Brent Mountain Birthday Hike

Sunday June 27th was Tim's 46th birthday and for the second weekend in a row (previous weekend was Father's Day), he was treated like a king. I guess that would make me a queen but I certainly didn't feel like one. The birthday person at our house gets to choose what they want to do that day and what they want to eat. This year Tim chose to go hiking up Brent Mountain with our friends Glenda and Eric. These are the friends from the Sun Run and we will also be going hiking with them in the Bugaboos in 4 weeks.

Brent Mountain Trails lead into undisturbed rolling sub-alpine/alpine areas which include Brent Mountain at an elevation of 2200 m - offering outstanding panoramic views of the Monashee Mountains and the Okanagan Valley. Due to the excellent view there is an old forest fire lookout tower at the top. It was a beautiful day, just the right temperature and according to my nifty gadget the hike was 10.1 km with an elevation gain of 490 m.









This is a picture taken near the beginning of the trail showing Brent Mountain in the background (just to the right of me).








View of the forestry lookout at the top of Brent Mountain.


















At the top of the mountain we were able to take a small detour to check out a plane crash that occurred where 2 men were killed. These 2 pictures below were taken by some of the wreckage left behind.

Both Tim and I had a great day and are looking forward to our Bugaboo trip. It is going to be a bit more strenuous (especially once I add a 30 lb pack to my back) but I think it will be an amazing experience.

July is going to be a very busy month for us. This Thursday I am doing the 5 km Peachland Beach Run. My goal is to beat my time from last year but I would be surprised if I did. I've been running regularly for the past few weeks and my nifty gadget is telling me I need to pick up the pace if I hope to beat my time. I guess I should just be happy I'm out there doing it.

Our friend Steve is visiting us this weekend from Victoria and he is bringing along his fiance who we haven't met before. That should be a good visit and I am sure she will meet our standards to be Steve's wife.

Cherries are ready. Tim had planned on picking some tonight but it poured at dinnertime so it was a little too wet to pick. Hopefully he will pick a few tonight so I can have my cherries and frozen yogurt. We usually pit and freeze a hundred pounds so I will be quite busy pitting over the next few days. Thank goodness we have a skookum pitter but it still is a lot of work. Tim is also very busy with his bees. He took a queen rearing course a few weekends ago and has already made 23 new queens and nuke (spelling?) boxes. These are small hives with only a few frames and we now how 23 of them in the orchard along with all his other hives. He is anticipating a bumper crop of honey which makes our customers very happy. Some of them have been waiting a long time for honey.

Tim has his GST trip (Glen, Steve and Tim trip) the second week in July, Tim's parents are coming the next week and then the week after that we are headed for the Bugaboos. Right after that it will be August and it won't be long until summer is over and hockey season starts again.

The Canucks are Coming To Town!

It was announced today that the Vancouver Canucks will be holding their training camp in Penticton at the South Okanagan Events Centre. The camp starts on September 12 and I bet you can never guess where I will be! Oh, I am excited to say the least.

More news on the hockey front, with the Chicago Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup, Duncan Keith will be bringing the cup to Penticton this summer. Last year he helped organize a charity game in the summer and there will be another one this summer. Last year Duncan Keith, Jarome Iginla, Shea Webber, Danny Heatley, Chuck Kobasew, Ryan Smith were just some of the players that were there and this year it looks like most of them will be back along with Andrew Ladd and Brent Seabrook.

I know, there's more to life than hockey!

Go Go Gadget

After years of hinting for a Garmin GPS watch for Christmas or my birthday and not getting one (that makes me sound kind of selfish), I finally went out and purchased one for myself. However, I must say Tim did look into one for Christmas last year but he could only find the super duper really expensive ones.

I love gadgets and anything that helps motivate me to be active is in my opinion, a good thing. It tracks my route, distance, time, pace/speed, heart rate, elevation change and I can upload it to my computer and display it on a map and make really cool graphs. I can even export the information and view it on Google Earth.

This map is from biking last Thursday.
Total distance - 17.22 km.
Total Time - 1:22:29.
Moving Time - 1:03:39.
Elevation gain - 36 m.
Elevation loss - 113 m.
Calories - 609.
Average moving speed - 16.2 km/hr.
Maximum speed - 33.5 km/hr.

Last week was bike to work week and I was captain of the Library team. Our team was very small - 3 of us rode our bikes but we did have a few people use alternate forms of transportation (walk). Of course these people don't own vehicles or are too young to drive, but I still counted them towards our totals for the week. We didn't win any big prizes but one woman did win a gel bike seat. I am very proud to say that I rode my bike to work every day and home 4 days. I didn't ride home Thursday night because I work until 9 p.m. and I figured that was a good enough excuse not to have to ride home. They had "celebration stations" set up around town every morning with free coffee and muffins for the bikers and I made it to every one, even though some of them were not convenient to my work and it was raining 3 mornings out of 5. It's amazing what I will do for a free cup of coffee. In total last week I rode 92.11 km and burned 3,416 calories.

I'm going to have the house to myself this weekend. Tim is going to a queen rearing course in Williams Lake leaving me to be farmer for the weekend. He is so excited about this course and I am concerned that he will come home on Sunday with news that he is going to quit his job and be a full time beekeeper and farmer. If that is the case, he'd better hope he wins the lottery on Saturday night. I don't have any big plans for the weekend. Tonight Lisa and I are going out for Indian food and then to a movie, farmer's market tomorrow and then on Sunday I have a picnic to go to for a coworker who is leaving us to go live in Regina (what is he thinking??)