What does Chris DO for a living anyway?

This one is a hard question to answer ;-)

The last week Christopher spent camping with his buddy, friend and mentor Douglas on the land overlooking the Yukon River at Minto in Selkirk First Nation Traditional Territory.

This was a gathering of Three Generations of Northern Tutchone Men passing on Traditional Knowledge, Stories and Traditional values.  Doug and Chris Organized and facilitated the gathering.  It is fun and lots of work at the same time.

We built rafts, skinned and cut up beaver, cut up moose, built drums, took the hair off a moose hide, told stories, etc.

+32 and Thunderstorms

Finally we are (so far) having the kind of summer we expected when we moved to Whitehorse.  In ten years there have been only 3 or 4... sigh.

It is baking hot during the day up here up to +32 in the shade and has been for several weeks... YAHOO!!!!!  Along with the sun and hot comes fires and afternoon thunderstorms that cause fires...

Take a good look at this one, it knocked all the beautiful blossoms off our Maydays and apple trees :-(

This is the view from our deck looking at our neighbour's house and their kids outside experiencing a real storm.

It then turned to hail making our yard white.

Sunny Days

We've had some lovely sunny days here in Whitehorse. The trees are finally green, the lawns are filling in and the first of the seeds are up in the vegetable garden. There are times when i think summer will never arrive. Once it does I try to really enjoy it. Hope you are enjoying your summer.

The many positions of the Co-Pilot

In general, it is only me who gets to see the many interesting (and often painful looking) positions ISLA adopts when she sits and lays in all over the truck when road tripping all over the Yukon.  I wanted to begin this post with  the first one I have ever recorded...

I hope there will be many more to come and I hope you find it as entertaining as I do (even though I am captive in a truck with her).

Christopher

Family Visiting

Christopher did a whirlwind trip to Vancouver and Kamloops to see Our Accountant and family friends Gary and Marie Fenton, the nephews (Wendy's new one Sidney) and siblings.

Here is our new little nephew Sydney George Bishop (Syd for short)...

 

Syd, Mom, Dad, Older Brother Murdoc and extended Bishop family were all found to be well.

 

Christopher and Drew's family all road tripped it up to Kamloops for a short visit.  Once recovered... there was visiting, hiking, trips to the park and lots of fun had...

 

 Daxton (Drew's Girlfriend Kylie's little one) ran so fast I only got this picture of him!

 

Christopher and Drew went to RONA and Home Depot so Christopher could get his fix (None in Whitehorse yet :-(  They checked out sheds and vanities for the rental house bathroom and did the annual visit to the rental house in Kamloops.  The new cedar fence looks great.

 

Dreams Puerta Vallarta 2013 Review

This is not a review of the Dreams Villa Magna...

We went to the Dreams Puerta Vallarta with the expectation that it would be as wonderful an experience as our trip to Dreams Villa Magna 3 yrs ago... not so much. 

Context:
It was a long cold winter and an even longer, cold spring in the Yukon.  We chose the high end tower for the nicer rooms. Sarah has the rather unique life experience of once working in a 5Star Hotel and now (after much hard work and sacrifice) is able to stay in them.  She knows how these hotels/resorts should be run.

Here were some of the notable negatives...
- They don't call it a time share but there is a lot of pressure for you to waste 1-2hrs of your precious vacation time to try to get you to buy into their Dreams 'vacation club'
- This all inclusive is not service oriented... the staff nearly all have attitude problems.
- The drinks are all from cheap mix and full of sugar... no fresh, real ingredients.
- The bathroom smelled like sewer gas the whole time we were there.  We complained a couple of times... the smell was reduced but was still there.  There was no offer to move rooms... give $$$ back... nothing.
- All employees seem to expect you to tip even when service is not good (which is the majority).  You get even worse service if you don't.  I don't know about you but when we choose to go to an all-inclusive... one of the reasons is so that we don't have to carry cash and be trying to decide about tipping all the time.
- We scheduled a romantic dinner.  We went, we waited 45mins, we got a piece of bread and some water.  We left.  What amazing apology did they offer us you ask!?!  They gave us some of our $$$ back, moved us to another restaurant and gave us a bottle of wine.  If this was truly the 5Star they make themselves out to be, they would have been falling all over themselves to COMP us... nope... not so much.

Here were the positives...
- The beach is beautiful
- We were still in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico... with sun after a long winter
- The deck hottub was fantastic
- The older gentlemen 'waiters' in our 'PREFERRED TOWER LOUNGE' were fantastic.

Would we recommend DREAMS PUERTA VALLARTA?  NO!!!

Would we go back to DREAMS after this experience?  NO!!!