Ahhh... finally... Summer finally made it to Vancouver. 28 degrees two days in a row, does that qualify as summer? Well, we had 3 days in a row over 30 degrees near the end of March (technically in winter!), but since then it has pretty much been rainy and/or overcast. For sure, we've had a few nice days, even a couple of great weekends, but I think this is the highest temps we've had since March (as strange as that sounds...)
Of course, as I type this, the gray clouds start rolling in... figures!
So anyway, over the past week I've kept pretty busy;
I've placed my first two geocaches and have even had a handful of people discover them already (two finds for my first cache, 3 for the 2nd) but that wasn't without it's challenges... I had scoped out a great spot in the bush near our place, and had checked it three days in a row to ensure it was safe an that my coords were correct, but then, the day after I placed it, some crazy kids had a big bush party within 20 meters of it.... burned down some trees, left a bunch of beer cans and junk all over the place, and while my cache was left intact, the first few people to attempt to find it were really put off with the atmosphere of the place. In fact, the 2nd person to look for it actually stumbled onto the party as it was getting started, at about 8PM Friday night... they obviously weren't too impressed... oh well, live and learn. I'm sure my next caches will be in more 'secure' areas.
Saturday Carole and I went to a small 'local' poker tournament with some people from our community, and we blew 'em away - I was 1st, Carole was 2nd. I don't think they were prepared for competition with seasoned poker tourney entusiasts, and I'll be surprised if we get invited back to that particular game again, LOL, but it was fun, we tried really hard to not play agressively (but it's HARD, if not impossible to not 'play to win'...). I walked away with $60, and Carole won her buyin back. Hope we didn't make any enemies!
On Sunday morning I made some of my world-famous potato salad, planning on having a beach picnic, but we actually decided to just pig out first then have a leisurely day at the beach without lugging the picnic stuff around... On the gorgeous Sunday afternoon (28 degrees!) we wen't to Pleasantside Beach, but decided to walk the trail down to the old secluded Port Moody mill site where we tossed our towels down and lay peacefully in the sun for an hour. There were only a few other people there, so it was nice and quiet. I was even able to have a nice cold beer in the sun without having to be paranoid...
then Sunday night my mom stopped by on her way back from Bowen Island, so I made a nice breaded parmesan pork dish to go with the potato salad and a few other veggies, we had some wine, then at about 8:30 we went out to introduce my mom to geocaching and had some nice park and harbour walks. We were back by 10:30 when the sun had finally dissapeared, though it was still 21 degrees out. That made for a fairly warm/sweaty sleep, but thats the price you pay for nice days!
All throughout the weekend, as well as yesterday, I've been out geocaching by myself too. I love this new hobby! The mosquitos are really coming out now though, and I'm getting eaten alive! I can usually ignore the pests well enough, but my legs are starting to look like hamburger now (I suppose the thistles, thorns, and poison ivy are contributing to that as well...) so I gotta remind myself to go buy some bug spray before I venture into the bush again. Oh, that remind me - bear spray too! The bears are EVERYWHERE this year - even trails in town have notices of bear sitings... I'm starting to get a little nervous about being out in the deep woods alone without any pepper spray, so I'd better pick some of that up too before doing any more serious hikes!