In Vancouver

Hi All
I havent written for a while, no internet access in Fort McMurray and been sick since hitting Vancouver, caught the bug from the others on our tour.

Since leaving Quebec we flew to Edmonton, its a bit like brisbane, and if you are looking for a job 9/10 shops have jobs going - they cant get enough people. In Edmonton we visited the West Edmonton mall, the biggest in the northern hemisphere, it has a water park, slides, bungy jumping, seal lion park, mini golf, ice rink, and heaps of other attractions, as well as shops interspersed in between all this, like seaworld/wet & wild meets garden city.

We picked up our tour in Edmonton, the main group had come from Vancouver on another tour and they were all sick - try as we might we couldnt avoid getting it so have been resting up these last few days in Vancouver. From Edmonton we were bused up to Fort McMurray, 4.5hrs north - and thats where we spent 3 days, its a horrible place, and the service was terrible, they told us to expect it as they cant get anyone to work there. The main industry is the oil sands mines, we went out and saw them and that was interesting - they have 4500 people working a shift there, and 3 shifts a day. Because they are paying $1000 a week for a kid to drive the big equipment, no one wants to be a waiter for minimum wage, so service is non existent in the town.

HOwever, we did see and do lots. Each night from 10pm-2am went were bused to the viewing site for the Aurora Borealis - first night saw a glipse for a couple of minutes, next night NOTHING! and then finally on the third night the display came. It was really cool, lots of good scrapping photos to be had. this was also new years eve so we had champagne under the stars with 2 other couples, one from Brissy and one from Scotland. We also saw Saturn thru a telescope, and they also did a mini rocket launch.

During the days we had some other things to do, went dog sledding - and the musher(thats the guy on the back that says MUSH!) was lovely. DH and I were put in the sled and zipped up to our necks and then off we went! what fun that was, especially the slide outs on the corners. The dogs feet dont get cold as they keep their nails and hair on the feet cut really short so the snow doesnt buildup [thats for you Claire, i asked especially]. there were 3 teams of dogsleds, 2 of them were treated like pets, so cute, i took lots of pics, the team we went with is run by a dentist and he has cross bred dogs, that he treats mean [on purpose]- they run up to 2500 klms at times, so have to be tough.

We also went snow shoeing, i fellover and it was nearly impossible to get up, with a foot of soft snow there is no leverage at all. The snow is really dry due to the lack of humidity and so soft. I even made a snow angel on our last night at the aurora!!

We went to a teepee and heard from one of the First Nation people about their history and made a dream catcher, [DHs is much better than mine].

After that we bused back to Edmonton, caught the plane to Vancouver, where we have spent the last couple of days resting up. Feeling better today, we are now off to take the sky train around to see the place. We did do a walk in Stanley Park - it has been devasted by the cyclone they had here a couple of weeks ago, lots of huge trees were down and they arein process of cleaning itup.

ON our first night here we had dinner with our friends, they took a different route to Vancouver, and that was lovely to catch up, they flew back the next day and would be home now [hi!]. We are going to catch up with the scottish couple we met on our tour, they are also in Vancouver currently.

In a couple of days we are off to Seattle by bus - it was also hit by the cyclone that hit here.

Thats all for now,
hope you are all well and had a great New Year.
cheers
Debra