The Taelemans´ Blog

Pretty much everyone knows that I’m a big fan of Winter. I’ve been looking forward to the first snow, and finally it arrived.

We’ve noticed that the last couple of days, the mountains on the North Shore were getting lots of snow. So today we decided to go to Mount Seymour and enjoy the snow. We were pleasantly surprised with about 50cm of fresh snow!

Of course Grizzly enjoyed this even more than we did! He definitely is a sled dog.

The predictions for next week are really good. They say it’s going to snow a little bit in Vancouver later this week. We’re living up a mountain so chances are pretty high that we’re going to get the first snow up here.

We were told by neighbors to get used to it, because there’s going to be days that we won’t be able to drive down the mountain…

A couple of images taken with my mobile.

Kris and Grizzly

Mount Seymour

Grizzly

Bear Den

Grizzly Paw

Grizzly and me

Rumors are that Whistler Slopes might open next week. Cross our fingers!

Sorry for the recent lack of updates but we had some busy weeks and more coming up. My parents came over to visit us for 3 weeks (too short) and we had a great time wine tasting, doing hikes, …
Here is a picture of my lovely mother in Vancouver:

My mother in Vancouver

We also did a short day trip to Whistler where we visited the Olympic skijump and biathlon area. At the Biathlon shooting range you could try out a biathlon rifle and shoot at the targets. Ine beat me with a perfect 5/5 score against my less perfect 4/5. I had a bad bullet… On our way we saw 2 bears (see previous post for picture). We ended the day with a very nice dinner at the Rimrock Cafe.

Ine at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Biathlon Shooting Range

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Skijump

Below are two more shots from the previous weeks, I still have a huge backlog to process and I’ll try to post some more soon.

Bald Eagle on the rocks in the Georgia Strait

Grizzly smiling for the camera in Golden Ears Provincial Park

A couple of pictures for you to enjoy! The bear picture was taken on Sunday, the other ones are a little bit older (you can tell because there is still snow on the mountains).
Credits go to Kris of course:).

A black bear having an afternoon snack in Whistler, BC.

Evolution of flight

Sea lions posing in front of Mt. Baker.

Samjohn Light in Burrard Inlet.

Mt. Seymour Snowboarding

Last weekend, Kris’ sister and her boyfriend were here to visit us.
On Saturday we did some tourist things: We went to Granville Island, which is always nice because they have amazing pork sausage over there:). Besides that we also went too Gastown and we’ve visited an outlet center not too far from Vancouver. To end a sunny day, we drove to Buntzen Lake (Where Grizzly and I had our first outdoor “swim”. I would love to say that it was nice, but walking around in meltwater is just a tiny little bit too cold for my feet.)

On Sunday the weather was so nice that we decided to go to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver. We were limited in doing a long hike, so we only did a short one to the viewpoint, Point Atkinson.

Because it was really hot we decided to go to the beach after our park visit. It was the first time for all of us to go there. It was extremely crowded, but we had tons of fun.

I actually went in the water with Grizzly (again). He used to be really afraid of it, so by going in together with him, I’m hoping to get him more familiar with swimming.

Because it was the last evening of Lieve and Thierry their visit, we decided once again to have a very tasteful dinner at Banana Leaf. It is a Malaysian Restaurant on Broadway.

Check out a couple of our pictures.

Point Atkinson

Grizzly watching the Vancouver skyline

Soaked

Lieve and Thierry

We will have some friends coming over next week so we will probably go kayaking with them and of course do some fun stuff. Apart from that I will have to work a couple of weekends next month, so unfortunately I won’t have too much time to think about blogging.

And something incredibly cool:
I am a volunteer for Bear Aware. They are organizing a Bear Aware Open House really soon, so I will also be helping at that event. Again, busy times coming up…

I will paint faces at the Bear Aware Open House:

Practicing my face painting skills

I hope everybody is enjoying the sunshine! Enjoy your week!

If I have to call out one thing I became addicted to since we moved to Vancouver, it’s gotta be Hockey. I’ve never been much of a sportsfan, but there is something about hockey which attracts me (and of course working on the best NHL game requires one to keep up to date and go out to research ).

The Vancouver Canucks are doing great in the playoffs at this moment (knock on wood), they are currently 2-1 ahead in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Chicago Blackhawks. Go Canucks Go! On to the Stanley Cup

Here are various pictures of hockey matches I’ve been to in the last couple of weeks. The first set is from the Vancouver Canucks first round game against the St. Louis Blues whom they swept out of the playoffs with a massive 4-0 sweep.

Ryan Kesler, Vancouver Canucks (Ine her favorite player)

Canucks Score!!

Group hug! (Very manly though)

GM Place Jumbotron

The next pictures are taken at game seven of the second round of the WHL Playoffs against the Spokane Chiefs. They won, but lost the Western Conference final against the Kelowna Rockets.

Giants Vs Chiefs Fight

PNE Minitron (Compared to the GM Place one at least)

We had a bit of a lazy Sunday, which created some time for me to do some photo filtering/processing. We had an early start due to a dog incident… (just spent 100$ on new blinds so we wouldn’t be woken up by the light anymore…), so we headed out for a 10K hike around Buntzen Lake, which is about 2-3km from our home and afterward we went for lunch at our favorite Sushi Place, where we treated ourselves to Spicy Tuna Sashimi, Spicy salmon sashimi, an “awesome roll” (it was actually very good, but that’s just the name) and Ebi Gyoza, price: 28$(+-18EUR) (including drinks). Can’t beat that price
We finished it of with a visit to Starbucks where I got a “Double chunky chocolate chip frappuccino” and Ine got something similar with strawberry (Basically these are more or less milkshakes, but starbucks likes to fancy up the names…).

Huge seaweed, Pacific Rim

A view on the Pacific Ocean in Pacific Rim National Park, BC

St. Aidan On-the-Hill in Ucluelet

That’s it for me for Tofino, I have plenty more, but that would just bore you all. I have so much stuff left to post I’ll just continue to go through them when I find some time.

Here are some more pictures from our trip to Ucluelet – Tofino – Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island.

Totem Pole on the Pacific Rim

Boardwalk through the rainforest, Pacific Rim National Park”

Ucluelet Welcome Sign

Pacific Rim Motel Bear Carving

Boardwalk, Pacific Rim National Park

Western Skunk Cabbage (What a name…)

Mussels, Pacific Rim National Park

It has been ages since we wrote something on the blog… Sorry about this!

We spend our Easter Weekend on Vancouver Island.

We left early on Friday morning to catch the ferry to Nanaimo. It took us some preparations to get everything ready especially with the dog, but we’ve made it in time!

It was a three hour drive northwest across Vancouver Island, from Nanaimo to Tofino along Highway 4.

River along Pacific Rim Hwy (Hwy 4) to Tofino

It is a popular tourist destination. It attracts surfers, nature lovers, campers, whale watchers, fishermen, or anyone just looking to be close to nature. In the winter many people visit Tofino and the west coast to watch storms on the water.

Surfer on Long Beach, Pacific Rim National Park

Since everything was completely booked in Tofino we end up staying in Ucluelet. Which is situated about 25 km from Tofino.

We stayed in cabins, which was a really nice experience.

We did quite a few hikes in the Pacific Rim National Park . At first we were a bit disappointed because they seemed pretty short but that turned out quite ok. Most of them led from the rain forest to beaches.

Pacific Ocean view from Pacific Rim National Park.

Even though I was pretty afraid that we would encounter problems with Grizzly (since it was his first real trip) it turned out great. I was definitely worrying for nothing.

I think all of us had a really good time and it was a nice way to get Bert introduced to the Canadian way of life!

So we had a wonderful weekend. Hope you guys enjoyed it too. Check out some of our pictures.

Lighthouse in Ucluelet

Grumpy Mushroom

Ucluelet Lighthouse Panorama

Sorry far the lack of updates over the past week, but we’ve been kind of busy move to our new home. I’m sure Ine will do a more extensive blog post with all the news and maybe we’ll take some better pictures of our new place once we get all of the boxes out of the way, so I’ll have to leave you with your curiosity for now.
Instead I’ll just post a picture I took some days ago in out hometown, Port Moody, at Inlet Park.

Port Moody Sunset

Maybe a more appropriate blog topic would be: “10 photos I made in 2008 of which I’m most happy and for which I’m looking for an excuse to post them again…” but that would be too long, so let’s go for the Top 10 one


10. Rain over Lake Annette – Jasper N.P.

9. Swiftcurrent lake, Glacier N.P.

8. Berkeley Pit, Butte

7. Venice, Las Vegas

6. Vancouver Panorama

5. Hot spring, Yellowstone N.P.

4. Peyto Lake Panorama

3. Victoria Government Parliament building

2. Dead Tree in Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone N.P.

1. The Wave, Arizona