A little trip to Nelson

A few weeks ago, we went to Nelson to spend the weekend with my cousin. It was a nice relaxing visit. We did some hiking (of course), some shopping in the "cute little town", went to Ainsworth Hotsprings, and did lots of reading! We didn't take a lot of pictures, because we forgot the camera, but we used Monica's camera when we went on our hike, so I thought I'd show a picture of that.

Amazing encouragement!

I know, I know, I'm really not so good at updating this blog regularly! Sometimes it's lack of time, and other times, it's lack of imagination... and I don't know what to post! Anyways, this time, I thought I would just share something that I have been so encouraged by lately. We are in the middle of making a pretty big decision... and we so much want to do what God would have us do in this. We have been making a conscious effort to bring this to God, and these are some of the things I have "stumbled" across this past week.

Psalm 16

"I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken."

Psalm 25

"To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul; in You I trust, oh my God.

Show me Your ways, O Lord, teach me Your paths; guide me in Your truth and teach me, for You are God, my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long.

Who, then, is the man that fears the Lord? He will instruct him in the way chosen for him."

Isaiah 30

The beginning of the chapter, God tells us that there are consequences when we just choose our own plan - not following Him. But then, look at these verses!

"Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; He rises to show you compassion. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed are all who wait for Him!

Oh people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious He will be when you cry for help! As soon as He hears, He will answer you. Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, 'This is the way; walk in it.'"

I am overwhelmed by His promise to lead and guide all those who trust Him. It was just such an amazing confirmation to us that God hears our prayers, and will give us direction! We truly serve an amazing and loving God!

Over-wintering Geraniums

Hello!

It's been a while, so I thought I better get back on here and update bit. We've been doing a bit of our fall clean-up around the yard, and I remembered that I told you before that I would tell you all how I saved my geraniums over the winter last year. It totally worked, and this year I had beautiful, big geraniums. I'll definitely do this again and again. A friend of mine told me how, so I won't take the credit myself - but I figured it was info worth passing on!
Step 1: In the fall (any time now), dig the geraniums up, and shake off the dirt. Then set them in a box (not too tight, you want air to be able to get at them). Store the box in a cool, dry place. That's the first step... pretty easy!

Step 2: In February, (sorry, I don't have any pictures of this step), you'll need to cut the roots back. They will be fine (like hair). After that, plant them in pots. If you have a sunny place to put them, that helps... but they need to stay inside. Water them as needed.

Step 3: In March, you need to give the plants a "haircut". They will have grown quite a bit, and you want to cut them down to about 3-4" plants. Don't throw the stalks that you cut off away... those can be set in water, and they will root. The plants in the pots will make big plants, and the stalks will make smaller plants that are perfect for window boxes, planters, etc. Still keep them inside for the most part. I put them outside if we had a sunny warm day, but then took them back in at night. Once the stalks have rooted well, and there's no more frost, they're ready to be planted outside! Enjoy!

Just before the "haircut".

After the haircut.

The stalks are rooting...

And here are a few pictures of what they looked like at the peak of the season:

Murtle Lake - Day Five

I'm finally back to tell you about day five!

It had rained all night and the rain continued off and on until early afternoon. Because of that and the fact that we knew today was a shorter paddle, we decided to give ourselves a bit of a later start. We were back on the water at about 11, and canoed for about an hour. It was the one day we had to have our rain gear on for the trip - which was way less than we were expecting!

The wind started to pick up a bit, but it was going in the right direction for us, so we decided to stop and rig up a sail for the canoe.

Wouldn't you know that it stayed windy for the entire time we were making the sail, but as soon as we got back on the water, the wind died down. We kept it up for quite a while, hoping the wind would pick up again, but that didn't happen, so eventually we took it down (it was a bit hard for Martin to steer, and for us to keep our paddling coordinated with the sail in the way).

We got to the same campsite as the first night at about 2:30. After debating if we should just go home this afternoon already, we decided to set up camp again, and just spent another relaxing afternoon here. The sky actually cleared in the evening again, and we enjoyed our last night on the lake.

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There's not a whole lot to say about Day 6, so I'll just include it here. We were up early, because we wanted to get the portage over and done with. At first we tried to carry the canoe while we carried our packs with all our gear, but that didn't go so well, so we still ended up doing it in two trips. The handle system we had figured out on Day 3 worked pretty good, but it was still awkward. We added some straps to it and placed those over our "outside" shoulder - that distributed the weight a bit better, and we managed to do quite well after that. It still took us about 2 hours to get everything back to the truck.

When we were hiking on Day 2, we had gotten pretty excited about what kind of "real" food we were going to eat on our way home. We had decided on eating at Triple-O's for lunch/supper in Kamploops and then having icecream at DQ in Merritt. We had totally looked forward to this, and we were not disappointed! The burgers and ice cream tasted so good!

We arrived home by late afternoon, cleaned everything up, and had a good sleep in a "real bed"!!

Murtle Lake - Day Four

This is what we woke up to on Thursday morning!!! We were so excited for this beautiful day!

The lake was calm pretty all the way back down the whole north arm - we had a little bit of wind, but not much. Here are a few more pictures of this beautiful lake! It was so calm the reflections were amazing! Pictures really don't do it justice.

We decided to head into the west arm and see how far we would get. It had started to cloud over, and we had to paddle against a pretty strong wind down here, but it was kind of fun to be in the waves! We thought we got around half-way down the west arm... only to find out the next day that if we had gone for about another hour, we would have made it all the way to the end! Oh well. In case you're curious, if you look at the map in the last post, we got to the campground with the #5 nearest to the left side of the map. We figured out that on average, we paddled about 4-5km/hour - we had paddled about 25km that day! Needless to say, we were pretty ready to set up camp and rest.

It was a nice campground and nice evening, although still a bit cold. After supper (tuna casserole) Martin decided to go for a swim - but since it was kind of cold, and the lake stayed shallow here for a long way out, it ended up being more of a "dunking" and straight back out! There was no way he could convince me to get out there. I had a hard enough time warming up when I was dry!!

And just a random note to end this off:

The sound of loons calling is an amazing sound! We loved to sit and listen to them call back and forth to each other!

Murtle Lake - Day Three

Today, after a good sleep and a good breakfast of scrambled eggs and bannock, we started canoeing at about 10:00. It was quite a warm morning, and the lake and mountains around us were beautiful!

We stopped for lunch at one of the campsites and sat on a rock by the lake to eat lunch. It was beautiful to see the sun shining on the water - I tried to get a picture of it, but I couldn't really capture it as well as I wanted to. Since fruit leathers were a staple for us, Martin decided he should do an ad for them. That's what that picture is about :)

We made it to the far end of the north arm by 1:30. After setting up camp, we tried to find an easier way to carry the canoe - knowing that Saturday morning we'd have to do that portage all over again. We managed to find some nice small pieces of drift wood that we tied to the yoke that would function as handles. It seemed to work pretty good. After that, we just read for a while. It was a nice (although cool) afternoon. The evening was as usual - eating supper (Fettecini Alfredo with chicken), and then sitting by the campfire again before we headed off to bed.

I know I've said it already, but we were amazed at the scenery in the north arm of the lake. We had Murtle mountain right in our "backyard" and many other beautiful mountain peaks around us. There were also quite a few waterfalls - a nice sound to fall asleep to!

Even though it's a bit hard to see, I thought I would include a map of the lake. The numbers at the campsites indicate how many tent sites there are. The first night we were at the "6" site at the bottom right. The second night we were at the "6" site part way up the north arm (by the two red hiking trails on the map). The third night we were at the "4" site at the very end of the north arm.

Murtle Lake - Day Two

Tuesday was a cloudy, cool day. We woke up early, had pancakes for breakfast, packed up, and were canoeing by 9:45. We got to our next campsite (the one we had planned to get to the first day) at around 11:00 - a shorter ride than we thought it would be. This campsite was our favorite of all of them. It was near the lake, and also had a nice stream running right beside it.

We set up camp, ate lunch, and then went hiking up Wavy Alpine Trail. In Martin's words (he keeps a daily journal on these kinds of trips), "This trail was a grind. Similar to Elk Mountain only longer." But we got some great views at the crest. You could go further up to the peak, but we didn't have time, so we headed back. We actually didn't stay up there long... just took some pictures and headed back - it was SOOO cold up there! It started raining a bit on our way down, but thankfully that didn't last long.

We had to canoe about 5 minutes between the campsite and the trailhead, so for the way back I decided that I wanted to learn how to steer the canoe. I'm not so good at that. The 5 minute canoe ride was a lot longer as I zig-zagged our way back. Martin laughed at me pretty much the whole time, but it was fun to try.

We had shepherd's pie for supper and a nice warm campfire... and the sky totally cleared during the evening. So nice!