I wound up submitting 5 shots, each with an application fee of sorts, but figured it’s going to a good cause so I might as well throw all 5 at them. One that I was especially pleased with when it printed is pictured at right

Kathy walking beneath some huge old growth on the last day of our trek.

Well lucky me, that one has made it into the final sort of batch! There are 3 other’s in that catagory that it’s running against, and 12 others in the overall catagory. The final step is done by voting, so if you felt inclined head over to the Picture My Parks page, my shot is “A&C3″, but of course vote how you feel! Every person who votes is entered into a contest there too, as added incentive.

I’m very happy with getting this far, I’ve never submitted anything to a photo contest before, so this is a bit of a treat to see my picture of our adventure on a goverment website.

Oh, and spring is here, enjoy it!!

Edit: I just heard that all 13 finalists photos had not only been displayed at the Victoria legislature buildings, but they are in today’s Vancouver Sun (March 13th) in section B. How neat was that picking up the paper and seeing my shot the focal point of the article, shame it’s split over two pages, but still…very cool!

Edit2: Unfortunately my photo did not win, however out of 1200+ votes in the contest the spread between the most votes in my catagory and the least was only 64 or so. Still was a fun time being involved in that, and I’ll always have my two copies of the Vancouver Sun

Anyhow, so we used our coupons today, and were given 2 sets of MSR snowshoes to tramp around with for the day. Up to McCullough Lake we went! The weather was amazing, blue skies, no wind, around -5 up there which was perfect.

We initially had brought some ski poles along, I’d seen numerous pictures of people on snowshoes using them, figured it might be the way to go since I was sure I’d be unbalanced on showshoes. Not the case at all, it felt just like walking, they were light and only helped you move easier! It didn’t require any weird body balance, leg splaying or other antics, just walk and maybe sometimes you might step on your other shoe, but it was rare. We left the poles in the car…

Overall, this is a heck of a thing to do. We had our cameras out non-stop, and equipped with gators we felt we could have really walked anywhere, not needing the tramped down snowshoe path. Our shoes however, they’re not waterproof…so that would have stopped that. But really, we didn’t get wet feet until the shoes got back into the car and the ice that had built up on them melted in. My toes were toasty the whole day.

Another bonus was the workout it gave, you’ve got such good traction on up and downhills that you seem to just go go go. I admit I’m terribly out of shape at the moment, so there’s a chance that simply walking would have winded me but I certainly seem to feel my leg muscles much more than a normal 5.5km walk.

We’ll probably rent one more time from Venture Gear, since they offer a “rent them for a day, if you decide to buy from us you can discount that rental price” offer, then we may look at buying. For $150 it opens up the winter season so much to the activities we enjoy in the other three seasons, hike on any trail or no trail at all through 3 feet of snow = no problem!

Head over to the photos section for the rest of the pictures!

So I did some research and most of the point and shoot cameras I’d want are priced upwards of $500, that’s just more than I’d want to spend. I don’t need 20d quality, but I do need something that I can tuck into a pocket when walking about the city and something that if I leave it in my car and it get’s stolen, I won’t be out a lot of money. Enter the Canon Powershot A540!

It has what I’m looking for, plus a black and white mode just for kicks. I managed to get a good deal on a Sandisk 2GB SD card (never trust the Staples store, go to their online site first and check out what price they sell it there, garaunteed it’ll be cheaper online…but they pricematch). Saved $60 on that card! Downside is it takes AA batteries, but it seems to drain them quite slowly…I bought 2400Mha rechargables for it though, which seem to drain all by themselves when left out of the camera…and fast. But when they’re fresh they seem pretty good, so far.

Anyhow, we went for a walk at McCullough Lake after getting it to test it out, here’s one of the shots just to entice…

In memory of fall:

I miss it already! Driving the other day I was thinking if I had a camera with me (which I should have), I’d have stopped a good 8 times in a 15 minute drive there were that many interesting things to shoot. Oh well, winter has it’s own little benefits, snow sure is pretty when viewed from a warm dwelling.

Yesterday was Kathy’s 25th birthday so we had a group of people over, where they were able to sample these delicious cheesecake cupcakes we made, courtesy of Kraft Canada’s free recipe magazine. It’s sweet! Naturally every recipe involves 95% Kraft products, so it’s a great way for them to get people like us to buy new things that they’ll probably only use once, but they lay it out in such a way that it makes things very easy and tempting to make.

Cheesecake, by the way, is the easiest thing to make…ever. And the cupcakes were wonderful.

Anyhow, will try to update this more often, it’s silly not to, it’s too easy now! Hopefully we’ll get out for a hike this Sunday, might be a great time to go back to McCullough Lake, last year around this time was utter magic. Sample to the right of last year’s best day there.

Cheers!

That is a shot of our dirty shoes (the mud was deep in some places!) as we stood at the center of the Loss Creek suspension bridge. It doesn’t look it in the shot unfortunately, but it’s about 150ft above the creek and made me a little bit leary.

Anyhow, check out the whole album, I’ve given a fairly lengthy description in the album itself but will be creating a whole trip log in the coming week(s) depending on my free time. (edit: triplog complete, view here: Juan de Fuca 2006

As for our apartment, we are still loving it, Kathy has taken to reading on the couch with the fireplace on, it’s just cool enough now to get away with that. Most of our boxes are unpacked and recycled (love not having to take them to the recycling depot, just take them to the cardboard bin outside…score!) and it actually looks like real people live here now. Not a complaint in the world at the moment, short of having to return to work in 2 days…Kathy goes back tomorrow. It’s horrible…but hey, gotta be done.

I have no pictures for today, as I have no idea where my camera is…somewhere deep in a box in the living room, where it will remain for a while. We leave for Vancouver and our Juan de Fuca backpacking trip tomorrow morning (Wednesday the 6th), and due to it’s sheer weight and bulk, I’ve opted to not to my Canon 20d, but rather my Nikon Coolpix 4500. Kathy will be carrying the Rebel for the trip which I’m sure we’ll be switching off on using.

Anyhow, time to get something accomplished with the morning, then do a final walkthrough of our old place this afternoon, then it’s packing time!

I am still unsure if this site will go live before we move, only a couple hours left and I’ve killed half my free time this afternoon fixing something I screwed up (teehee). Anyhow time to get a little more productive! Adios for now!

Edit: I am throwing caution to the wind! It is now live…I’m missing a few things (a contact me page, a what’s new page, and an “About Mike” page, but otherwise it’s alive! Things should be much quicker now both here and in the Photos section.

I should also point out that the Photos section has been completely changed, it now contains not simply a select few pictures, but a photo diary of sorts of the past while, which will be updated frequently

There’s a shot from the last update I did in the Photos section, just to see how this all fits. There’s a shot from the last update I did in the Photos section, just to see how this all fits.There’s a shot from the last update I did in the Photos section, just to see how this all fits.

We are moving on Saturday the 2nd of September into a great apartment that we’re very jazzed about! Unfortunately we won’t have internet service there until the 5th of September. Probably this site will remain active through this time as I’ll just leave it in the old place until the 4th.

Anyhow, that’s it for this initial post!