Mount Indefatigable

This past Sunday night my friend Theresa, and I hiked to the south summit of Mt Indefatigable. Indefatigable always strikes debate between Tim and I on the pronunciation... He insists on pronouncing it the "correct" way, while I choose the "popular" way. For anyone interested in the "correct" way, listen to this wave file. http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?indefa01.wav=indefatigable It was a gorgeous day, almost too warm. Luckily we had snow, and two ice cold lakes to cool off in.

France trip - Loire Valley

I stayed for 2 days in the Loire Valley. This is the hotel that I stayed in.

My first week in France (on my own)

One of the Chateau's that I visited in the Loire had hunting dogs. Here they are having their afternoon nap. I was told that if you are there at dinner time you can see a feeding frenzy as they devour their raw dinner.
This staircase was designed by Leonardo da Vinci. It is two spiral staircases that spiral around each other. You cannot see one staircase from the other. It is rumored that if the King had a mistress over and the Queen came home, the mistress would have a 50-50 chance of sneaking down the stairs without being seen by the Queen.

I spent a week on a tour through Dordogne. It was a cycling/hiking/"canoeing" trip. If you scroll down and see the pictures of the canoes, you'll understand why I've put canoeing in quotes.

Burgundy through the canals...

We spent a week touring Burgundy by river boat. This was a lot of fun, we just sat back and watched the scenery go by. Here is Jinny taking her turn driving the boat.
We went through many locks along the way. Here we are at one of the first.

The tile roof you see on this building is traditional in Burgundy.
One of our favorite stories.... saving the life of a lab. We were going along through a canal, with high stone walls on either side when we saw a dog swimming in the water with a stick. Using Colin's french we determined from the owner that the dog had been fetching the stick from the water, and had gotten turned around and started swimming up into the canal where the walls were too high for him to get out. When we got there the dog was starting to tire, and go under the water. Colin (in heroic fashion) ripped off his shirt and dove into the water. He swam to the dog, and grabbed ahold of him. He pulled the dog towards the boat and when they got near, I grabbed ahold of the dogs collar, and with my pulling and Colin pushing on the butt of the dog we got him into our boat. We then drove towards shore and the dog jumped to safety and his owner. The part that makes Colin's dive most heroic is the fact that the boats that travel these canals do not have septic tanks... they simply drop their waste into the water. All I will say is that Colin spent quite a bit of time in the shower that afternoon trying to wash the canal off of him.
There were a couple places where the canal traveled through a tunnel. Here is one.
We tried to maintain a healthy lifestyle while away, here is Jinny having a strawberry tart for breakfast.
This is St. Jean de Losne. The start and end of our journey.

France - Paris highlights

The first night in Paris I went for a walk. This is Notre Dam at night.

The first day in Paris we took the train out to Versailles. It was beautiful, especially the gardens and fountains.
We were lucky enough to be there when there was a light and classical music show happening in the gardens.


That night we went out for a fancy dinner. The food was spectacular.

My trip to France last summer - Paris highlights con't

We spent a day in Montmartre where we saw the famous Moulin Rouge.


Jin and I went to the top of the Eiffel tower, it was spectacular! This was my biggest surprise, I wasn't excited at all to see it, but it was one of my favorite things.

Here we are on the next lower platform (my bro was too chicken to go any higher)

The next day was the Louvre, amazing, I could have spent days here.

And the most famous church in Paris, Notre Dam. It was perhaps the spookiest church I've ever been in.


And this was my hostel...

Ok, here we go, starting a blog. Hope you all enjoy what you see here. I'll start by showing you who I am, and more importantly :) who my best friend is... Guinness.

And here is the next important person in my life.... with his favorite thing, hippo's!!