Another year comes to a close

As another year comes to an end, we wish you all Merry Christmas. JasonAndKara-Christmas2012

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A sigh of relief!

Oh happy day!

Some interesting developments with the wet camera saga. Once arriving home I put the camera in front of the heater for a few days. Unfortunately the rear display still did not work. Just out of curiosity I connected the camera to the HDMI inputs on the TV. Lo and behold the camera display was shown on the TV as you would expect it to.

This gave me hope that the video processor was still working and it was merely the display that had failed. With this new hope I ordered a replacement display from the vendor on eBay. It arrived in a little more than a week and today I installed it. The operation was significantly more delicate than I would’ve anticipated. In fact the very thin ribbon cable you can see in some of the photos actually splits into two directions, one for the display itself, and another for the back light. These two very fine ribbon cables needed to be soldered together, but that’s no challenge for big J.

Long story short, it works splendidly well and there is much rejoicing from me tonight.

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Hot Springs, Hiking, and Home

Our vacation is sadly coming to an end. The past few days have been spent enjoying the hot springs and doing some hiking. We had one good soak in Fairmont and had two quiet evenings in Radium. Well, from what we were told 50 other people in the pool is considered really quiet!

Our only unfortunate event to this relaxing reprieve was the demise of our camera. A hike that started out sunny, ended in a major thunderstorm. We were drenched, Lincoln was trying to climb under every rock, and despite our best efforts, the camera got a soak too. Ugh, mountain weather. Oh well, back to the prairies where we can see a thunderstorm coming for days; and watch the dog run away for three days too. Yes, back home we go. 🙁

Before returning home, we stopped in Calgary to meet with overlanders Tom and Janet. Two amazing people that have traveled all over the world. They actually drove from Alaska to Argentina! Not to mention driving all though Africa a few years before that. We thought that if we ever want to travel out of Canada and the US, then we really want to talk to these people!!

How does one come about meeting such awesome adventurers you might ask? Well funny story… We had kept contact with the Swiss couple that were traveling through North and Central America, Frank and Isabel. In one of their pictures taken in Central America, I spotted an Alberta license plate. What!! Anyway, this was Tom and Janet, the Adventurous Spirits. Now after meeting them in person, truly an appropriate name! We had a wonderful visit and I’m sure we will have many more questions for them in the future.

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Oh dear camera, please be alive again!

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The Crowsnest is not as the Crow flies.

Hello Everyone! Yes we are still alive! I know it has been a while since our last post but we have been busy relaxing.

If there is one thing that Jason and I share a common dislike for, it is the dreaded “RV park”. We passed so many signs for “RV Resorts”, yuk! 😯 Who wants to be sardine canned into these parking lots? Once we were west of the big national parks we feared that we would have no option but to join the big rigs and road whales. Fortunately for us, the BC provincial parks came to our rescue. We found so many awesome parks and have had lovely camping spots all through southern BC. These well kept, rustic camping locations have been a real delight!

We last left you in Johnstone, our Trapper’s Lake twin. From there we traveled to Jewel Lake Provincial Park. Also another gem about 15 km north, off the Crowsnest, uphill switchbacks the whole way, but worth the journey. This lake is said to have awesome trout fishing. Although we didn’t go fishing, we enjoyed the beach and splashed around in the crystal clear water for a while.

From there we stayed at another great find, Yahk Provincial Park. Although not as secluded as Jewel Lake, we still enjoyed a relaxing night at our camp spot beside the river. We also purchased some amazing smoked candied salmon in the town of Yahk. So many awesome flavors; pepper, maple, chili, garlic!

Since we don’t really have a strict schedule we have to luxury of stopping when something catches our eye. After Cranbrook we saw a campground called Premier Lake. That sounds good, doesn’t it?! Indeed it lived up to its name being a stunning, emerald mountain lake. After a somewhat challenging gravel road pull into the campground, we expected to not see many others. We were very surprised to see that the campground was nearly full. I guess the locals thought it was premier as well.

We went for a 2 hour hike on the Turtle Lake loop. The park operator informed us when we got back that 2 hours is considered very good by the locals, so we felt proud of ourselves. From there we headed into Radium to enjoy some hot spring soaking. I’m sure 3 days of hiking and hot springs will get us right back into the mood for work Monday morning! 🙂

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_the_crow_flies

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