Cam I Am

Well, it’s been an eventful couple days.

Today is the first day of our roadtrip to Winnipeg for my little brother, Andrew, and his fiancee’s wedding.  Meghan and I spent the better part of yesterday and today packing and making sure that we have everything.  We started really planning this trip after we got back from Las Vegas in April, but we’ve known about the trip for nearly a year.

The plan was to leave at 4:00pm today to do the 5 hour drive from Maple Ridge to Salmon Arm, BC.  We got a late start, but only by about 40 minutes.  We made it to Hope, BC for a not-so-nutritious dinner at McDonald’s.  It was about this point that I realized that my jacket was still sitting at home on the bed, right next to where I was packing my suitcase.  ”Oh well, we can’t turn back now!”

We finally made it to the Holiday Inn Express in Salmon Arm around 10:20pm..  Much later than I hoped for, but the kids got ready for bed and were asleep within minutes.  Actually, Megan is still awake, but Meghan and I have told her that she needs to go to sleep.

The plan for tomorrow is for another solid day of driving to Medicine Hat, AB.  If things go according to plan, it’ll be approximately 825km and if we leave the hotel by 8:30am, we should be rolling into Med Hat by 8pm.  We know that there will be stops along the way for food, bathrooms and geocaching.  :)

Night!

Yes..  You read that right.  Winnipeg.  Not exactly a vacation destination, is it?

Next weekend, my youngest brother is getting married.  His fiancee and her family live in Winnipeg and they made the decision to have the wedding there because it is central to the country, and I believe the majority of people going to the wedding live in the general area.

I originally looked into airfare for myself and the girls.  It would have cost $2300 just for airfare.  I then did the math on driving out and discovered that it would cost about the same amount to drive out as it would be to fly.  The advantage to driving is that I will be able to take the girls halfway across the country.  We plan on making a couple stops on the way back, including to Drumheller and the Alberta Badlands.

It’s two days before I leave now and I’m in full packing/organizing mode.   I’ll post updates from our trip..  :)

It seems that I’ve been quiet again.. So I better fix that!

In the last month, I have been on my very first trip to Vegas and the Grand Canyon. Since my girlfriend was already going, I paid virtually nothing for the trip.

Now, Vegas was exciting. It was the first time in a long time that I could forget about reality in a long time. I stayed up late and got up early. Since I was there for a wedding, I met a few nice people and got to enjoy a bachelors night out. Not only that, I found 9 geocaches in Nevada and 4 in Arizona.

One of the biggest highlights of the trip (and perhaps my life) was going to the Grand Canyon. We went to the south rim and stayed the the Village. You may be wondering why seeing a large hole in the ground was exciting. I have my reasons…

My grandfather used to live in Ontario when I was growing up. Every year, right after Christmas, he would head down to his place in Tucson, AZ where he would stay until the spring. Over the years, he would show us pictures from Arizona, including the Grand Canyon. In the early 90’s, my grandfather made his annual trip down and passed away. My mother went down to take care of things she needed to, but I never got to go. So, this part of my trip was a way for me to quietly feel a connection with him.

Since that trip, I’ve been getting busier at work. It’s been a very lean winter at work, but it appears that the annual slump is slowly coming to an end.

In the next 6 weeks, I need to get caught up on some bills, but also save enough money for a two week trip to Winnipeg. Why there? Well, my youngest brother is getting married there, so I’m packing the girls and I into the truck and we are booking it there! After the wedding, we are planning a slightly more leisure trip back, including to make a slight detour through Rouleau, SK (aka Corner Gas’s “Dog River”), and a visit to Drumheller and the Alberta Badlands.

The kids and I are very excited about this trip! We’ve been talking about it for months, so it’s nice to see the plans for it coming together!

Stay tuned for more!

At this moment, I’m watching the geocaching.com site. I’m waiting for the final approval and listing of a series of geocaches that I’ve started.. Actually, it isn’t really me behind them.

Very often, my daughters come with me when I go geocaching. They love looking for them and have even helped me hide a couple. Recently, they helped me pick out the location for “I Understand” when that gave me an idea. Why not devote a series of caches to them?

And so, the Three Daughters Series has begun. Each of the girls helped pick out the location and the cache contents, and even the kind of cache they wanted to place.

One of the caches (Cache “M”) is located by a restaurant that is a favourite of daughter “M”. The name of it is the Frog Stone Grill, but she always ends up calling it the Frogs Grill Stone. That cache has a frog theme to it and we even have a FTF prize that she is going to personally hand to the person that finds it first. This is why I’m watching the listing. People move quick on new caches in the area, especially easier, urban ones.

Cache “E” is located in a favourite park of the girls and Cache “A” needs to find a home. We found a couple spots that were possible, but due to the rules of geocaching, placing it where we wanted it would not be approved.

So, that is the plan for the weekend. We’ll probably go looking for a couple, but we are very excited about the new ones that we’ve hidden.

Have a great weekend!

So.. This year has been an exciting and tumultuous year so far.

The year started off with promise. I got to go on a trip back home to Ontario — something that hasn’t happened for 9 nine years. I visited my family and a few friends on my quick trip back.. It started off well!

Then the 2010 Winter Games were here! An exciting event that I brought the kids to see the sights downtown. We even took the kids to see a Sledge Hockey game for the Paralympics..

Sadly, this was also a turning point. The same day as the hockey game was the same day that my wife and I let our children know that we were separating. It wasn’t an easy decision, but after being together for over 12 years, it wasn’t working for us..

Shortly after I moved out. And since then, things have been a very different. I left nearly everything in the house, so I had to quickly furnish a place as inexpensively as possible. (Well.. the inexpensively part didn’t work out so well). I’ve also had to learn how to operate a household on my own. This is the first time in my life that I’ve had to be on my own. And yes.. I do suck at housekeeping! My ex and I are also still working on how to schedule the kids around our needs, and parent as a cohesive unit that live separate lives now. A challenge indeed..

I’ve met someone as well. This happened much quicker than I thought and she’s had to put up with me. I’ve been all over the map in terms of how I feel about where I am in life, dating and family. It’s been over four months since I’ve moved out and this new lady in my life has been supportive (she’s clearly a sucker for punishment!). I’ve made mistakes and I still keep trying to improve myself.

I’ve had a lot more time for myself. When I don’t have the kids and when I’m not working, I spend time with this new woman in my life (Meghan). I go geocaching, have gone camping a couple times (with another trip planned in a couple weeks), and still am full of good intentions..

So, here it is on a beautiful, sunny holiday Monday. I’m planning to take the kids to the beach today, play in the water and find seashells and some crabs.. I have no idea where life is taking me at the moment, but I’m still moving forward. Who knows where this journey will take me.

Hopefully, I’ll be blogging a lot more regularly now..

Our day started out with even better weather than the day before. We had breakfast and then headed into Brakendale to go to the area where you can view bald eagles.

It was only when we arrived that we discovered that eagles can be found there during the winter, and usually leave the area in February. We walked along the trail on the dike until we saw a bear about 300 feet ahead of us. Fortunately, there was a fence between it and us, and we started to walk the other way, but it seems that the bear knew the way around the fence, crossed the street (in front of a pedestrian), and went into the wooded area by the Easter Seals Camp. Now, the Squamish area has plenty of signs and information warning you that you are in bear country and to be aware, but we expected to see them in the campground or provincial park that we were staying in— not a busy street!

So, after bearly containing our excitement/nervousness about running into a bear (yes, I couldn’t resist the pun), we decided to go looking for an estuary that we read about. Well, either we took a wrong turn, or didn’t go far enough, we never found it. At this point, it was getting close to lunch time, so it was back to camp.

After lunch, my youngest daughter, Ainsley, and my wife wanted to have a nap, so me and two other daughters went for a walk along the Four Lakes Trail to find the other two geocaches in the park. Three hours, we completed our 7.5 kilometre walk, including going up and down a hill of about 300 feet in height. My 7-year old and 4-year old were real troopers, not complaining at all. I was truly amazed at how well they did!

The rest of the evening went well. A family had arrived at the campsite across from ours who had a couple young kids, so Megan was happy to have “friends” to play with. It was unfortunate that they arrived the night before we left, especially since they seemed nice and the kids all played well together. After we got our kids to bed, my wife and I sat by the campfire talking well into the evening.

That pretty much sums up our trip. Today was spent packing everything up this morning, heading home, and then the fantastic job of unpacking, putting things away, and 78 loads of laundry!

Today started off much better!

For once, our kids let us sleep in until 7:30! After getting up and making coffee, we made something that my daughter learned in Brownies… Barf-in-a-Bag! As gross as it sounds, it’s just eggs and mushrooms, peppers and onions in a ziploc bag. You seal the bag up (with no sir), smoosh it up, and cook it in boiling water. Very good! Afterwards, Megan and Elisabeth did the dishes. It’s nice that they are old enough to help!

After breakfast, we decided to go for a walk and search for one of the three geocaches in the park. After a short walk, we found it and I finally was able to leave a Las Vegas geocoin that I had picked up in Manning Park a couple weeks ago. We then went to have a quick look at the beach at Alice Lake (which barely qualifies as a lake — more like a big pond), and then it was time to head back to our campsite for lunch.

Within a minute of arriving at the site, one of the park operators notified us that the campfire ban that head been in place since we had arrived was now lifted. As we cheered, we prepared to make our lunch: hot dogs cooked over a fire.

After lunch, we drove into town to Walmart to pick up a couple supplies, and then drove down to Shannon Falls. We spent about an hour there taking everything in, including some ice cream, then took a drive to Brackendale.

Brackendale is the location where the annual bald eagle count is done, so we found where a viewing area is, and plan to check it out tomorrow.

Following our drive, we came back to make a spaghetti dinner, then had a campfire and made delicious, hot smores.

It was the perfect way to end the day..

It’s around 10pm of the first night of our camping trip to Alice Lake Provincial Park. It’s been two years since my family has been able to go camping, so this trip feels extra special for all of us. It’s a little bit different this time.. It’s raining today..

We haven’t done much today. We got here around 2pm, and by the time we were set up, it was 4pm.. After a quick trip into Squamish to pick up a few things we needed, we came back, cooked dinner, and then the kids (and my wife) were pretty much ready for bed. Of course, shortly after going to bed, Megan decided that she wanted up, and then Lizzy wanted to go to bed.

Hopefully, the weather improves a little for tomorrow and we’ll get a chance to do a little more exploring!

Today was the best Father’s Day I’ve had yet…

The day started off with me getting to sleep in; an amazing way to start off the day. After getting up, my wife immediately poured me a coffee with Bailey’s. Score!!!!

Once I had fully woken up, the kids and my wife gave me their cards and gifts. Afterwards, we went out for breakfast at IHOP and then on to the highly anticipated activity of the day. We were all going fishing.

Now, it’s important to understand one fact: I have never gone fishing before in my life. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe that at the age of 34, that I have never been. The only time I have done something remotely like fishing was for about 5 minutes, back when I was in Boy Scouts at a camp in the Haliburton area, and that was with a fishing rod that had no bait, and I’m fairly certain the lake had nothing but minnows.

So, we drove out to Mission to Sun Valley Trout Park where they have a small pond stocked with… well, trout of course! My wife had heard of this place on the TV show “The 100 Mile Diet“, and she thought that this would be something that would be fun to do for Father’s Day. With our brand new fishing rods in hand (that we had purchased earlier this week), we started setting the kids up. Fortunately, my wife used to go fishing a fair bit when she was a kid, so she showed me and the kids what to do. We set up our middle daughters’ rod first and let her get started. She cast out once, and within about 3 minutes, she had caught one! We still hadn’t finished setting up the other two kids rods and she had caught one! We helped her out, and then got our youngest daughter set up. Five minutes later, she caught one! Once we had helped her, we got my oldest daughter ready and then me.

After about a half hour, I caught my very first fish!

I have to admit, I was very happy! My oldest daughter was determined to catch one. Sadly, after another two hours, she still hadn’t caught one and was ready to call it quits.

After we left the park, we came home. Thanks to the power of the Internet and YouTube, I learned how to clean and cook trout. I’m happy to say that dinner turned out very well, considering it was swimming around less than 6 hours prior.

That was how I spent my Father’s Day! It’s always nice to spend time with my family and this day always makes me think on how I can be an even better dad.

…that keeps on calling me.
Down the road, that’s where I’ll always be.
Every stop I make, I make a new friend,
Can’t stay for long, just turn around and I’m gone again.

Maybe tomorrow, I’ll want to settle down,
Until tomorrow, I’ll just keep moving on.

Back in the early 80’s, I remember watching “The Littlest Hobo” on TV.  I would look forward to it every week, wondering what Hobo would do.  It was one of those shows that my brothers and I loved watching.

A few months ago, I was watching an episode of Corner Gas where Hank thinks that Hobo came to town (yes, apparently he beleived that a 30-year old dog could exist!).  After watching this episode, I did a search on the channel guide and found the “The Littlest Hobo” is still on TV.   That’s right!  If you are up at 3:30AM (PDT) on Monday mornings, it’s on CTV-Ontario!

I decided to start recording the episodes on the PVR for my kids to watch..

And they love it!   They ask to watch the same episode over and over all week until there is a “new” one to watch.  

I’m glad that I can share something with my kids that I enjoyed as a child myself..  

Hell..  I still like watching it now…