Opal hunting in the B.C. mountains

One of the reasons that we wanted to go to the Okanagan Valley was to search for Opals. We contacted an Opal shop in Vernon B.C. and they do a tour up into the mountains to search for Opals. So on Monday morning we took the 1 hour drive up a logging road to the top of a mountain and began the search for the elusive opal. In my mind I thought a opal would look like the ones on their web site. Nice and big and shiny. Well, it is not like it may seem. We spent 4 hours in the 40 degree heat searching through rock and dirt and found rocks with traces of opal slivers in them. Not exactly what I had imagined. But I suppose diamonds don't look like they do on a ring either. So we will return home with slivers of opal and I'm sure Dean will make them look really cool.

Hogs and Horses

My cool dude cousin has a hog and a horse. Miranda and Colton each got a ride on the Hog.Then we went to Mable beach and the boys did a little fishing. They caught a rainbow trout that we cooked up for supper along with the Salmon that Auntie Helen made us. It was all so good.

Hot Hot Hot

I can't remember the last time I felt 40 degrees in Canada. Wow is it hot. The last few days have been sunny and 40 degrees (102).
Dean and Colton and my Uncle went out for the day driving through the mountains looking for semi preshious stones. They came back mostly empty handed. But today we are going on a more sure thing. There is an Opal mine in Vernon that they take people to to serch for Opals. So hopefully we will have some luck and find some good stones. Everyone out here thinks we are a bit nuts I think. They look at us a bit like we are nuts to want to go looking for rocks. But we like it. We want to get an early start. So we are leaving first thing this morning before it gets to over 100 again.

The Okanagan

We are off on a road trip. We have always wanted to go for a road trip into the mountains. So we decided to make it a visiting holiday and kill a few birds with one stone. Dean also wanted to do some rock collecting in the mountains. We researched some good rock collecting sites and found an opal mine near Vernon. Well that is right where my aunt and uncle and cousins live. I haven't seen my cousins in 28 years. I called my aunt and asked if we could come for a visit and stay with them for a few days. Of course they said sure. So here we are in the Okanagan valley.
We drove through the states and stopped a couple of nights and meandered through the mountains. We got to the valley and stopped a few times to do some wine tasting. They have some excellent wines all through the valley. We also stopped along the way to find some rocks but so far didn't find anything that great.
Another fun thing we did is go on a train ride through the mountains on an old steam engine. It was the kids and my first ride on a real train. It was fun but I'm not sure how far I would want to go on a bumpy train.
We also have never picked bing cherries off a tree. We are here at the very beginning of cherry season. We stopped at a U pick cherry place and had lots of fun picking cherries and eating cherries. Mmmmm.

Fishing at Rock Lake

This weekend we pulled our camper and boat to Rock Lake. It had been raining most of the day before we left so we were unsure of how the weekend would turn out. We ended up having a great weekend. It was windy on Sat. morning and afternoon on the water but in the campground it was nice and sunny and warm. We sat outside in shorts and t-shirts enjoying the sun and the cloud shapes we had to look at. We made up a photo scavenger hunt for the kids and they had fun running around taking pictures of silly things. In the evening it became nice and calm and we headed out for the evening fish. We caught enough for shore lunch and ended bringing back 2 big zip lock bags of walleye home.
This is a picture of our new boat. Dean wanted a different style of fishing boat so he traded with a guy who wanted the one we had.

camping and fishing at Shoal Lake

This is the double header Jack and Walleye the boys caught.


We have had a fairly cool summer so far. We like to try to get out and go camping every weekend of the summer from May to Sept. It doesn't always work but we try.
We went out the third weekend of may to Shoal Lake,Ontario. It was a great weekend. We caught over 100 fish at least 20 being master angler. Master angler fish are fish that are considered bigger than the average. Most provinces have a program that if you catch a fish of a certain size catagory that they have listed you can sign up for their program and they send you a certificate.
We also had a shore lunch of fresh fish. It was a great weekend that was full of family time that can't be beat.

Inner city Winnipeg Urban Plunge

This spring break we once again went up to Winnipeg, snuggled ourselves into a church basement and threw ourselves into learning more about the people of the North End of Winnipeg.
Wow, once again we got a chance to have our eyes and hearts opened to the hurting people on the streets of the inner city. We spent 10 days with over 200 people under 18 years old. It made me realize that the older we get the more sleep we need.



One of the cool things that we all did was an urban plunge in the north end.
We all broke into small teams and walked around learning about who the people are who live and serve there. It started out by everyone going to their first location. Some of the tasks at the different locations were, buying someone a coffee in Portage place mall,giving up a piece of clothing at Siloam Mission,learning about prostitution and the girls who stand on the street corners and also just walking the streets meeting people and talking to them. There were many very cool stories from everyone when at the end of the day everyone was given $2 to buy themselves supper.

We met so many great people during the 10 days. I was blown away at the kids who gave up the usual spring break that most youth get to teach VBS and serve in soup kitchens and work hard.