Summer 2011

Summer – June to September , 2011

We were both awake well before the alarm. Our bags were packed and waiting in the rental car. Double check the hatches and turn off the electrical breakers. Try to find a cup of fresh coffee in sleepy Fort Pierce at this ungodly hour of the morning and head for West Palm Beach airport for a 5:30 AM flight to Toronto. A few hours later we landed at Pearson International Airport. I don’t even want to think about how long that would have taken by boat.

Once again Chi Chi Maru provided us with a home base as we attended to a long list of appointments and errands. Their hospitality is always appreciated. We also did a bit of couch surfing (actually beds, not couches) and spent some quality time catching up with other friends in the area and of course, our son.

A berry picking trip in the Caledon area produced several of these mouth watering baskets.

The LSYC 20^th anniversary Sailpast was an opportunity to reconnect with many friends if only for a brief time.

 Dinner with the Phams and Tmejs at a Japanese restaurant was entertaining.

At the top of our errand list was to purchase a disposable car to meet our summer transportation needs. We became the proud owners of a very reliable, blue, 2002, almost bottom of the line, Saturn SL2 that took us to Calgary, Edmonton, cross continent to Florida, up to Toronto and finally to Florida again and back. It was so good we decided to give it a home for the winter.

Much of our summer was spent in Alberta reconnecting with family and friends and enjoying the beauty of the Rocky Mountains.

We arrived in Calgary just in time to attend our niece’s lacrosse tournament.

We celebrated some birthdays….

Went camping in Kananaskis Country……

The last time we slept in a tent our boat was a Hobie 16 and we were much younger.

Using plastic to start the fire.

Alpine wildflowers in Beaver Flats campground.

Wildlife on the move in downtown Bragg Creek.

… and Spray Lakes Provincial Park.

Yes, the white stuff is snow and we were rather cold sleeping at night until we figured out that it was better to have more blankets under us than on top of us. The temperature of the air in the air mattress was colder than the air at the higher altitudes inside the tent.

A summer hailstorm left more white stuff down at our level.

This is as close to winter as we want to get.

On a roundabout trip to Edmonton we treated ourselves to a delightful B&B on the outskirts of Rocky Mountain House.

Ask for “The Cottage” at The Grapevine Teahouse B&B. And have some of their freshly baked rhubarb crisp. www.grapevinebnb.ca

We attended a charity rodeo…..

...where bruises were bought and paid for in aid of sarcoma research. Check it out at http://www.pearsonrodeo.com/ . We were observers, not participants.

And made salsa in Mom’s kitchen.

“H” on the lid means “Hot”.

Summer passed much too quickly but we were anxious to get back to the boat and back on the water. Mapquest and Google gave us several options to get us from Calgary, Alberta to Fort Pierce, Florida. We chose the route that would take us east through Alberta and Saskatchewan then diagonally across the United States to the east coast of Florida.