Caribbean trip video

I have finally gotten around to posting the video Rob put together of our trip to the Caribbean. It is to long too post all at once, so I've broken it in to four smaller parts.(Gives you a pee break:)

Caribbean trip Part 1



Caribbean trip part 2

Caribbean trip part 3

Caribbean trip part 4

Helicopter Trip

Sheila’s job allowed us an opportunity to take a ride in a helicopter today. I’ve always wanted to so I’m all over it!

Lost a bit of sleep thinking about it for the week leading up to the trip... had the theme song for Magnum P.I running through my head, picturing me, Rick and A.J flying away from the bad guys. Landing at the mansion to play fetch with Zeus & Apollo and taking the Ferrari to Starbucks for coffee.

Ahhh, what a day it will be

I did get some very nice video of the afternoon while we were flying over the stretch between Kelowna and Penticton. Flying really helped me appreciate where I live. I kind of take this area for granted after awhile, but flying I see it from a different perspective and see how amazing it really is. Even without the boys, Zeus & Apollo or the Ferrari, it was fun.

Beautiful country, I love the Okanagan Valley!




Here is the YouTube link if you prefer
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=JCL1zkv3_wo

Deception Bay camping

This last Labor Day long weekend Sheila and I left for Washington to go camping. As we’re driving over the Kokahala Highway, an hour before Merritt BC, we run into snow! In August, it’s crazy up there. We finally get to our camping site in Deception Bay

Deception Bay Google Map

Pulling up to the dude manning the registration booth and he says there full except having one cancellation not minutes before we showed up! Nice:)
… With a view of the ocean, nice again.

Toured around all the next day checking out the huge bridge, hiking trails, beautiful scenery, and eating. I went fishing one afternoon off the beach, caught one of the ugliest (For lack of a better word) "fish” I’ve ever seen. The photo defiantly shows its good side… yummy. We had hot dogs that night:)

The last full day we went to Fort Casey (some information on the fort Here)

Fort Casey Google Map

Amazing what they could do way back in the late 1800’s, a crazy maze of very thick Concrete tunnels and very large guns. The biggest of which fired 700 pound shells!

“Fort Casey was one of the several coast artillery posts established during the late 1890s for the defense of Puget Sound. Together with the heavy batteries of Fort Worden and Fort Flagler, its guns guarded the entrance of Admiralty Inlet, the key point in the fortification system designed to prevent hostile fleet from reaching such prime targets as the Bremerton Navy Yard and the cities of Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia and Everett.”

I’m looking forward to returning to this area and checking out the other forts.

Here is a link for some of the photos we took throughout our weekend

Click Here

We didn’t have our camera this trip so the quality of the pictures are not very good… I took them with my blackberry:).

Spectrum Lake Hike/Camping

What a great trip!

Friday, July 28th we took off from Kelowna at 3am (6 am) and headed up to Spectrum Lake for three days. Because of the 14 hour hike (2.5 hour) that was almost vertical (it was fairly flat) and the fact that we could only carry about 180lbs (40ish lbs) on our back we weren’t able to bring a lot with us, completely ruffing it.

The first day, after the travel and hike, we didn’t do a whole lot. Set up our tents and ate most of our food. Second day, half of us went up to an amazing water fall on the other side of the lake and the other half of the group went to the Glacier (Maybe post those photos later?). From the photos you’ll see how incredible it was.

The terrain up to the falls was quite steep and being guys, we had to push a few rocks down the hill :)





That night and the next day we spent a lot of time getting the local wildlife used to us being there (We were running low on food you know) , fishing and carving walking sticks… among other things that we can’t talk about… "what happens on the mountain stays on the mountain" :).






Enough chat, here are some photos;

CLICK HERE

Kalamalka Lake

What a great day!

We rented a boat this past Saturday for Lynn’s Birthday (Happy Birthday Lynn!) on Kalamalka Lake, just outside of Kelowna. The weather was perfect, next to no wind and hot. We were out ripping all over the lake for the afternoon, sunburn and bruises to prove it.

Here are a few of the photos of the day

HERE

And a little video of me tossing Rob of the tube in less than 10 seconds… sweet.

Sad, sad day

Well, it had to happen sometime… odds were against me, it was inevitable. I can only be the guy who pulls Pathfinders out for so long before I need to be pulled out myself and, very humbly, here it is. My buddy Noel is the commentary for the video… thanks for the emphasis on “…Jeff’s STUCK Jeep” Noel.

Here is a link to the photos taken of the day

HERE

Otherwise, here is the video
Jeep-1, Pathfinder-4

Little Jeffy

Sheila and I went out to a friend’s (Julie and Rob) ranch just outside Armstrong BC on Easter Monday to meet a horse that was named after me (long story). Julie and Rob breed horses for racing here in the Okanagan Valley with good success which is also really cool… but not the point of this story.

I’ve never experienced anything quite like it. Every horse I’ve ever met in the past has been timid and fairly unsocial. These horses were almost like dogs where they loved attention and affection, with the exception of one stallion that tried to eat me or something… he was behind a big, strong fence for which I was grateful.

CLICK HERE FOR A LINK to a few photos we took that day. Little Jeffy is the lighter brown color with a white spot on his nose, forehead and left rear leg.

Caribbean trip

Here are a few pictures of Sheila and my journey to the Caribbean this month. Our friends Rob and Lynn joined us, looking at some of our trips over this last couple of years you’d think they were fun to travel with or something:). Rob had filmed the trek and made an amazing video, kind of a summary of the whole trip… I hope to get it posted soon as well.

Our itinerary looked like this;

Landed in Fort Lauderdale on January 29th, rented a car and traveled to Miami, through the Florida Keys to Key West and the Florida Everglades. Then we jumped on a boat and toured the Dominican Republic, Antiqua, British Virgin Islands, Barbados and St. Lucia.

I want to go back (I know, duh), what a great trip!

For the slideshow;
Click Here

Alaska Trip

I know, I know...

It's been awhile since I've posted anything but, here are a few photos of our trip to Alaska this summer

For the slideshow;
Click Here

Not as a slideshow;
Click Here

The story of a hero…

I was in Prince Albert this week visiting my Mom and thought I would share one of our adventures.


One morning I saw this BIG black and red… thing in her apartment. I went to get something to kill it with and when I got back it was gone. We searched everywhere; it was nowhere to be found. Of course all day I was freaked, feeling it on me or seeing it somewhere… but nothing. I knew it was watching…waiting. We were just about to turn in that night and there it was looking at us from the hallway, hunger in its eyes and drool in its jaws, slashing into the air like we were already being fed upon.

But this time, we were ready…

I had the can of raid spray and mom armed with a fly swatter and paper towels. I squared off first and sprayed, like a flash it dove and rolled left… I missed! Getting reset I then took the super-duper leaping dive ninja roll and sprayed right, the demon saw it coming…missed again! I landed hard on my side this time and was injured. The beast, seeing me in a vulnerable position took his opportunity leaping straight for my throat! I knew it was over for me and with what I thought was my last breath, I looked back at mom and squeaked out…

"Run Mom, save yourself! I’ll hold it off as long as I can!"

Instantly Mom’s motherly instincts kicked in, she grabbed me and ripped me back out of harm’s way. With fire in her eyes and the swatter in her hand, like a blurred frenzy she beat the stunned beast within an inch of its life. With one fluid motion she grabbed the paper towel, wrapped up the stunned and defeated animal and tossed them into the toilet… flush. Round and round, down and down it went, back to hell where it had come from.

After I flushed four more times… the black and red beetle was gone.

THE END

Postil Lake fun

This is the video collage is from our adventure 4x4ing up at Postil Lake. As you’ll notice the video quality is much higher than previously posted… thanks Rob!
(Jeep-0, Pathfinder-4)

Jeep verses Pathfinder Day

I don’t really know what to say beyond what the pictures will tell you of the result but Pathfinders do make the photos for our journey more interesting… thanks Michael :)

This is the start of the trek (Rob & Lynn) , notice how everything is clean.


This is the scene about 20 minutes in the day.

Stuck = Jeep 0, Pathfinder 1

So after much tugging and Michael getting all muddy, we finally get back on the road. 5 minutes after that...

Stuck = Jeep 0, Pathfinder 2

After all that got figured out things went pretty smoothly or… roughly (we were 4x4ing). It was lots of fun, the last postings are short videos of some of the events.

My Mom at 3

I thought this was kind of cool to share. This is a video of my mom at around three years old.

Click here

Hope you enjoy this mom:)

Seattle Trip

We went to Seattle this last weekend for Sheila’s birthday (the other couple with us are friends of ours, Rob & Lynn). We had a great time and just thought I would share. (Just click on images for full size)

Day one:
We left Kelowna quite late on Friday due to some unforeseen incident, a purse being left behind…Sheila. We arrived in Everett, Washington quite late and drove around a bit. Found a cool new Hotel (Holiday Inn) and that’s about it.

Day Two:
We went to Boeing first thing, quite cool. Apparently the building where all the planes are built is the largest covered building in the world… Did the big tour there and also the new Future of flight museum, which was ok… It wasn’t completely finished yet.



Then we drove downtown Seattle to check out a part of downtown that had burned out over one hundred years ago. I guess they had rebuilt over top of the old (Underground) and a few caverns underground still remain. Kinda spooky and touristy at the same time. Found a great little authentic Italian restaurant and had a delicious Bday meal.



Day three:
This was a long and boring shopping day… hence no photos of the day time. And on top of that we all were going to a Circus that evening. Thank God I have some good news, the Circus turned out to be a neat experience. It was better than I was expecting, it was a good show… I laughed, I cried, ya know



Day four:
This was a good day, not because we were heading back home but because we were on the hunt for go-carts… and boy did we find them. I have no photos of that other then one with Lynn in her racing overalls… nobody could keep us still long enough for one. We have some video footage of the craziness; maybe I’ll be able to post that sometime if possible, Rob?

That’s pretty much it, Cheers!

We all that…

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything to my Blog so I thought I would get started again with something we did last weekend, we as in “our bad selves”. It may look funny but the fun! The whole gang zipping around “beeping” at everyone. We spent two hours, non-stop “zipping” for a whole $1.80 in fuel…

4x4ing up in Myra Canyon

Well, this weekend Sheila and I went 4x4ing up in Myra Canyon just outside Kelowna. We found a little puddle, which I had to drive through…duh

Here is the video clip

Also here are a few photos of our journey… whenever I managed to actually stop driving and take a couple of pictures :)

(Just click on the image for full size photo)

coffee from monkey poo

Kopi Luwak is a rare, gourmet coffee from Indonesia that is made from beans passed through (Yes... Poo) the digestive system of monkeys.

Here is the "rest of the story"

Driving skills

Now This guy can drive

Odd... I think?

I tried; I watched it three times to give some kind of description of this…flick. If you get an idea, please let me know.

Here it is

How to catch fish without bait.. or poles... or hooks... or...

This is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen… well as far as fishing is concerned.
You would think mosquitoes and black flies are bad while fishing… this flick will make you want some-kinda fish repellent.

Check it out here