark. Shortly after starting the race, Ben fell off his toboggan at full speed. I don’t know if this was part of his strategy to win the race, but because of his fall, Josh stopped to see if Ben was alright. After racing to a nearby bush where his toboggan had crashed, Ben got back up onto it and zoomed down the hill with incredible speed. He was the first to finish the race. Josh came in second with his downhill bike. In third place came Danny running down the hill with his near empty air-mattress tossed over his shoulder. As he finished the race we noticed he had found an exact replica of Ben’s toboggan somewhere on the hill. The challenge was on. Toboggan vs. Toboggan! Danny and Ben hiked half way up the original course where they embarked into their race vehicles. After a short sprint, Ben took the race for a second time. Even though Ben won, I would say that the real winner was Danny. Even if he had a no good air-mattress he finished the race and had the courage to take on the ever so fast Ben on his red 2008 speedster toboggan.

Darcey

 

 

Last week Nick, John, Phil and I spent a few hours snowshoeing instead of skiing. I got back home early from work to find out that they we’re going snowshoeing. I quickly agreed to join them. We rented snowshoes ($10 each) and explored different trails. It was a nice and sunny day. We made it to lost lake where we had fun running in the fresh powder the lake had to offer. It was a nice change from skiing and great exercise.

Darcey

 

 

 

On January 26th, Australians celebrated Australia Day. This day proves to be quite popular in Whistler being that a third of people here are Australian. Up on the mountain the lift operators were dressed in 80’s retro and in the village it was party time. About 8 of us tried getting into Longhorns at 2:00 pm but it was already full. We would have waited a good couple hours to get in. We ended up partying at Crystal Lounge, a sports pub, from 2:00pm till 1:00 am. It was good! We met some Americans from California. They we’re really nice. The one lady bought us each a couple shots of tequila and some Jagerbombs. I’m sure she spent over 200$ on our group. The bar was filled with Aussies (Australians). Everyone had a good time. I’ll admit that my first Australia Day was a good one. It reminded me a lot of Canada Day.  

Darcey

Once a week, in the common room located on our floor, we have an event called the community kitchen. A lady comes over and shows us how to cook healthy meals. The food always turns out great. We are usually about 10 people who participate. The best part about this event is that we don’t have to spend one cent and we get a nice big supper. I forget the name of the stuff we prepared this week but, there was a dish containing Chinese noodles, a rice bowl, potato wedges, couscous and for desert rice pudding. Can’t wait till next week.

Darcey

The first time I ate a Beaver Tail was in Ottawa on the Rideau Canal. I have to admit, it was pretty good. A Beaver Tail is a pastry which they deep-fry and then add toppings. They are normally sweet. When we first got to whistler, we noticed that they had them down in the village at a chip stand named Zogs. We tried them but they weren’t the same. We were really disappointed, especially Danny. I believe the pastries were shipped to them from frozen. It didn’t taste at all like the ones in Ottawa. Last week, we decide to try our luck with another Beaver Tail place located on Whistler Mountain. This place was bigger. We figured they probably had room in that building to make fresh pastries. When we finally had them, they we’re exactly like in Ottawa. Everyone has to try a Beaver Tail. It’s quite good! Here’s a picture of the maple one I had up on the Mountain.

Darcey

Nicely said Paul and Thanks mom!

Darcey

The average snowfall in Whistler is 33 feet. Last year they got around 60 feet. That’s a lot of snow. It is unreal being here and watching it fall virtually every day. This past week we got over 4 feet of snow. The skiing was great. On Sunday it snowed so much that the traffic was backed up like you wouldn’t believe. What is usually a 5 minute drive to Creekside would have taken hours. Danny, being he works for roads and parking, missed out on the fire and ice show but managed to rack in the overtime. All this to say there’s a lot of snow! Take a look at the picture I posted of my truck. That’s after only a few days. Luckily it’s parked for the winter. Oh yeah, and I guess it doesn’t get cold in Whistler. My guess is that for the past month the daily average was close to – 5c. This week they are calling for around 0c. The coldest we got so far was -17 here in the village. The weather is perfect. We love Whistler!

Darcey

 

 

JMac’s visit started off as a good one. He arrived in whistler this past Saturday. Little did he know he was about to spend a lot less money than what he expected. Saturday night we went out looking for boots for him to buy. As I was lending him my second pair of skis, he only needed boots and poles. After an hour of shopping, the cheapest boots we can find were $399. Equipment is expensive in whistler. We shopped around for rental boots and poles. Many of the places had them for well over $100 for the week. Jon’s first hook up of the night came when we set foot in Source for Sports. He was able to get the boots and poles for $75 tax in. I think the guy accidently charged him for kid’s boots and on top of that gave us a 10% discount because I am staff here in whistler.
Jon and I made our way back to rez where we would start off a great night with a few beers. For a while now Jon has wanted to try Kokanee Gold. Unfortunately they don’t sell this beer in Ontario. Getting hooked up again, he was able to able to fulfill his life long dream of tasting a beer he had long heard off. We went down to a pub called Crystal Lounge for a few pitchers of beer, or as they say here in whistler, Jugs. Then with our luck, we got hooked up again. We left Crystal Lounge for a club named Buffalo Bills. Since a friend of mine works there, we were able to by-pass the line by entering the back door and didn’t have to pay a cover charge. Thanks Josh! We played some pool and had a great time.
Sunday morning we got up nice and early, put on the skis and made our way up Blackcomb Mountain. It snowed all day. It was Jon’s first time skiing in all that powder. We made our way to the ticketing office in order to pay for Jon’s passes for the week. Hooked-up again! Ben, a friend from rez, used his magic and was able to hook Jon up with early-bird season prices (best deal you can get to get up on the mountains) and the ticketing person accidently hooked Jon up with a free day of skiing. (It was no accident, but in case someone asks, yes it was.) There he was, getting hooked up left and right like if it was his job. Jon, Ben and I went for some après-ski at the Amsterdam Pub. We split on a Jug and each had a poutine.
After showering and a few drinks, Jon and I went to GLC, a pub situated at the base of Whistler Mountain, to go watch the Fire and Ice show. This is a show where skiers and snowboarders perform tricks and try their luck jumping through a ring of fire. We were able to hook ourselves up with a sweet table on the outside patio of the GLC right near the show. We even got the guy who works there to hook us up with a big propane lantern to keep us warm. The waitress told us they don’t allow people to sit there but made an exception for us. The fire and ice show was great.
It’s now Tuesday. I’m typing this post as Jon and Danny are making themselves grilled cheese for breakfast. Soon we will be back up the mountain for another fun day of skiing. This afternoon we will watch the Montreal Canadians on TSN. Hopefully our luck will continue.

A little late post to whish everyone a great new year. We had a lot of fun for New Year’s Eve. Had some drinks here in residence and then made our way to 18 below, a restaurant near our place. They had cheap drinks and good music. After a great night out, everyone went straight to bed except for me (Darcey). I stayed up a little longer in the lounge with some friends. Before hitting the hay, I went into Danny’s room where he and Kendra were sleeping. I tried to wake them up for fun, but nothing. So I took almost everything Danny had in his room and put it onto his bed. When he and Kendra woke up they had a bunch of stuff on them. Kendra was cuddling with a bag of chocolates. Haha.. New Year’s Eve was fun. Hope everyone had as much fun as us.

Darcey

 

Christmas this year was truly different. Even though it was our first Christmas away from home, it was still a really good one. We got some visit from my mom, Nick’s mom and Danny’s girlfriend, Kendra. It was a full house in our little apartment. We had a lot of fun visiting the village. It was good to have some big home cooked meals again. The moms cooked some ham, turkey and even took the time to make 12 loafs of homemade bread, cinnamon buns and raisin bread. We got spoiled. They even did our dishes. The girls went out for a snowshoe hike while we were at work. Mom and Kendra had some baileys to make the hike a little bit more interesting. They took some really nice pictures. We went tubing and mom tried skiing. Christmas was great! We all had a lot of fun!! Thanks for the visit.

Darcey

Most teams came up with one main course and some came up with a main course and a desert dish but danny, darcey and I came up with an appetizer, a main dish and a desert. Our appetizer was a home made soup with a base of chicken broth and cream of celery with one fried perogie and one deep fried perogie balanced on top. Our main dish was a perogie pizza on an English muffin bun topped with some fresh vegetables, bacon, swiss cheese and of course a sliced perogie. Our desert was a deep fried perogie topped with caramelized apple slices, a sauce of brown sugar and maple syrup and some diced pear.

The best part of the whole evening was that we ended up winning the whole thing. What we won was 4 free nights of rent each (grand total of $165) and a nice gold medal.

Nick

 

 

We are now used to the everyday life in whistler. It’s awesome! We all like our jobs but especially our days off. This week, both the Whistler peak and Blackcomb glacier opened for riding in the alpine. There are many bowls, fresh powder, wicked back country, off piste hiking and really nice scenery. This is what separates the Rockies with the ski hills in Ontario. Today, Nick and I spent most of our day up on Whistler peak. It was such a nice day. We then went for some après-ski with Tom and Ben, friends from our floor in staff housing.

 Darcey

Danny

Sorry if this repeats lots of Paul’s blog, its cause I wrote it in the airport.

Danny

Danny is still in the learning process and Darcey is showing a lot of interest in learning how to snowboard as well, so we’ll all be able learn together. Should be fun/interesting.

Nick

4 out of 7 days a week, I wake up at 6am and get to the whistler village by 7:15. Although it’s only a 10 minute walk or 2 minute ski run to the village from staff housing, I like to take my time in the morning. Once in the village, I make my way to the Springs Building where our locker room is and where the morning meetings are held. Our supervisors meet up with us, inform us of the temperature both in the alpine and in the village, tell us how much new snow came down the night before and how many guests we are expecting that day. After our brief meeting, all 15-25 of us head to the whistler village gondola to upload. Once at the top of Whistler Mountain, we all take our separate designated routes to our lifts. This means we are the first to ski down the mountain every morning. I prepare the lift for the guests (make the maze, shovel snow, put signs up, perform mechanical tests, etc). During the day I get to meet a lot of people (each lift can upload up to 15000 people per hour – gondolas even more) and also work with really cool people (most from Australia or England). I also have to keep in contact with the alpine office/dispatch throughout the day to give them updates on lift lines and other stuff as well as inform ski patrol of any incidents or irregularities. There is a lot more that goes on behind the scenes at lifts then I could ever imagine. While most people think we only have to press a couple buttons all day, it is much more complicated that I thought. We are trained to deal with many types of incidents, some I wasn’t even aware could happen. I’m not just saying this to make my job seem cool, but I was very surprised about how much training it takes to become a lifty at whistler-blackcomb (about 80 hours + studying and an exam).

But to take away the little stress that we might get at work, we also get what we call ‘ride breaks’ where we take turns and go for a couple runs here and there throughout the day. On an average day, I can get up to 8 runs, which is pretty good considering when people aren’t working and ski all day, they get on average 12-20 runs.

When the day is over, we dismantle the maze, work along side ski patrol to make sure all guests have left the mountain, do a little paper work and contact alpine office/dispatch and then ski down to the village. I usually get home between 4:30 and 5pm.

Although some days can get pretty cold since you’re just standing there outside for hours without moving much, and although some guests can be very irritating and unpleasant to deal with, I still love my job and wouldn’t trade it for any other job in whistler. Plus the view from where I work is unreal, being thousands of feet above sea level looking down on the whistler valley and the chain of mountains all day/everyday is something else.

Nick

Yesterday I woke up shortly after 3:30 am. I tossed and turned in bed trying to sleep in until at least 5:45 am but my mind wandered off about work and countless things that I needed to get done. Instead I got out of bed and got some work done before heading off. At 5 am I showered and got ready. At 5:25 am I stumbled into Tim Hortons, picked up a coffee and a couple of bacon & egg muffins. At 5:33 am I filled up at Esso and was on my way. I didn’t realize it stayed dark so late in the morning. That could be because I don’t usually wake up that early. This is what it looked like at 7:14 am close to Gogama. (that’s the only picture I took all day…grr)

Pot holes, bumpy roads and congested traffic is what reminded me why I dislike Sudbury as I arrived at 8:50 am. I killed half an hour at Walmart as I waited for the mall Future Shop to open. I did a bit of Christmas shopping before I met up with Danny and Kendra for lunch at Swish Chalet. It was nice to see Danny again since I won’t be able to make it to Whistler at Christmas. After lunch we did more shopping at Costco and Future Shop. I dropped by Cambrian College to get a sweat shirt because mine got stolen back when I was in college almost 5 years ago… Kendra bought a wicked cool Olympus 790WS camera that is waterproof up to 10 feet, shockproof @ 5 feet, and freezable to -10 Celsius. Not to mention face detection and image stabilization. It’s way cool. I went to say hi to my good friend Steph at 4:50 pm before leaving to go back home shortly after 5 pm.

Sudbury got hit with snow just after noon yesterday which made it difficult for Sudburians to drive. It seems like everyone forgot how to drive in snow as it took over an hour to get to Chelmsford. Before I got to the Watershed fatigue set in and I started dozing off. Luckily I made it to the watershed and had a 15 minute power nap before going in and buying a Pepsi. The rest of the drive was fine, the Pepsi kicked in and after 4 and a half hours I was home.

I hope Danny has more time when he comes back in February. Maybe we can go snowmobiling!

It was about quarter after seven Friday night and I started talking to Kendra online. I told her about my day and how it was frustrating that the guy that I am supposed to work for screwed up and now I have a week off before I start work. Simply for fun, Kendra said well come and see me for the week. We checked it up online and we found a really awesome deal through aeroplan. A flight to Sudbury from Vancouver return was only 25000 pts. We had enough points for me to go see Kendra (most of the points were hers though haha, thanks Kendra!!) So now I am on my way to Sudbury! It was a little hectic having to book the flight since I had to transfer Kendra around 2500 aeroplan points. Then she had to book, I had to receive the confirmation, find a place to print it, pack my bags and all this on time to catch the bus one hour after realising I am going to Sudbury. Everything is good to go now and I am on the bus heading to Vancouver. I am going to have to pull an all nighter because my plane only leaves at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. I don’t really care that I have to do that because I am so excited that I wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. I am going to arrive in Sudbury in time to go to Kendra’s Christmas formal and will be there till Wednesday. Not bad for a last minute plan. I am super pumped and will post some pictures of my little trip back to Ontario.

Danny

Danny

Finally this weekend we got to go skiing. Saturday morning hundreds of people lined up for the opening day of Whistler Mountain.  We were not expecting much because of the absence of snow down in the village. Once up the mountain we we’re amazed. The runs we’re really nice and the white stuff was everywhere. It snowed all day Saturday and therefore we got to enjoy nice powder skiing. Sunday was nice and sunny. The scenery was great. We saw the peak of both mountains, Whistler Mountain and Blackcomb Mountain. As the week goes on, more runs will be opening and soon both Mountains will be skiable.

Darcey

 

 

 

Danny

Danny

Darcey

To forget about the stress and to celebrate Ben’s birthday (Australian), about 15 of us from our floor started drinking in the lounge at around 2pm. Then all went out for dinner. We went to Mongolia Grill in the Whistler village, which is a pretty cool dining experience. What happens is that they give you a big bowl, and you go up and fill it with any vegetable you want, any meat and any sauce and then they fry it in front of you. You pay according to how much your bowl weights (I’m proud to say I had the second heaviest bowl at 1.05kg). So you pretty much make your own stir fry. After dinner we all went to a club called Buffalo Bills in the Whistler village. Once there, the rest of our floor met up with us and it was an awesome night. A good 30 people were there that we knew from our floor as well as other floors in our building, so it was really cool. Most people that we hang out with (or that are on our floor) are either Canadian, Australian or British, so we’re really getting to learn about other cultures and stuff which I find really cool. We’re always asking others how they do things in their country and if it’s the same as in Canada etc.

I forgot my camera tonight, but I’ll try to get pictures from the others to post.

Nick

While watching TV last night in Danny’s room, Richard invited us to go hiking today. We were pretty pumped since we’ve been pretty bored lately. This morning we all woke up early and got ready but there was no sign of Richard, so we figured we weren’t going anymore. All of a sudden, while Darcey and I are in the middle of shaving, Richard knocks on the door and tells us everyone is ready and they’ll be waiting downstairs. We were supposed to wake up our Irish neighbor Connor when we found out when we would be leaving, but since we had to leave right away, we decided to let him sleep in. we thought there was only going to be a couple of us hiking today but when we got downstairs, a dozen people were waiting for us, mostly all from our building and we had already met and partied with most of them already. We hiked up to an elevation of about 1500 feet (the mountain is over 8000 feet in elevation) and it still took us a good couple of hours. We got to play in some artificial snow and took some nice pictures of the village from above. We even got to see some deer and also got pretty wet. We hiked along the ski runs because we couldn’t find any small hiking trails, but it seems like everyone was doing the same. We met several other groups going up and down. Enjoy the pictures.

Nick

Mountain facts:
- Average snowfall : 33 feet per year or 10 meters per year
- Total terrain : 8,171 Acres
- Trails : 200 plus
- Number of lifts : 38
- Hourly lift capacity : 61,407 skiers per hour
- Whistler top elevation : 2,182 meters
- Blackcomb top elevation : 2,264 meters
- Longest run : 11km
- Regular rate adult season pass: $1,739
- Adult two day lift ticket: $120-$164
- Skiable season : November 22 – June 3

Village facts:
- Accommodations: 100 plus
- Shops/Boutiques: 50 plus
- Restaurants: 67 (42 of these ranked as expensive or more expensive than the Keg)
- Bars/Nightclubs: 19
- Distance from Vancouver: 2hours or 77miles (according to mapquest)

Nick

We went to see ‘Dan in real life’. Now don’t get too excited, it didn’t live up to any of our expectations. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great movie… for women and/or men who like to get all teary inside while trying to hide it from the people sitting next to them. That said, we (Dan, Darce, Richard and I) were expecting something a little bit more funny than what we witnessed tonight. For a film that has Steve Carrell and Dane Cook in it’s opening credits, you’d think your abs would hurt by the end of the opening scene and not stop hurting until the credits, but instead, my eyes got a little watery (I’m not going to lie) and my abs barely worked a sweat.

It’s definitely more of a ‘first date movie’ or a movie you’d like to see with that special someone instead of seeing it with three other guys. Nonetheless, props to Steve Carrell for being able to play a serious role. Never will I look at Michael Scott the same again.

To conclude this post, I would just like to add that the producer/director of ‘Dan in real life’ didn’t use the actors’ full potential and could have made a better film with what they had to work with (in my opinion).

Comedic value 4/10
The ability to make eyes water 6/10
Love story 8/10
Overall 7/10
Would you recommend this film to a friend : yes (only to girls and boys with girlfriends – if you’re a bunch of guys, go see ‘American Gangster’ with Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe in the next theatre instead)

Nick

Halloween was definitely a success this year. We started drinking in the lounge with people from our floor at around 3:30pm. After a few drinks we all went to put our costumes on and then drank some more. A few hours later, our lounge was full of people dressed up, mostly from our floor as well as the other floors in our building.

After a few more drinks, we left for the bar. We went to Merlins in the upper village, also known as the Aussie bar. Most people jumped in cabs while Danny, Richard and I ran to the bar. We got there pretty early, must have been around 9pm. For half an hour or so our floor mates and others from building 5 were the only ones ripping it up on the dance floor. The bar got pretty packed by 10pm, especially with all the costumes (eg: some guy was a school bus and took up a good part of the dance floor). We drank and danced all night and eventually got back home in the AM. Danny and Darcey left earlier than I did to go get some food in the village, they got back by cab while Richard, the Australian girls and I walked back.

Australians don’t really celebrate Halloween, but I think they all had a good time last night. Most of our floor mates came out to Merlins too, so that was pretty cool. I think we got pretty lucky scoring this floor because everyone seems pretty cool and we’re all getting along great. This winter is going to be sweet.

Nick

We spent last night in Vancouver because Kendra was flying from Vancouver to Toronto early this morning and because we wanted to load up on some food since it’s so expensive here in Whistler.

We slept in yesterday because we went out the night before but still left for Vancouver in the early afternoon. The ride was a pretty scenic one and took us about two hours. There was a lot of construction between Whistler and Vancouver because they’re changing the two lane hwy to a four lane one for the 2010 Winter Olympics. We also took a little detour coming into Vancouver because we had no idea where we were going. We ended up driving through Burnaby, Coquitlam and New Westminster before finding a hotel.

Turned out perfect though because the first hotel we spotted was the closest one to the airport (less than 10 minute drive). We ordered some pizza (awesome pizza from the Pizza Factory – only in B.C.) from our hotel room. Then, after digesting, we went to play a couple bowling games. We played two games of ten pin bowling (the second only because Darce, Dan and I all got a 3-way tie in the first). Although still last in the second game, Kendra was the most improved from game #1 to game #2 doubling her previous score and Darce won the 2nd game by 22 points, leaving me and Dan eating his dust in second and third respectably.

Before heading back to Whistler this morning, we went grocery shopping (stocked up quite a bit – spent over $600), got $64 dollars worth of stuff at the dollar store and got some pretty sweet Halloween costumes (you’ll have to wait a couple days to see some pictures).

Once back in staff housing, the three Australian girls from downstairs helped us unload the truck and haul our 40+ bags of groceries up three flights of stairs; we ate supper and then relaxed in our appt. with Richard (Etobicoke), Luke (Nova Scotia) and ‘forgot her name’ (Nova Scotia) and watched TV (given to us by Will – Australian).

Nick

We got to the bar at around 10:30pm and found a couch and some chairs right in front of the big flat screen TV and the live band. Darce and I had to sneak a couple people passed the bouncer since some are only 18. The booze there is pretty cheap; we could get double rum and cokes for under $5 as well as pitchers of beer for under $11.

We met a lot of cool people last night, both in staff housing and at the bar. We met five more Australian guys from our floor as well as three Australians from the first floor and some people from Ontario at the bar.

The walk on the way back was pretty tough, it’s pretty dark, pretty uphill, pretty slippery, etc. But to make things worse, the group of people that were walking in front of us decided to start a game of tag. Our group was forced to join without our consent since I got tagged out of nowhere, so that made the trip up to staff housing both more tiring and little more exciting.

Fridays are pay days here at whistler so people go out to a bar called Marlins in the upper whistler village, so I think most people from our floor are going there tonight, including us of course.

Nick

Our first night in staff housing was pretty sweet. We got to whistler in the early afternoon yesterday, checked out the village (which is bigger than our campus in Ottawa), ate lunch, did some groceries, checked into our staff housing, etc.

After unpacking, we went into the lounge to use the stove to make some spaghetti for supper and to drink some beer. While in the lounge we met a couple people. A couple people soon turned into quite a few people and before you knew it there were over a dozen people drinking and socializing in the lounge.

We got to meet a lot of people from our floor, from other floors in our building as well as our house advisor (Don).

Our staff housing is pretty cool. We live on the third floor of a four floor building called ‘bluevault’ or building #5. There are about ten appt. on each floor and three people per appt. We got really lucky because we got the last appt. with three single bedrooms in all the buildings (there are 7 in total).

Our appt. is pretty cool too. We have three rooms, a bathroom, some storage space and a kitchen. We are also lucky for the fact that our building is the only one out of the seven that was renovated this summer. So instead of having old gross and stained carpet, we have nice hardwood floors, etc. We have no stove but there is a lounge on both ends of the hallway with a couple stoves, some couches, a table and will soon have a TV. We also lucked out because we are the closest appt. to the stairs and the lounge.

We met a lot of people yesterday. Our floor is pretty much half from Ontario (GTA) and half from Australia, with a few exceptions. We also met some British people and some people from Nova Scotia. Our Don seems pretty cool too, his name is Will and he’s from Sydney, Australia. He had a few beers with us last night and told us all the cool events he’s trying to organize. Will and the other Dons of the building are trying to organize something like 4 activities per month. The latter include bungee jumping, snowmobile tours, hockey games, etc. He also told us what bars to go to on what night and stuff.

We now have a few weeks off before our interviews.

Nick

We would have liked to leave earlier today but the truck is in the shop getting fixed. They should be calling anytime soon and as soon as we get the truck we’ll be packing and hitting the road.

Staying in Calgary a little later today allowed us to go out to lunch with Steph. We went to Swiss Chalet.

We’re pretty excited to see what our staff housing looks like and to hang out in the whistler village for a couple weeks before our interviews. Speaking of interviews, we all got a call back from Banff, but had to turn them down because of housing issues. We couldn’t find a furnished appt. in Banff that was under $1800/month and that didn’t ask us to sign a one year lease.

I think Darce is the most pumped to move into staff housing because this morning he told me that Thursday morning will be the first morning in a long time that he won’t be waking up beside a guy.

Nick

 

Danny

She’ll be hanging out with us for a week. We took it easy for her first day, didn’t want to overwhelm her with the west as this is the furthest west she’s ever been. We just went to play some arcades and watch a movie last night. (The heartbreak kid with Ben Stiller, I’d recommend it) I’m not sure what we’re doing today but we’ll try to find something cool to do. Maybe ice climbing, sky diving or crab fishing, or maybe (most likely) just do something in town.

It’s nice to have visitors (hint, hint). We’ve been gone for over a month now and it’s nice to see a familiar face. I’m sure I’m speaking for all of us when I say we’re looking forward to the week ahead.

Nick

I go first at 10:15am and Dan and Darce have theirs at 1pm and 1:15pm respectively. We’ll be leaving from Calgary early tomorrow morning as it takes over 1.5 hours to get there. We each have three separate interviews tomorrow, so we might be getting back to Calgary pretty late. The first is a screening interview where they just get to know us and help us decide a position that best suits our interests and qualifications as well as their needs. During that first interview, they also help us pick one job in two different departments. Following our first interview, the second and third are with the individual departments. So we’re practically applying for two jobs.

They said we’ll probably find out if we got a job by tomorrow night. Our first choice is still whistler-blackcomb because we can live together in an appt. in staff housing, but we’ll still accept the jobs at Banff if we get them.

That’s it for now, we’ll let you know how things went tomorrow evening hopefully.

Nick

It has come to our attention that we have unwillingly failed to specify in the previous post that Jojo is only our new roommate while we are in Calgary because she is in fact Steph’s.

Our apologies,

The Crew

We have a new roommate in Calgary. Her name is Jojo and she’s three months and one week old. she’s a Boston Terrier. She’s not the best roommate just yet because she doesn’t pick up after herself and makes messes everywhere, but i think she’s got potential to become a man’s best friend. she likes to cuddle and sleep on you while you’re watching tv and she also makes us laugh, so i think we’ll get along just fine.

Nick

U-S trip (12 days):

Food   – 372.77
Beer/alcohol  – 95.72
Gas   – 720.46
Campgrounds  – 431.67
Other   – 75

Grand total:  = 1695.62 (565.20 each)

Entire road trip (one month):

Grand total: = 3557.67 (1185.89 each)

Our trip to the States might be done, but the fun isn’t over yet. We will be in Calgary for the week. On Thursday we have interviews in Banff and then next week we leave for Whistler where we have an apartment in the staff housing residence located alongside the mountain.

Darcey

Last night we decided to shorten our trip a little bit. Instead of sleeping in Butte, Montana tonight, we’re going to drive 13hrs straight from Salt Lake City, Utah to Calgary, Alberta. Arrived in Calgary, we will have driven 22hrs in two days. And by ‘we’ I definitely mean ‘Darce’. I’ll be in the back blogging, sleeping and counting cows and horses for 13hrs. So far in two and a half hours, the cows are up 43 on the horses with 54 and 11 respectively.

I don’t want anyone to worry or lose any sleep over this; we didn’t decide to shorten the trip because we weren’t having fun or because we’re not getting along anymore. The decision was taken solely because we drove 9hrs yesterday and figured we could drive 13hrs today instead of camping out another night. I think subconsciously we’re all tired of cuddling in a small tent on hard ground and waking up to idling tractors, trains, garbage trucks, transports, plains, birds, etc.

When we get to Calgary, we will have driven over 12 000 km’s in one month and got two oil changes in two weeks. This is all I’m going to write about the truck because I think Darce wants to write something about the truck and the budget once we get to Calgary.

A little about our time in Utah: Last night we ate supper, updated our website then went in the hot tub for a bit while listening to the Oilers – Canucks game on the laptop radio. After losing $10 to Dan, we went to get some ice cream and chocolate milk at the nearby 7/11 then watched the 2nd episode of the 4th season of The Office. We ended up going to bed at around 11pm and woke up at 6:30am to get an early start.

The campground in Utah was nice but noisy since we were near an interstate, a railroad and the airport. And I don’t think they have a legal limit on hot tub temperatures in Utah like they do in Quebec and Ontario because that hot tub was unreal hot and the pool was closed for the season so we couldn’t cool off. Hence the reason we went to get ice cream afterwards.

Even though we’re done our road trip, that doesn’t mean the fun stops at the boarder. Keep checking up on the site because we still have a lot of traveling left to do before we start working. We have to go to our interviews in Banff, Kelowna and Whistler and we will also be updating the site as much as possible this upcoming winter.

Nick

There are two things that Darce did that really made Dan and I laugh. I’ll try to explain them to the best of my abilities but you might have had to be there in order for you to find them remotely as funny as we did.
The first event was at the boarder as we were crossing from BC to Washington. The Customs officer asked us for our passports (which we keep locked in the glove compartment). As I was asking Darce for the keys to unlock the glove compartment, the officer asked a second time for our passports. Subconsciously, Darce thought he asked for the keys instead of me, so in a daze Darce gave him the keys as Dan and I are watching silently and wondering what he is doing. The funny part is that I guess the officer was also in a daze because he happily accepted the keys and set them on his counter. After typing a few words on his keyboard, he grabbed the keys, gave them back to Darce and asked for our passports for a third time like if nothing had happened and we had just pulled up to his booth.

The second event happened on way from California to Nevada. We saw an outlet mall on the side of the highway in California so we decided to stop. While paying in the Quiksilver store, I guess the girl was asking Darce where we were from and asking where we were going, etc. All Dan and I heard was Darce tell her that we were in California yesterday and we were on our way to Las Vegas. Dumbfounded and almost insulted, the girl abruptly told Darce that he was still in California and that the boarder was still over an hour away. After that there was an absence of dialect between the two as Dan and I were laughing. After we left the store I asked Darce if the reason why he was a little confused while talking to the cashier was because she was good looking, he just said that he assumed we were in Nevada because we were in the desert.

Nick

I know we’ve still got three states to see and two days left on our trip but to tell you the truth, the reason why I’m writing this post now is because I’m not expecting much from Utah, Idaho and Montana and because I need something to do on this 10 hour drive from Williams, Arizona to Salt Lake City, Utah. But who knows, hopefully these states will amaze me and I’ll just be forced to write more posts for you to read.

Top picks so far:

Campgrounds: Although we had to set up in the dark and it was quite cold, I really enjoyed camping in Crescent City, California. The landscape and scenery in the KOA in Crescent city is something else, it is actually the setting of the Star Wars saga Return of the Jeti. Camping there you think you’re on another planet. There’s redwood everywhere on the ground and the trees that are surrounding you are some of the tallest in the world.

Bathrooms: The bathroom in the Bellagio in Vegas was amongst the nicest I’ve ever seen. It had everything from marble countertops and gold faucets to a guy available to spit shine your shoes at your request.

Scenic routes: I really liked the drive from Cascade Locks, Oregon to Crescent City, California. My jaw seemed to be dropping every second as we continuously passed by some of the biggest trees in the world on one the curviest roads I’ve ever been on.

City: I really liked Santa Cruz, California. We went there for a day trip while we were staying in Pascadero and it looked exactly like what California looks like in the movies. Nice boardwalk and roller coasters separating the beach and the pier from the local surf shops and resorts.

Attractions: Walking on the Hoover dam and looking down was pretty cool. Stepping on the ledge of the Grand Canyon was also quite exciting.

State: Overall, I really liked California. Although my choice here might be influenced by the fact that we spent more time in California than any other state but to support my choice, the weather was the nicest in California, I really liked the campground in Crescent city and I liked visiting Santa Cruz and Newport Beach.

Day: My favorite day of this trip has to be the full day we spent at the beach in Newport Beach, California. Swimming in the ocean, baking in the sun, walking along the bike path and the beach houses and boogie boarding was awesome.

Night: The night we spent walking up and down the strip in Las Vegas while drinking our cheap tall-boys of Coors and heckling all the people trying to give you ‘collectable’ hooker cards was pretty fun-tastic.

That’s it for now. Thanks for letting me keep busy for 15 minutes.

Nick

Best regards and sorry for the inconvenience,

The management.

Today we left Las Vegas and headed towards Arizona. Our first stop was at the Hoover Dam. I always wanted to see the Hoover Dam and I was super pumped when I saw it! It’s about 740 feet tall and the base of it is 660 feet wide. It borders the state of Nevada and Arizona. After seeing the Hoover Dam we went to the Grand Canyon. I was expecting big, but wow this was big. We took pictures standing on ledges and its actually pretty dangerous. If you fall off, your pretty much dead. We made sure to stay far away and it’s not like if you had to be super close to the ledge to see it because the canyon is so big. Anyway it’s hard to explain how nice these two places were, so check out the pictures and you will see what I mean.

Danny

Anyways, I say we painted the town red in a not-so-classy way because of the following: instead of eating a fancy dinner at an expensive restaurant, we ate chicken fingers on the bbq. Instead of getting picked up at our hotel by a limo or even a cab for that matter, we got picked up from our tent in a KOA golf kart. Instead of drinking classy beer and acting like big shots, we drank $2 tall-boys from a corner store and went to watch the games we had less than $25 on.

We had a total of 6 bets on 5 different hockey games and we all lost. And roulette and black jack weren’t very nice to us either, but all in all we had an awesome time in Vegas and we’re looking forward to the rest of the trip.

Nick

 

 

 

We arrived in Vegas yesterday afternoon. We made our way through the traffic to our campground onthe main strip. The campground is nice. It has a pool; it is surrounded by palm trees and luckily for us, it has a couple tent sites. After setting up the tent, we made our way towards the main strip where we took many pictures. After visiting half of the west side of the strip, we went for the buffet at the Excalibur Resort. When leaving, we were almost not able to move because we were so full. We managed to walk it off and finish the west side of the strip. Later, we had beer at our campground. We drank Coors, and not Coors light. I don’t know if they have this in Canada but it was our first time trying it. It was good. We then made our way back to the Circus Circus Resort to gamble. I lost 65$, Danny broke even and Nick won 30$. We finished off the night with Krispy Kreme doughnuts which we ate at our campsite as a midnight snack. 

 Darcey

The boys

 

 

It was sad to see California disappear in my rear view mirror as I drove towards Nevada. We had so much fun in the golden state that we could have stayed longer. The northern part of California amazed us with its gigantic trees. Swimming in the ocean and relaxing on its many beaches was amusing. The people we met were friendly. Especially Captain Bill and his lovely wife Lori who helped us with directions and kept us company in the campgrounds hot tub. Last but not least, the weather in California was hot! For the first time of our trip we didn’t have to wear pants and sweatshirts as we blogged online before going to bed. We’ll miss California but at least now we get to go visit Vegas! 

Darcey

This morning, for the first time of the road trip, we woke up to nice hot weather. We quickly ate a bowl of Eggo cereal with built in maple syrup that Nick picked out from the grocery store. Without showering, we left for Newport Beach. The drive from our campsite to the beach was a hectic one. There are many driving lanes, exits on both sides of the freeway and traffic like you wouldn’t believe. Thanks to the directions from a guy we met last night when we were down by the hot tub, we got there without wasting too much time. It was my first time in the ocean. The salty water was a little cold when we first got in, but after a few minutes we were ready to hit the waves with the boogie boards we rented (a mini surf board). Newport Beach was really nice. We spent the entire day on the beach and walking around the local beachside shops. Before coming back to our campground, we stopped at a Denny’s and had a huge breakfast for supper. We’re now back at our campground with our newly acquired sunburns and will be spending the evening in the hot tub by the palm trees. Next stop, Las Vegas!

Darcey

Danny

After seeing all these nice things, things could have been a little better. We took a wrong turn in San Francisco which added a good 2 hour detour to our already-falling-behind schedule. We woke up extra early this morning to make sure we’d get to Pascadero not to have to cook diner in the dark like the last couple of nights. But after getting off on the wrong exit and ending up in the sketchy ghetto of San Francisco, we still had to set up the tent and cook in the dark. But that’s not all. Since we were starving, our butane tank decides not to have any butane left in it anymore. This couldn’t have happened at the worst time because our meat is cooked and our noodles are still half crunchy/half soggy. Starving and only having bread and peanut butter left to eat, we decide to go eat somewhere in town. Since it’s already 10:30pm, every restaurant is Pascadero and all of its surrounding are closed. So we drive 40km’s north to Half Moon Bay to get shut down once again by numerous closed restaurants only to find a burger king drive through that’s open till (thank god) 11pm. Oh yeah, and Darce was six inches from ripping the head off an elk with the left front end of the blazer all because the damn thing didn’t look both ways before crossing. And if that’s not enough, when we got back form our late night snack, our tent was soaked from the ocean mist.

Nick

P.s. funny fact here, the speed limits are so slow in campgrounds that you’re actually speeding if you let your vehicle coast.

 

It’s almost 11:30am and we’re on our way to Pascadero, California (south of both San Francisco and San Jose) where we will be spending the next two nights. I’d like to dedicate this post to the unreal redwood trees we have driven by and camped beside in the last couple days in northern California.

Picture this: you’re driving on the empty two lane redwood highway from Oregon to California with no cars in sight making you feel somewhat invisible. The road is as curvy and narrow as they get letting you hear the hot rubber from your tires stick to the asphalt. The road goes downhill for upwards of 30 minutes at a time making your hands sweat as they glide from side to side on the steering wheel. The road curves around huge trees and you can feel the blood pumping in your right foot as you accelerate through the turns. It’s a really sunny day but you can’t see the sky and it seems like you’re driving at night because the tree branches and leaves cover the road from one side to the other not letting any sun light through except for the odd beam. In other words, you’re driving in what seems to be a dark tunnel because the trees are so tall and their branch span is so long. Not only are the trees really tall but they’re trunks are very wide as well. The branches from the trees only start growing at a certain height, maybe 20 feet or so, so as your trying to keep your eyes on the never ending road ahead, you take a peek to your left and to your right and you can see deep into the dark shaded redwood forest. Not only are some trees big and tall but every single one is making your jaw drop and makes every single hair on your neck stand and rub on the tag of your shirt. On the ground, between the trees in the forest, you notice the dark moss growing on rocks, stumps and logs, the red bark covering the ground and the massive green leaves making it seem like you’re in a dark jungle. If you look on the ground, tree stumps are several meters apart, but if you look up, your view of the sky is blocked by huge branches and leaves as if you were in a clustered forest.

Our campsite last night was unbelievable as well. We were surrounded by huge trees and stumps in the Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park (the setting in the Star Wars saga, Return of the Jedi). It was cold and dark at our campsite due to the tree cover, but the day was actually quite sunny and warm.

Enjoy the pictures as we enjoy the sunshine and the Californian breeze off the pacific as we drive past San Francisco and San Jose to Pascadero, California.

Nick

We left Cascade locks, Oregon this morning and we’re on our way to Crescent City, California. After sleeping in this morning due to the comfortable beds in our cabin and the peaceful sound of rain hitting the wooden shingles we were woken up by the train about 10 meters from the campground.

We went to visit the Bonneville dam and fish farm near Cascade locks, Oregon which was pretty cool. The Bonneville dam was the size of what I could imagine the Hoover dam’s grandson would look like if dams could procreate, but it was still cool to see regardless of its size. The fish farm was cool too, I had never seen one before and we even got to see a 450lbs sturgeon although I think it lost weight since the last time they made the sign since it didn’t look anywhere near 450lbs.

We then went to see the Multnomah falls about 10 minutes from the Bonneville dam. The way the guy at the campground was talking, I was expecting to see something pretty spectacular. Apparently that guy has never been to Niagara falls. They were high, don’t get me wrong, but if the Niagara falls were a Bently or a Rolls Royce, these falls would be classified in the economy class type cars such as a Mr. Bean car.

After updating our website last night, we decided to go out and explore the town. Since Cascade locks is close to the size of Monteith, Ontario near Iroquois Falls (if you don’t know these towns, then I’ve proven my point), we decided to go explore the next town 25km’s away. Hood River wasn’t much bigger but at least there were people in the bars. After being underdressed for one bar called ‘Brian’s Pourhouse’, we decided to go to ‘The big horse’ for a drink. ‘The big horse’ makes their own beer and their menu was a little different than the norm. We ended up ordering two types of their homemade beer and some sweet potato fries with onion sauce. The beer wasn’t too bad and neither were the fries.

Nick

It’s just after 5pm and we have just arrived at our campsite in Cascade Locks, Oregon (45 minutes east of Portland). We woke up in Burlington, Washington this morning and drove to Seattle, WA. Walked around downtown Seattle for an hour and went to visit the space needle. Nothing really special about that city, but it’s nice nonetheless. After leaving Seattle we made our way to Portland, Oregon for a little shopping and a gas refill. We paid $2.75 and 9/10 per gallon. Not too sure if that’s considered a good price here but it’s really good for us since it cost us $42 USD to fill up whereas it used to cost us over $70 CDN to fill up in western Canada.

It’s been raining ever since we left Seattle. We were pretty discouraged driving here since it was pouring on the Interstate and we knew we had to set up a tent, cook, eat and sleep in the rain. Fortunate for us the KOA where we’re staying has little wooden cabins. So we were able to upgrade for an extra $23, which was very worth it. The cabin is pretty sweet, it’s about the size of my room in Aylmer (if you’ve never been you should have came to visit) with a little wooden front porch, a heater, a double bed and bunk-beds. We also have electricity, water, nice little pink drapes over the windows, a wooden swing on the front porch and a fire alarm. It’s very luxurious by our standards.

Oregon is a really nice State; on the way here we had green hills and waterfalls to our right and the Columbia River to our left (river that separates Washington and Oregon). We’re lucky we weren’t camping here last night because they got 1 inch of rain in 45 minutes. Apparently they get rain everyday here in the winter (3 times more than Seattle) and they get roughly 100 inches of rain per year. I’m not a mathematician but I think that’s about 100 inches more than the desert, but that’s just my guess-timation. We’re going to go visit the Multnomah falls (second highest waterfall in the U.S. – 1 mile high)  and the Bonneville dam tomorrow morning which are located only 5 minutes from our campground. Cascade Locks is home to the most dense waterfall area in the U.S. It has 77 waterfalls within a couple miles.

Nick

P.s. We’re California bound tomorrow. Our campsite in Crescent City is right by the Pacific Ocean.

We just left Kelowna and it’s 1pm pacific time. According to Garmin, we’re scheduled to arrive in Burlington, Washington at 6pm where we will be camping for the night.

Kelowna was in one word: ‘awesome’. We stayed at Dan’s friend Sylvie and her fiancé Andre’s for the night. They were great hosts and made us feel very welcomed. The first night we went on a winery tour (Sorry about the absence of winery photos but all five of us forgot our cameras that night; what are the odds?). The winery was pretty cool, it’s apparently the biggest organic winery in Canada (85 acres) and the only one in the world with a cellar shaped like a pyramid, which we got to go inside. We got some free samples, tasted some good ice wine (Apricot flavored with an after taste of honey) and bought some bottles for the night. Before heading back home Sylvie and Andre took us on a tour of downtown Kelowna and took us on top of Knot peak to see the city lights.

The next morning we went to see the Big White ski resort near Kelowna with Sylvie as Andre had to work (We have interviews at Big White October 26th and 27th). It was a lot bigger than we thought it would be and there was already a lot of snow on the way to the village and on the hill. We could see that the snow plow had already made a few runs and I got my first ‘snowker’ of the year. We then went for lunch at the Rose’s pub at the Kelowna marina before leaving. (Thanks again ‘Sneaky’ Sylvie for lunch).

Now a little about our new crush Kelowna. The latter is a beautiful city with a population of a little over 150 000. She lies in a valley shared with the Okanagan Lake at the peak of the North American desert. The summers here are really warm and dry and there are many beaches and summer activities such as water sports, golfing and biking. The landscape actually reminded me of the dry desert and valley-ish Las Vegas landscape. In the winter their main attraction is the Big White ski resort located less than an hour from the city. As you can see this city is a haven for outdoor activities all year round and I think that’s the main reason why we fell in love with it. That and the fact that Enterprise road, located in the middle of the city, is infested with rabbits – even worse than Ice Chest lake near Timmins.

Nick

 

 

 

 

The road trip from Calgary to Kelowna was awesome and the scenery unforgettable. It was raining and cloudy but it actually made it cool because we couldn’t see the mountain tops and we were driving through the clouds. We stopped in Golden and Revelstoke to check out the ski hills but the clouds made it hard to see. Driving through the mountains was cool because we got to go through tunnels, see wildlife overpasses, avalanche warning signs, avalanche barriers and runaway ramps in case your brakes let go. We are actually going to drive this section again later this month and I’m hoping it will be a sunny day so we could appreciate the whole view next time even though is was wicked with the clouds.

Danny

Another thing I find kind of odd is that before leaving Timmins, we spent countless hours preparing, getting the truck ready and packing and right now, the truck is empty, we still have clothes in the washer and nothing is packed. Are we just unorganized and unprepared for the States or are we just so confident in ourselves that we decided to go with the flow and do most of the stuff last minute. I guess we’ll find out.

Ok, I lied, we’re kind of excited, but for a good reason. We found some pretty cool campsites. A couple campsites in California are right on the Pacific Ocean, and the weather will be much warmer than in Canada so we’ll be able to go swimming. Also, our campground in Las Vegas is on the strip. And when I say ‘on the strip’, I mean ‘on the strip’ – right behind Circus Circus.

We’ve added another cool gadget to our collection. Steph hooked us up with his satellite radio, so we’ll be able to listen to some cool tunes while cruising past palm trees and checking out the babes on the beaches.

Nick

Nick

Today we went to the Big Rock Brewery in Calgary. It was pretty sweet; we got a tour, got to sample the beer and got to bring back a six pack of mixed beer with us back home. They had ten different kinds of beer we got to sample. The samples were about 3 oz each and you know what that means. It means Nick got drunk! I got a little buzzed because I had some of Darcey’s and Nick’s beer. It was a good time and I can’t wait to see Nick drink his 6 pack because that’s three times more beer then what he drank today which should be pretty funny.

Danny

Despite getting injured and probably needing stitches on two different areas on my shin, today was in my opinion the best day of our road trip thus far. Some of you might assume it’s because I got special two-on-one first aid treatment from Biologist Dan and Human Kinetic-ist Darce but it’s actually because after not getting lost and not almost getting hit by the C-Train this time, we found ourselves in the bike rental office at the Canada Olympic park North of Calgary.

Because we’re both tough, Darce and I rented some hartail bikes (no rear suspension) and Dan got a full suspension bike (with the money I saved getting a hardtail bike, you’d think I’d spend a couple dollars to rent shin guards, but nooo.) We biked all day taking different trails and going on different obstacles and I think I’ve found a new passion. I always wanted to try downhill biking and I always thought I’d enjoy it, but I had the time of my life out there today. Maybe it’s because I’m lazy and you don’t have to pedal much compared to road biking or maybe it’s because of all the adrenaline pumping at 30 000 gallons per second through your veins, whatever it is, it felt great.

All in all it was an awesome day and we would like you to enjoy the pictures and video. Also, we love hearing from you as much as you like hearing from us, so keep the comments coming, they makes us feel warm inside.

Now if you will excuse me, we’re supposed to go visit a brewery tomorrow, but I’m going to try to convince the guys to go downhill biking again.

Nick

The boys

Darcey

Oct 1 : visit Kelowna, British-Columbia
Night 1 : camp near Kelowna, British-Columbia
Oct 2 : visit Burlington, Washington

Night 2 : camp near Burlington, Washington

Oct 3 : visit Seattle, Washington
Night 3 : camp near Portland, Oregon
Oct 4 : visit Crescent city, California
Night 4 : camp near Crescent city, California
Oct 5 : visit San Francisco, California
Night 5 : camp near San Francisco, California
Oct 6 : visit San Jose, California (visit Alcatraz in SF and go to Water Park in SJ)
Night 6 : camp near San Jose California
Day 7 : visit Los Angeles, California (go to Beaches)
Night 7 : camp near Los Angeles, California
Day 8 : visit Los Angeles, California (go to Beaches)
Night 8 : camp near Los Angeles, California
Oct 9 : visit Las Vegas, Nevada (hang out on the strip)
Night 9 : camp near Las Vegas, Nevada
Oct 10 : visit Las Vegas, Nevada (hang out on the strip)
Night 10 : camp near Las Vegas, Nevada
Oct 11 : visit Hoover dam, Arizona and Grand Canyon, Arizona
Night 11 : camp near Tusayan, Arizona
Oct 12 : visit Salt Lake city, Utah
Night 12 : camp near Salt lake city, Utah
Oct 13 : visit Idaho Falls, Idaho and Great Falls, Montana
Night 13 : camp near Great Falls, Montana
Oct 14 : drive back to Calgary, Alberta, Canada

That’s 6375 kilometers (3961 miles) in 14 days.

We’ll keep you posted.

The boys

After almost getting hit by the C-train, we went to Drumheller. Garmin (the GPS in the truck) told us to turn right on a road which is only meant for the cable cars. We noticed we were on the wrong road and were lucky the C-train wasn’t their. After being lucky and not getting hit, the rest of the ride to Drumheller was good. We saw the Horseshoe canyon, some pretty wicked bad lands and crossed a little suspended bridge. We felt like if we were in an Indiana Jones Movie. We saw some Hoo Doos which are sand sculptures caused by erosion with time. After all this, we were really excited to go to the world’s biggest dinosaur museum. Arriving at the museum we saw a sign saying it closed at 5 and it was already 4:30. We were too late to go in, but that didn’t ruin our trip since we still got to see big dinosaurs and got some pretty kick ass pics.

Danny

Food = $168.46
Beer = $140.95
Campgrounds = $76.17
Gas = $533.39
Other (attractions, parking, souvenirs…) = $176.96

Total trip cost = $1095.93

* Remember this total is split three ways. That’s $365.31 each for 10 fun filled days. One good day of tree planting this summer has covered these 10 days.

Darcey

The road trip is super fun so far and I don’t want it to end. We went through Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and have BC left. Our original plan was to make our way to BC and then go hit up job fairs and interviews on ski resorts. We have some confirmed dates for interviews and the earliest one is October 18th. That means we have two and a half weeks to spare before our interviews. Since our road trip is actually cheaper then paying rent and living somewhere we decided to extend it. That’s right, extend it!!! We think that 5 provinces were not enough. So we are adding 8 states!!! On October 1st we will be heading into BC to Vancouver. From there we will be going down through Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho and Montana. Some of the major stops in these states will be Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Las Vegas and Salt Lake City. Later this week, we will be choosing the activities we want to do in these states and we will post them. If you have any ideas of cool things these states have to offer make sure to let us know. This will take us about 12 days and we will keep you updated on our situation like we’ve been doing here in Canada. Enjoy!

Danny

Our first day in Calgary proved to be a good one. Even though we drank a sufficient amount of beer last night, we were still able to get up nice and early this morning. After eating two pounds of bacon, showering and shooting the shit in Steph’s dining room we hopped in his Jeep and headed for the mountains. Once there we were able to test out the off-road ability of Steph’s brand new 4 door raging Wrangler. We had a great time and got to see some nice scenery. Thank you Steph for letting us be there with you when you first de-virginised your truck in Calgary’s backcountry.

Darcey

I’m writing this blog in the truck on the way to Calgary. We left Edmonton about 30 minutes ago and are scheduled to arrive at around 5:30pm. We have to admit we’ve been pretty lucky since we left Timmins and this is the reason for this post.

Most campsite we’ve stayed at gave us sites with power outlets, water, etc. which we didn’t even have to pay for. And I don’t think it’s because the women working in the registration offices thought we were cute because we usually arrived shower deprived and after a long day in the truck taking numerous naps thus waking up with bed hair, pillow creases across our cheeks and pasties in the mouth. I guess it’s the off season and they didn’t mind charging us tent site rates and giving full serviced sites.

Mother earth has also been incredibly nice to us. It rained a couple times but it was at night so no one got wet. It’s also been pretty cold at night here, it almost went below freezing a couple times, but we stay nice and warm in our good sleeping bags and since we’re cousins and brothers, we’re allowed to cuddle to keep each other warm.

We went to the Edmonton mall last night and I found $60 on the ground in the footlocker. So we decided to go gamble the found wealth in the palace casino in the mall hoping to double, triple or even gazillioniple the $60. After loosing the 60$ at blackjack, I took $40 of my own money to try to win it back and because I didn’t want to leave because there was a cute girl playing at the table. I got lucky and won $30 after a couple hands. We then left and went to get some free appetizers at Boston Pizza in the mall with my winnings.

As we were taking a break in the hot tub from all the wicked waterslides in the Edmonton mall water park, three girls gave us their tubes (which cost $5 each) because they were leaving. Those free tubes provided us with close to an hour of fun in the wave pool. And thank god for those tubes or else we would be the ones on the receiving end of flying people in tubes instead of being the flying people in the tubes knocking helpless children and old women off their feet. Should have bought tubes suckers.
Other quick reasons why we’ve been lucky so far: we never had to buy firewood because people either left some at the sites or we just find our own, got $10 off the waterslides today because the cashier thought is was Thursday, got to stay at some friends in thunder bay and Winnipeg for free, went to visit the corner gas filming site on the last day of filming and got to take some sweet pictures because it was in the morning and they hadn’t started filming yet and ran out of gas and stalled only a few meters from the cheapest gas station we’ve found so far so pushing wasn’t a problem nor was the bill.

As you can see, we’ve been pretty lucky so far on this road trip and I hope I haven’t jinxed our luck by writing this post.

Be sure to stay tuned in the next couple days because danny will be announcing a pretty sweet surprise. It’s taking everything for me not to spoil it right now. I better go before I say more.

Nick

Cars running out of gas aren’t only something you see in movies. On our way to the Edmonton mall, crossing a busy intersection, the truck started to stall. Lucky I spotted a gas station at the corner. Before entering the gas station, which was only a few meters away, the engine completely stalled, the power steering let go and the brakes became uncooperative. I tried my best to coast the truck to the nearest pump still struggling with the steering and brakes. I managed to make it near the pumps, but the opposite side of the gas tank. Luckily I had danny and nick and their raging pipes to act as a backup engine. They were able to push and straightened the truck to the right side. I now know that the gas tank takes exactly 70L and that there is no warning light on the control panel.

Darcey

In the comment section of this post, write down something funny and original you would like to see us do (or one of us do). We will pick one at the end of each week, record it and post the video on our website.

The boys

This road trip is going great, and I want to dedicate this post to the stuff I find impressive. p.s. We’re at our campground in Edmonton right now. it’s almost 5pm.

First of all, the fact that our truck is getting more and more organized as we get further and further from home is maybe not a surprise but quite impressive nonetheless. Before leaving every campsite every morning we put stuff back where they belong and organize the truck so everyone knows where everything is and so everything is of easy access if needed. Even if I have to crawl in the back to find something while we’re rolling at 110km/h, I know I won’t be there risking my life while un-seatbelt-ed for long because I know where everything is.

The fact that only 15 minutes goes by from the time we check in to a campground and the time that our tent, sleeping bags and supper are all set up and ready has never ceased to amaze me. It’s like if we all have our own little chores and everyone does what is needed to be done in order to have the most efficient and arranged campsite in the campground, even though it’s not a competition. The same goes for when we leave in the morning. Only 30 minutes goes by from the time the first person wakes up to the time we put our garbage in the dumpster leaving the campground. In those 30 minutes, we all have time to shower, get dressed, make breakfast, eat, do the dishes, take down the tent, stuff our sleeping bags in their respective bags and pack/organize the truck.

The electronics we’ve brought with us have all come in use at one time or another and some are constantly in use. We’re all glad we’ve brought everything we did from the dash cam, gps and video camera to the am/fm transmitter, tripod and the power inverter.

The food we eat is actually better than the food I used to make myself in a full kitchen while in school.

Campsite expenses and gas prices are much lower than we expected to spend. Maybe it’s because we’re always running on empty and always only put $20-$30 at a time or maybe it’s because we’re camping during the off season, but no one is complaining.

The only thing I have to complain about and it’s not really a complaint, is that dan and darce always seem to fall asleep before me and always wake up before me, thus forcing me to wake up since I don’t want to keep them waiting. It would be nice to sleep in once in a while but we have a lot of stuff to do, so I’m happy at least they are disciplined and are aware of their priorities.

Nick

It’s 6:30pm and we just finished eating supper in Saskatoon. We’ve been eating pretty good considering we have one cooler, a camping BBQ and a butane stove. We had ham today and pork chops yesterday. We’re on our way to Edmonton tomorrow then Calgary the day after (check our event calendar). Thank god for the 110km/h speed limit in this province because there’s not much to see and it allowed us to speed through to more interesting activities and scenery. Today’s activity was the only cool thing we could find to do in the whole province. We drove to Rouleau to see where they film the show corner gas. We got to see the Ruby, inside the gas station, inside the police station, inside the bar, Oscar and Emma’s house, the cop car, Oscar’s truck and much more. It’s cool because the set is in a real town  (Rouleau)but the buildings aren’t really what they seem. Although they have a dog river police sign outside the police station, it is actually a coffee shop and Emma and Oscar’s house along with all other Dog River residents’ houses are real Rouleau residents’ houses. In Rouleau, they only film the outside of buildings, the inside of the Ruby, the inside of the bar and the inside of Brent’s gas station. The rest is filmed in a studio in Regina I believe. We were also lucky again to stay at a campsite that offered wireless service tonight, but since it’s 7pm here, it is 9pm in Ontario and for that reason I shall now say: “good night”.

Nick

It’s 10:30am and we just left Regina. We’re on our way to Rouleau to visit the corner gas set and then off to Saskatoon to camp there for the night (an extra stop we added). What was pretty cool about Regina was that it was really easy to find stuff, maybe it’s because you can see for miles in every direction no matter where you are in the province or maybe we just got lucky. When we arrive in every city, we go to the grocery store to buy a couple meals since we only have one cooler and we also try to find a campsite where we can stay for the night. Both were very easy to find yesterday. We camped about five minutes out of the city and there was a ‘Canadian super store’ five minutes from our campground too. It was also pretty cold the night we slept in Regina so we went to Tim Horton’s around midnight for a hot chocolate before going to bed and even that was easy to find. But I’m sure Tim Horton’s aren’t too hard to find anywhere in Canada. The campsite we stayed at was pretty nice, we scored a talkative neighbor from Manitoba, some clean showers and internet access.

Nick

Danny

It’s 12:30pm central time and we’re about to leave Winnipeg to go to Regina tonight then to Saskatoon tomorrow night. I’m blogging from the back seat again which means two things, I have more room than danny and I have access to more food than him too. Our visit in Winnipeg was short and sweet and confusing but friendly. We arrived two nights ago and slept at my friend brian’s house for the first night. We just stayed in, drank some beer and ate some pizza from beside that place that only sells underwear for men called ‘undie world’ as we got in pretty late. We had forgotten to upload Manitoba into the gps so we had to call brian for some directions from the highway to his house. They were very simple, and by simple I mean two turns, which I still managed to screw up. I got the street names right and the turns correct but I associated the wrong turns with the wrong street names. Brian’s living in a pretty sweet house with no driveway with some pretty cool roommates and tv’s. We set up camp in the basement and slept in our sleeping bags.

The next morning we updated our website as best we could with the time we had but we still have to do some stuff as the website is still not up to date yet. A lot more pictures and some videos will be added as soon as we get the chance. After eating and not showering, we left to go to the Manitoba museum. After paying the most expensive parking in the city across the street from the museum, we had the privilege of getting shut down by the ‘hours of operation’ page posted on the front door of the museum. It read as follows: closed Mondays. We then decided to walk downtown and get lost in the underground tunnels before going to the forks. The latter is supposed to be a national historical site but to us it simply looked like a bridge crossing a river and some shops. After visiting the not-so-impressive national historic site, we went for a tour at the royal Canadian mint, where they make Canadian money and other currency. We didn’t know they had scheduled tours and got there a little early so we hung out in the gift shop for like 45 minutes. The tour was cool, we got to hold a 24 carat 99.999% gold bar worth over $360 000 and the woman answered all our questions but still seemed like she could blow a fuse at anytime, so I stayed behind trying not to touch anything just incase shit would hit the fan. After the mint we were all starving so we went back to brian’s to eat. Brian had an online class from 6pm-8pm so danny, darce and I went to find a campsite and hung out there till 9pm when we met brian and two of his roommates at the corn maze.

The campsite we found was a little sketchy, no one was in the office and no one was camping, it was completely deserted. We figured we found a free spot to crash that night and we couldn’t really get in trouble because the gates were open. So we all met at the corn maze at 9pm. The corn maze was pretty cool, the corn was like 8ft high and there were something like 9 checkpoints to find. We split up in teams and it was really dark because it’s in the middle of nowhere and it was already pretty late at night when we started. We ended up only finding 6 out of the 9 checkpoints while brian and his roommates only found 4. I think the big reason why we won was because brian and his team were too busy breaking all the rules the whole time and spent less time trying to find the checkpoints. We asked the girl that worked at the maze if she knew of any non-sketchy campsite we could maybe crash at for the night but darce thought the girl was more sketchy than the campsite we found prior to the maze since she was pointing left and telling us to go right. Plus we didn’t feel like taking her contradicting directions and getting lost in the middle of nowhere in the dark on an almost empty gas tank.

When we got back to the campsite after the maze the owner came and saw us and collected our whopping $9 and opened the showers for us. The next morning we went back to the Manitoba museum and spent a good 2 and a half hours in there. it was a cool museum, way better than the civilization one in hull. We visited the regular galleries and went to the science part as well.

Nick

Enjoy!

Friday sept. 14^th

• Leave for Thunder Bay
• Stay at JF’s house

Saturday sept. 15^th

• In Thunder Bay
• Hiking at Sleeping Giant
• Camping at Marie-Louise Lake with JF

Sunday sept. 16^th

• Thunder Bay to Winnipeg
• Terry Fox Run in Thunder Bay with JF
• Stay at Brian’s house

Monday sept. 17^th

• In Winnipeg
• Royal Canadian Mint
• Corn maze

Tuesday sept.18^th

• Leaving Winnipeg and heading to Regina
• Camping in Regina
• Manitoba Museum

Wednesday sept. 19^th

• In Regina
• Check out Corner Gas filming site
• Relax and whatever else we find cool

Thursday sept .20^th

• Leaving Regina and heading to Edmonton
• Camping in Edmonton

Friday sept. 21^st

• Edmonton Mall (water slides, heck ya!)
• Camping in Edmonton

Saturday sept. 22^nd

• Leaving Edmonton and heading to Calgary
• Drumheller / Royal Tyrell Museum
• Staying at Steph in Calgary

Sunday sept. 23^rd

• Relax
• Steph’s house all week in Calgary

Monday sept. 24^th

• Olympic park for some downhill biking

Tuesday sept. 25^th

• Big Rock Brewery

Today we are going to check out the Manitoba museum which has a wicked science center so we will have fun for sure! Later during the day we are going to a corn maze. I had never even heard of that before. I hope we don’t get lost and I hope nick doesn’t get kicked out for eating all the corn. I will have to tell him that its not a buffet!

Danny

Nick

We just left Thunder Bay and we’re on our way to Winnipeg. It’s 2pm and I’m in the back seat again. Danny keeps on calling shotgun but I don’t mind, there’s a lot of room back here and I don’t have the responsibility to look out for the signs. Plus I get to sneak food from the cooler without them noticing.

Thunder Bay was unreal. J-F and his roommates were very welcoming and were great hosts for the weekend. They let us sleep in their basement and use their kitchen and shower which was a luxury. The first night we just stayed in and drank at their place. I was the first to tap out that night, not cause I was too drunk but because I was tired from taking naps in the car. They had quite a bit of people there. I guess their house is where all the pre-drinking happens during the school year. We saw the best guitar hero player ever. Leah’s cousin TJ could play all the songs on expert and even played with two guitars. It’s almost safe to say that he isn’t a guitar hero, but Danny, Darcey and mine too. We also partied with a dog that looked exactly like Brian from family guy, although this dog’s name was hunter and he didn’t have a crush on his owner, at least I don’t think so.

The second day we were in Thunder Bay J-F gave us a tour of the Lakehead campus before we all headed out to the sleeping giant provincial park were we hiked and camped out for the night. When we first got there we picked the campsite with the best view of lake Marie-Louise, but after setting up camp we realized it was way too windy where we were as we were on the point with barely any tree cover. So we decided to move a couple campsites away from the lake where we can get some shelter from the wind. After setting up and eating lunch, we went hiking up to the sleeping giant’s chin. It took us a little more than two hours to hike to the top. It was so windy up there, we all had to add a couple layers of clothes so we wouldn’t freeze. The best part of the hike was on the way down where we pretty much ran and jumped off ledges holding on to trees here and there to slow us down. we ended up hiking 16km’s in total that afternoon and the scenery we saw was unbelievable. The park we were staying in was also overcrowded with deer. At one point Darce and I went to get wood and we saw 8 deer within a 30 meter radius. So we were able to take some pretty close up pictures.

The next morning we woke up, packed our stuff and went straight to the Terry Fox race in Thunder Bay. A big reason why we left Timmins on the 14th was to be able to participate in the Terry Fox run where he ended his journey. Despite hiking 16km’s the day before Darcey, Danny and J-F all finished in the top five in the run and cause I have shorter legs, I only finished about 11th or something.

The driving part of this road trip is more fun than I expected because we stop and see nice stuff that the little towns have to offer. For example we stopped to see Kakabeka Falls outside of Thunder Bay where we literally stole a sneak peak because we didn’t pay the mandatory fee and we always stop to take pictures with the tripod of the three of us in front of the town monuments whether it’s a big goose, a sasquatch, etc.

Nick

I’m writing this from the back seat of the truck. We’re about two hours past Wawa, so about 3 hours from Thunder Bay and it’s 4:30pm. You might be wondering how this post got it’s name. Well, we kinda took a wrong turn after filling up in Wawa and we were heading to Sault Ste-Marie. After going the wrong way for about an hour to an hour and a half we started seeing Lake Superior. After taking a couple pictures of the beaches and the waves hitting the rocks from the right side of the truck, Darce was wondering why the lake was on the right and not the left. So we hooked up the gps and sure enough, we were headed to the U.S. but before turning around, we decided to park, eat lunch and take a trail down to Lake Superior. The trail was wicked, we took a 400m trail with huge rocks everywhere and some trails past through like 40 plus feet corridors of rock. so it wasn’t a complete waste, a little long detour to eat lunch by the some rocks, but pretty cool nonetheless. So let this be a lesson, gps’s are more useful when turned on.

Nick

Nick

So it’s our last night in Timmins before our road trip departure and it’s past midnight. The truck is almost all packed except for the last minute stuff like toothbrushes, pillows, laptops and food. There was alot more to do tonight than we expected I think, at least more than I expected anyways. we’ve been running around town since supper time buying the little stuff I never even would have thought of bringing. thank god for Dan and Darce or I would have left for a while without any toilet paper, lighter for the bbq and other little small but important stuff. We just got back from buck-or-two and Walmart to get some containers to organize the truck, a deck of cards for when we’re bored, some propane tanks for our bbq, a note pad, some dish soap, etc. We also did some groceries and went to the police station tonight, so I think we’re almost all set. We seem pretty organized and I think we’ve planned everything and are ready if anything goes wrong. We’re planning on leaving at 7am tomorrow morning. Thank god Darce is driving cause I’ll prolly still be half asleep by the time we pull out of the drive-way. Who am I kidding, I’ll prolly be sleeping when we pull into Thunder Bay. As I mentioned, our first stop is Thunder Bay where we’ll be camping for two nights. While we’re there we’re gonna go hiking and camping with our buddy J-f who goes to school there and we’re also gonna run the Terry Fox run.

So where are we going and what are we doing. Well we plan on road tripping to Calgary first. It’s gonna take us 8 days to get there because we’re stopping in Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, Regina, Edmonton and Drumheller before getting there, and camping for two nights in each city. We’ve got between one and four activities planned for each city and those include visiting and downhill biking at the Canadian Olympic Park and taking a brewery tour in Calgary, going swimming in the Edmonton mall, visiting the Corner Gas set near Regina, visiting some museums and going to a corn maze in Winnipeg and hiking and running the Terry Fox run in Thunder Bay and much more. We’re planning on staying in Calgary till October at Dan and Darce’s cousin’s place. Then once October hits, we hit the mountains and resorts all over Alberta and British Columbia while camping in search of a job on a ski resort. We’ve already applied to a dozen resorts online and we’ll be attending job fairs throughout Cctober as well. If we get bored driving around from resort to resort in Canada and if it get’s too cold to camp out, then we might take a week or two to go to California or something. On October 24th, we get to move into our staff housing apartment at Whistler-Blackcomb where we’ll be staying till our interviews on the 6th and 7th of November. If we end up getting hired at Whistler-Blackcomb, then we get to stay in our apartment, and if we don’t get a job, they kick us out and we’ll continue road tripping and camping in search of a job. So that’s about it. Ski hills out west stay open till late april to mid may, so we prolly won’t be back in Ontario till then.

What we’re bringing… Well Darce bought a 1994 Blazer this summer so we’ll be road tripping with that. We also bought a SportRack to put on the roof for more storage space. In the SportRack we’ve got all the camping stuff. In the back of the truck we’ve got our personal stuff like clothes and laptops and on the one side of the back seat we’ve got our cooler and other stuff. We’ll be shipping our skiis, skiing gear and winter clothes on the bus cause we have no room in the truck to bring them.

We’ve also got some cool stuff. We modified the truck a bit like adding a little laptop shelf in the front and some dressers in the back, Darce got a GPS, Dan and Darce’s older brother Paul hooked us up with an online phone so we can get free long distance and a camera to put on our dash board that takes a picture every 30 seconds. We’ll have that camera on the whole road trip so when you watch it you can see the scenery and the roads from Timmins to Calgary in like a 15 minute clip. We’ve got this website to keep people updated on what we’ve been doing and show pictures and video clips. Dan got a am/fm transmitter so we can listen to the music from our laptops through the car speakers and he also got some power inverters so we can charge our laptops, cameras and stuff in the truck. Darce also got a video camera.

Well, I gotta go help pack our winter stuff and make our lunches for tomorrow, so i’ll let you guys go.

I dunno how often I’ll be blogging on here cause I dunno where we’ll be able to get internet signals, when I’ll find the time or if I’ll even remember as this is all new to me, but i’ll try my best. They prolly won’t be as long as this first one, but i’ll try to make them more entertaining by adding funny stories and pictures, etc. Hopefully the stuff we do will be more interesting than a packing list and an itinerary.

Nick