I spent this past weekend with my friends Lindsay and Tanis in Banff. I hadn't been to the mountains since January and it was so nice to be out there again! We headed out of town after work on Friday and made it to our campsite by about 9. We camped in between the town of Banff and Lake Minnewanka, where we spent most of the day on Saturday.

Lake Minnewanka is at the top of this photo, and the town is just outside of the picture at the bottom

The three of us are on a relay team for the Canadian Death Race and needed to do a bit of training. Unfortunately I'm still working up to running, so Riley and I just did a hike along the lake, but Tanis and Linds did a 20km run/hike along Lake Minnewanka and then up one of the mountains along the lake. I had a great time hiking with Riley. She has had a bad cut on the bottom of her foot which is not quite healed but it was good enough that she could come with us. Shes great to hike with!


To round out Saturday we hit the hot springs for some much needed relaxation!

Sunday we dropped Lindsay off in Canmore to meet her boyfriend for some mountain biking and Tanis and I headed back to Banff to hike Sulphur Mountain. Our hiking book said it wasn't worth doing, since there is a gondola up the mountain that all the tourists take, and the top is a bit crowded, but we wanted a short hike that was close to town and decided to do it anyways. In the end we were quite happy with the hike itself and the views from the top!

After seeing this sign at the top Tanis and I were glad we had our good hiking shoes on!


As always, its a bit of a drag to have to hop in the car and drive 4 hours back to the flat lands of the city, but it was a great weekend and I'm looking forward to more hiking adventures later in the summer!

veggies!

I had my first little meal out of my garden last week. My lettuce needed thinning (I think I got a little carried away when I was planting) and what I was pulling out was about the size of baby greens that you would buy in the store. It was just enough to make myself a little salad to go with my dinner! And I was even more excited that everything else in the salad came from the farmers market here in Edmonton. It was delicious!

I'm not sure what is happening to my weekends. They seem to fly by and sometimes I feel like they never even happened! My big adventure this past weekend was a 60 mile road ride. I need to start taking my camera with me because the scenery can be pretty great. My friends sometimes give me a hard time about living on the edge of town (and therefore far away from them) but if I hop on my bike I can be out of the city and into farm country in about 10 minutes. I love riding past fields of cows and horses, and yesterday morning there were several farmers out with their tractors plowing the fields. I rode to the town of Devon, 20 miles from my house and just southwest of Edmonton, and then did a big loop back into the city. Unfortunatley when I got back into the city it started pouring rain. I originally wanted to go for 75-80 miles, but was too wet and cold to keep going. I'll be in the mountains hiking this coming weekend so my next long ride will be a big jump. I'm hoping to ride the Ironman Canada course (112 miles)with my friend Stacy when we are in Penticton in two weeks.

In an effort to save some money, help out the environment, and just for the sake of good tasting veggies, I decided to try my hand at an actual vegetable garden this year. I spent the May long weekend building a box in my back yard and planting seeds, and I'm finally starting to see some actual plants!

From left to right I've got peas, beets, and lettuce. They need to be thinned a bit, but I haven't quite gotten around to doing that yet. The other half of the box is a bit more shaded, so things are a bit slower to come up. I do have a few beans coming up, and my broccoli and zucchini are slowly but surely getting a bit bigger.

There's Riley in front of the same part of the box.

I'm also attempting to grow tomatoes and peppers in pots again. I planted a few from seeds, but also bought some plants at the farmers market. I've decided the farmers market is the way to go for veggie plants. The plants are clearly way ahead of my seedlings, and the tomato plant already has flowers on it!


Unfortunately I'm not sure how to get my camera to focus on the flowers and not the carpet! I'll have to work on that...

Sometimes its the little things here in Edmonton that make me really appreciate the city. Today at lunch I took the LRT downtown and met my friend Stacy for lunch at a little cafe overlooking Churchill Square and City Hall. The public transportation here isn't as great as it could be, but taking the LRT is kind of an adventure! The construction right now is awful, but by 2009 the south extension of the LRT should be completed to just a few blocks from my house!

Resurrection

I've been inspired by Sarah to perhaps start up my blog again. Obviously its been awhile....I'm done grad school, still in Edmonton, and now have a dog! We'll see if I actually get around to posting on here more often!