Personal Worst

I just did a personal worst in the Olympic distance triathlon today at the Canadian Championships here in Kelowna. It was a sad race, well mostly just a sad run. It's not like I expect to race as I used to, just want to be consistent with how I am working out and have been feeling not too bad lately. Anyways, had an OK swim and bike, but my legs just did not want to run fast today. It was a personal worst 10km time. At least I finished and just ahead of Pete still. I knew the announcer again, but luckily he didn't say anything embarrassing. It was a great course and well organized race. Oh well. I'm experiencing new things in Kelowna in my races - almost last and personal worsts. Oh well, guess it's gotta be good for me.

Fruit Trees

I have several fruit trees in my yard. I was picking cherries a couple of weeks ago and now the peaches are almost ready. One of the peach trees was bending a lot from the weight of the peaches even though they weren't quite ripe, I had to pick them to save the tree. It's great to just go out and pick your own fruit in your yard.

Facebook

I have just succumbed to the Facebook pressure and signed up this weekend. It's fun contacting some that I haven't spoken with in a very, very long time. Something else to play with anyways and it is better for keeping in touch with those who are one it since little messages are posted frequently that they may not put on a regular email. Anyways, another addiction.

Moving Muscles Ride

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, my cousin, Mike McDonald, was biking across the country for Muscular Dystrophy as one of his good buddies has MD. They just finished the ride this week after 3 months. They raised almost $150K. I just writing this case I'm proud of what they did and will miss reading the blog to find out of his adventures. If you want to check it out, click here.

Kettle Valley Railway - Myra Canyon

The Kettle Valley Railway (KVR) was part of the TransCanada Railway system. It is now a great spot to mountain bike along for miles and miles. Great for families to bike and camp along since it is mostly flat. There was some big fires here in Kelowna in 2003 which wiped out a lot of homes and burned down the KVR trestles. They have since been rebuilt in the Myra Canyon and reopened a couple of months ago. My friend, Marcia, was up here staying with me while doing some work here. We went to check it out yesterday. It was a great canyon hike although you could see the charred remains in the forest. I'd love to go back with my bike next time.

Revelstoke National Park

On the August long weekend, my friend, Helen, and I went backpacking to Revelstoke National Park. Seems like this is becoming a yearly thing for us - not last year since I was Ironman training. The other two weekends we ran into a British couple, but there weren't in Revelstoke this year. Revelstoke is northeast from here on the way to Banff. It is grizzly bear country. There are grizzly bear statues entering into the town. Lots of shops,restaurants, etc have "grizzly" in their names. We were a little spooked. We chose to hike in the National Park since we figured it would be a popular spot with more people, therefore, less chance of bears around. I did take my bear spray and my bear bell (thanks Aunt Polly:)).

We hiked into Eva Lake which was not quite a couple of hours. There was one other party there who was a family from Kelowna. They had a couple of kids and this was their first backpacking trip. The kids loved it and were great to hang around.





The next day we did a day hike up to Jade Pass and onto Jade Lake and back. There was some snow to go around and the area was quite open so we just went off trail down to the lake. There was one area that wasn't very open but we made lots of noise and didn't see any wildlife. Not a wise thing to do, but it really was quite an open area. Helen had thought we were going to hit the trail again, but I had assumed she could see that the trail went around the other side of the lake. A little miscommunication there, but we managed. My response was "You want a trail??" The footing off trail is harder and took more energy so we were tired by the time we got back to our campsite. I guess another "hiking with Kath" story, but there were no mishaps.



The bugs were bad, but there was a small shelter there if we wanted to be in there. It was relaxing by the cold lake. I know it was cold as I washed in there. No one else joined me. Cold wimps :)! The alpine flowers were in full bloom. The marmots there are well fed as they were quite big. We had a short hike out, but another awesome trip again!!!

Canmore

As I'm typing lots of stories in one go here, I realize how many trips I've had recently with still a couple more to come. Anyways, I was invited to Canmore, which is near Banff, for a weekend. My friend, Sabina, who lives in Edmonton has a brother-in-law with an amazing cabin and we had to go and help her celebrate turning 40!!! Who was I to say know to that. There was a few of us and we just hiked, chatted, shopped, chatted, biked, chatted, drank and chatted. The cabin had it's own steam room which was great!! Not much view from the place, but nicely settled in the woods. It seemed like such a short trip for the weekend and it's so very beautiful up there, we all wanted to stay at least a couple more days. A teaser for next time.

Abba

There was a "Abba Again" concert up here as part of the July long weekend celebration. A couple of friends were up for the weekend and we all went. It was fun to sing Abba songs and sit out on the grass. Look forward to seeing the Mamma Mia movie even though I have seen the play. Here's a pic of Pete and I at dinner before heading out. Don't let the grey hair fool you - he went grey young. He can mostly keep up:).

Nakusp Hot Springs

In June, I was wisked away to Nakusp where there are lots of hot springs. I have wanted to explore east of here since I haven't seen much of this part of the province since moving to Kelowna. Pete, my current man, is a hot springs fan and took me there. It's about 3 hours east of here with only one small ferry ride. It was good to have a weekend away and do some mountain biking too. There are hot springs that are in a pool that you can pay for or you can drive down a logging road and hike down a steep path to natural ones. We went for the latter. They were right by a cold river, but it was great to relax there. Apparantly, there are a few areas of hot springs east of here which I look forward to check out.

Colorado

I know that I'm in trouble for taking a while to write here. I just hadn't sat still enough to download my pics from the Colorado trip in May until now. I went with my friend, Lisa, who lives in Victoria. We both drove to Spokane, Washington where I left my car and we drove down to Colorado. We did a very long day of driving the second day to get to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. There was still lots of snow to do a lot of hiking with no snowshoes, but we did some along with some riding. The road through the park is the highest road in the continental US. It was to be fully opened at the end of the week so we couldn't go though it with all the snow still.



Estes Park is the town by the park and known for weddings there as it is really pretty. Elk were everywhere including this really big one with really big antlers!!



After a couple of days there, we drove down to Edwards which is near Vail to stay with a friend of Lisa's. We spent the next day riding part of the Copper Triangle Ride which is a very popular ride, but very tough. Beautiful, but a climb up a pass!! The Vail area a great, but getting to be touristy. Didn't have any Trista and Ryan (from the Bachelorette) sightings :)



We, then, drove up and over the Leadville area. This is above the tree line and the home of the most famous trail running race 100 miler at this elevation. Must be so very tough. Don't have any aspirations as this point to ever do it right now. I won't say never cause I seem to end up doing it then. There was snow driving there as we were up so high.

We got to Colorado Springs to the home of Pikes Peak. It's a well known hike/race there as it's over 14,000 ft and is on it's own with no snow in the summer so anyone can hike up there with no technical experience. We could only get up to 12,000 ft cause there was snow afterwards and we didn't bring any equipment for that. Beautiful hike, but don't need to do a straight up race for hours. I prefer a little more rolling terrain. Saw a unicyclist coming down - brave man! There was the combination of red rock and forest which was beautiful. Went around the Garden of the Gods rock formations - reminded me a little of Arches National Park in Utah.





We did have some relaxing time during this quick 10 days also, but we wanted to see lots the state. I would definitely go back. Lisa wants to move there at some point. Lisa was continuing her trip from there and I flew back to Spokane.