road trip woo hoo!

we are leaving on our road trip tomorrow! rough plan is: head east through canada - rockies, banff, calgary etc doing some camping. then blast through manitoba and ontario down to toronto where we will see niagra and cross over to the US. then some time in NY city and upstate. then back to canada for ottawa, montreal and quebec, and spend time around maine and vermont including boston. head a bit south and then west for cincinnati and chicago. then south to atlanta for a week or two. then probably south again to florida inc savanah, orlando and miami. then start heading back west - new orleans (or what's left of it), up to santa fe (hi dean!), through the grand caynon, and finally start heading north up the west coast through san diego and san fran etc, prob detour to yosemite. should be awesome.

likely to finish trip around mid august which is when bjorn and kass will be arriving in vancouver. intend to meet up with them and poss stay in van for a while...

i'm going to keep this blog going, although updates likely to be sporadic. if anyone needs to contact me, my canadian number is +1 6049022800, and i will have a temporary US number while here also (canadian one doesn't roam - i hate the mobile networks in canada) which is +1 2067084370.

in wildlife news, i saw quite a few bears in whistler before i left. mostly from the gondola, but excitingly i saw one in the flesh about 30m away. was doing some temporary work at this guy's house which is surrounded by forest, and a female browny coloured black bear ambled past. black bears come in all shades (even white!); they are generally timid and predominantly vegetarian (they dont hunt but will scavenge anything). i also saw a chipmunk - they look similar to small squirrels but with red/brown and black stripes down the length of their bodies. and i saw some sort of alpine weasil in the snow.

ok hope all are well :)