stubsadventures

Mission: To see a polar bear. Churchill, Manitoba 2008

Poncho’s dream was to lay eyes on a polar bear before they were extinct. There were several ways to go about this trip. Our way? Rent a minivan, drive to the northern most part of Manitoba you can drive to (Gillam) and take the train 12 hours north to Churchill. Along the way, we stopped and hiked in Grassy River provincial park. The confusing trails, lack of a map made it a  long 22km trip, the highlight of which was Manitoba’s largest waterfall.

We took a gamble when we went. We went right before the season and took the chance of it being too early and not seeing a bear at all. The train, normally without an empty seat during bear season, was empty practically which made for meeting some amazing new friends. When we arrived in the town, we had rented an SUV. The lady showed up with a 15 passenger van. When we inquired about the location of the SUV, she said a hunter had taken it and hadn’t come back. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned and I got a mental image of a big old polar bear with a satisfied look on his face rubbing his belly on leaning against our SUV.

The adventure began immediately. We started the tour and one of our first stops was a crashed airplane named Miss Piggy, a cargo ship that had missed the runway and no one ever bothered to move it. Driving around the barren terrain of the north, you never quite ever knew when you were going to see a bear, or if one was just on the other side of the hill you were peeing behind. Not seeing a bear for the first two days was discouraging especially after talking to people who had been there for months and never seen one. Not seeing a bear was not an option for us! We had intended on camping while we were there. When we arrived and started to talk to people, we quickly found out we would be arrested because it was so dangerous, so we quickly abandoned that plan. Had we been there during the peak season, we would have been out of luck but because we had gone early, we were able to get a hotel in town.

We set out to hike to the Ithaca, an Italian cargo ship that had run aground in 1960. When the tide is out on the bay, you can hike right up to it. On our way down the remote road to the ship, it happened. Poncho spotted a bear. He slowly came out behind a pile of rocks and for the next fifteen minutes we watched him make his way over to us. To our amazement, he was coming straight for us. It is a surreal moment. You’re always telling yourself, he’ll turn, he won’t come the whole way, anything to not get your hopes up but it happened. He made his way to the road we were on and started to head straight for us. The pictures tell the story better than I can. When he got about 20ft away, we drove off. You aren’t supposed to let the bears have interaction, that’s when they get used to people and stop being afraid. When we drove away, he looked up as if to ask where we were going! Then he took off running into the tundra.

Later, we saw a momma and a baby bear while out on a Tundra buggy tour. Near the end of the tour, we even got the opportunity to drive the buggy! Churchill with its 26km of roads, one town center that held all of its services in a building the size of my high school, polar bear horn and jail will always have a piece of my heart. I was lucky enough to see some of the worlds most beautiful creatures and once again be enchanted with the northern region of this country.

Stubs.

My four legged baby

Caper Hagell. She is almost her own legend and isn’t even four years old. She has been to almost every province in Canada (except PEI), she has been on airplanes, trains, ferries, stayed in five star hotels, seen both coasts of Canada by car, come face to face with a polar bear, has come nose to nose with a coyote, kayaked, completed a three day canoe trip and been stolen and missing from me for three days. Yep, you read that right!

After mistrusting the wrong person, Caper was stolen from mine and Poncho’s home and was missing and feared lost forever. Although the three days were filled with fear, anxiety and deep sadness at the same time they were so filled with love. It is in those times that you realize what you are made of but more importantly you realize the depth and feeling of those you have surrounded yourself with through the course of your life. Without telling the very long, very indepth story, it’s one of those good news stories where she was back in my arms and some good life lessons were learned.

True to my life, even the first time I saw Caper was an adventure! I purchased Caper from someone in southern Manitoba and making her mine included a solo road trip to pick her up. I had never bought anything from the internet and was convinced that I had likely just handed my hard earned money to some scam artist. Even pulling into the parking lot of the coffee shop, I didn’t really believe that I would leave there with my puppy. When I first laid eyes on her, it was the first time I ever experienced true love, lol. She was soaked to the bone (it was pouring outside) and full of barf (car sick) and shaking like a leaf. I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. We drove away and I couldn’t help but pull over so that I had time to cuddle my new stinky bundle of joy!

Caper makes me laugh everyday. She sleeps as much as a cat and has probably broken more hearts than I have. She has had an epic, several year battle ongoing with my sister’s cat. Over the years, she’s been stalked and bitch slapped more than once but keeps going back to her cousin Ida, that’s the true love of family!

Check out the pictures of Ida (cat cousin) and Caper, and some pics of my little puggle from over the years.

Stubs.

The Yukon inspires Iceland

In 2008, I did a 7000km road trip up through the Yukon and crossed and camped north of the Arctic Circle. Best rental car deal of the century. The north captures you and overwhelms you in a way that can’t be matched. It’s one thing to feel tiny in some of the largest cities in the world and it’s another altogether to feel tiny in the north. Desolate takes on a whole new meaning. The trip with Poncho gave me a new appreciation for parts of Canada that are much less travelled. We spent three days on The Dempster Highway (a 500+km gravel highway that goes through the north part of the Yukon and into the NWT). The whole three days, we saw three other people, an older couple who were also camping and a semi heading south. The sun hardly set during the trip, so we made the best of all of the hours in the day by doing things like crazy hikes in grizzly territory over a random glacier, attempting to raft down the Yukon River in a Canadian Tire special raft, which almost ended our lives after going through a culvert (which was one of the most exhilarating 45 seconds of my life until the raft spilled us).  We explored semi ghost towns, hot springs and did the famous “sour toe cocktail” drink in Dawson City. Real human toe in a shot of whiskey!

Back to the north I go but not in Canada this time. Iceland has been on my list for a long time and in June, I’ll be hitting the ground running. Some of my greatest adventures to date are in the works right now and this is taking it to a whole new level, even for me. I will be crossing the Arctic Circle for the second time and have a good chance of seeing puffins again! I have some dives planned that take you to a place on earth where the american and european tectonic plates meet and you can dive under the shelves and touch both plates at the same time. New certificate for the wall!

Luckily the flights depart from Halifax so the whole thing couldn’t be more perfect if I tried.

Stubs.

I got myself into this…

So many things sound like a good idea at first. You can really psych yourself up to believe that things are the greatest idea you’ve had in a long idea. Then, the dust settles and you shake your head and realize you’ve done it again. I have done it again.

My company is having a hockey game in two weeks, Site vs. Calgary. No girls from site were going to play this year, so I felt I had to step up. Women working in my industry isn’t as old school as it used to be but we are still seriously outnumbered. A girl HAD to play in this game and I felt like I could step up. This despite the fact that I have only ever played in one other game before and haven’t put on a pair of skates in seven years. Meh, no big deal right?

The only game I have ever played in was when my brother was playing in atom division. Their team tore it up that year, they won everything there was to win. Their coach recruited the moms on the team for a game but told the players that they were playing the top team from NB. While they were out on the ice getting ready for the game of their lives, the moms (and me and my best friend) were in the dressing room trying to figure out how to put on gear and deciding if we needed to wear a cup. When it was time to hit the ice, one of the moms lead us out with the bag pipes. Watching the boys stop one at a time and hearing them say, “dude, that’s your mom” over and over again was priceless. The game was full of laughs and cheating. My mom took a puck out of her pants, shot it into the net and they counted it, her name was even in the paper.

Now, I find myself playing against full-grown men for the company pride of taking back to site our replica Lord Stanley. To do this, I have bought brand new skates (terrible idea) and a helmet and have been skating on our outdoor rink at work, which means skates between -20c and the coldest night being about -35c. My feet get sore after ten minutes and I could barely remember which way I shot. Ok, so rough start to my training program.

Two weeks. I now have two weeks to make my site and just as important my family proud! I can smile my way through just about anything and if nothing else, this game will be full of bumps, bruises, trash talk that would make most people blush and lots of lots of smiles.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can… damn I hope that really works.

Stubs.

Good ol’ Toronto

Just got back from six days in Toronto.

Got to see my bff Poncho again and we hit up the town with some of my family and a few friends but not without a few bumps along the way. After we got all girlified and called a cab, we went to the wrong bar, not knowing the difference. Who knew there could be more than one bar called Shoeless Joe’s! After having a few drinks, Poncho out of the blue asks if we’re at the right place only to find out, we were about 20 minutes in the wrong direction. No big deal. We went outside to grab a cab and turns out it was more of a big deal than we thought. So, we decided that we would start to walk to stay warm, I failed to mention it was stupid cold. So, we started walking until cars started to slide all over the road. The hilly road was a sheet of ice and none of the cars could stop. It was terrifying! Poncho was freaking out (as always). Oh, I forgot to mention the part where we were crossing the road and I fell in the middle of it. Not a slip, complete arms flailing, legs doing the cartoon deal and then finally coming to a stop in the middle of the ice road. I had no choice other than to mention it or else Poncho would have commented on it anyway. I know this because for the rest of the night when we ran into someone, it was the first thing she told them. Then, everyone laughed at me. All. Night. Long.

The distance between where I stay outside of Toronto and where I visit my cousin is a little less than an hour. In that drive, you see people make decisions with their vehicles that they should be put in jail for. How someone doesn’t die every five minutes on the 403 highway is something I will never understand! People drive speeds like their in one of those race deals, people cut each other off like it’s funny and no one follows the proper spacing for vehicles… until it snows. Then, people all find their inner senior citizen and no one goes over 40km, it’s the weirdest thing. I also saw a car that is actually smaller than a Smart Car. I have no idea what kind it was but it looked like an overgrown dinky. It took up about 1/8 of a parking spot. Obviously this is more crazy to me as I drive a Suburban which is routinely filled to the brim. I got this awesome mental imagine of the burb just driving up and over that thing, crushing it in one pass. Man, if only….

Other highlight from the trip was going to a Leafs/Pens game at the ACC which was the first time I had been there. Me and the cousin had awesome seats and we made it on the jumbotron thing! We were those people though who acted like they were too cool to notice that they were even on there in the first place. It was either that, or take the opportunity to make an obscene gesture. I like to think I took the high road.

Stubs

There was this one time I got helicoptered out of the woods…

My adventures did have a distinct starting point. When I was 22, I took a winter survival course as leadership development working at the Boys and Girls Club in Halifax. It was two days of learning to survive in the woods, in the coldest time of year with minimal supplies. The second night was a solo exercise where you had a build a shelter and stay in it without anyway to communicate over night. It was probably at that time, the most uncomfortable I had ever been in my life between the cold and fighting my imagination in the dark woods for hours.

After that course, I learned what I was really made of and was ready for more. Poncho and I planned a 54km hike around a national park in NS. The hike was around the exterior of the park and we were the first people that season to do it. It was raining when we started out and rained on and off for the rest of the day. Day one, we took a wrong turn that added about 5km to the day. Generally not a big deal, until you are carrying a 50+lbs pack. The first night was uneventful other than how hard it was to sleep because of the rain. The next day, it wasn’t kind of raining, it was pouring. It never let up once all day and by mid day, we were walking in water up to our knees. We were doing the hike in May, so the ground was still frozen, keeping most of the water from soaking into the ground. When we got to our campsite that night, it was completely underwater. By that time, our spirits were dampened, we were soaked to the core, our feet were unbelievable sore from hiking almost 30km and we had to backtrack several km’s to try to break into a warden’s cabin we had seen. Poncho stealthy broke in (through an unlocked window) and we were thrilled to be out of the rain. Literally, every step was painful at this point and we were so grateful for a warm, dry place to sleep.

The next day, we woke up to a clear sunny day and we were pumped! Finally, a day without rain brightened our spirits and we were determined to get this thing done. We set out all smiles! Our energy level came crashing down when a couple of kms into the day, we encountered a bog. After reading the map over and over again, going over all  the scenarios there were no options but to cross the bog, what we were looking for was on the other side of it. Away we went, through freezing cold water that was up to our waists for several hours, looking for the bridge we needed to cross the huge raging river.

What we didn’t know, was that it had rained over 100mm in the last two days and the river had come up so high, it had washed away the bridge. Not being able to find the  bridge, we assumed we were lost. We wandered for hours through the water trying to find it before coming to the realization that according to the map, and our current location we had three options. #1 – somehow manage to cross the river which was at least 30ft wide and raging from the amount of rain. #2- hike back out the way we had just come, which meant back tracking more than 30km or #3, call for help. Using the topo map, we found the highest point and I called the park warden. He told me that they had been waiting to hear from us and that if we hadn’t called them by that evening that they were coming in to look for us. Then he told me they were sending a chopper to come pick us up. He asked us if we had seen a warden’s cabin and without telling him we stayed there, we said yes.

The next couple of hours involved us not actually believing what was happening, trying to find the path again and barely being able to take steps because of the intense pain our legs and feet were in. We eventually made our way back to the cabin and waited at the helipad for the chopper to come. When I watched it come over the horizon, it felt like we were in a movie. They had to take us back separately because our packs were so heavy and I was taken back first because I had been navigating and had to give a statement. Poncho went second, and they flew her over the area we had hiked. The park warden said that he has never seen the water like that in his career.

The rescue cost the province over $4000. Luckily, because we had registered for the hike and had all the correct maps and navigating equipment, we weren’t responsible for the cost. Free helicopter ride!

Stubs.

My super scary hobby

I find ghost towns fascinating and terrifying all at the same time. There is something about a bunch of old, isolated houses that are abandoned, falling apart and being over grown that gets my attention. These towns at one time were all vibrant and full of life and now, they seem forgotten, left behind and oh so creepy.

Driving around, I half expect an old dude to come flying out one of the front doors that I’m taking a picture of with a gun pointed at me, yelling at me to get out of his town. This is Alberta, I believe that possible. Most of the towns I’ve gone to are actually considered semi-ghost towns, meaning there are still a few folks left hanging on, which almost adds to the creepy factor. It’s hard to believe these are entire houses that people just walked away from. Being a homeowner, I couldn’t imagine having to walk away from the house I worked so hard for but for a lot of these communities, that’s what happened when the railway was rerouted or stopped going to the town at all. So really, I believe anything possible when I’m going to check out a new one. I always seemed to be reminded of the movie The Hills Have Eyes when I enter one of these towns, especially when I’m alone. No one can for sure tell me there is human eating mutants waiting for me and that’s what I see happening on one of these expeditions.

I have a favorite ghost town story. So, in 2010, I drove all the way around NFLD. It was amazing. While spending some time on the Bonavista Peninsula there were a couple of coastal ghost towns that I had wanted to check out. I contacted a tour company, (one guy) a few months before leaving and asked him how much a private tour would cost because I wanted to take a lot of pictures and I ask about four million questions. He said that he didn’t do private tours because his morning and afternoon tours were always full and it wasn’t cost-effective. I asked him if he would consider doing an evening tour for me and made him an offer that would make it worth his time. He politely declined and I told him that I would see him in August.  When my time in NFLD came, I called and booked myself in on a group tour. When I showed up that afternoon, the captain apologized and told me that this never happens, that no one else had booked a tour for that afternoon. He asked me if I minded coming back in the morning because it wasn’t very cost-effective to take one person out. I smiled (he at this point has no idea who I am) and said that it wouldn’t be a problem. I stood on the dock and talked to him for about an hour, about what his life was like, what happened to the communities, about old NFLD politics. At the end of our conversation, he said that even if I was the only person again in the morning that we would go out for sure, he could tell it meant a lot to me. The next morning, I show up and I’m not kidding, I was the only one again. He scratched his head as we boarded the boat and told me that it was the strangest thing and that this never happens. As we were flying out of the harbour, I stood next to him at the wheel and asked him if he remembered getting an email from a girl who wanted to have a private tour. He looked me like I was a ghost and I couldn’t help but having a shit eating grin on my face. I smiled wide and told him that he should have named his price. The whole tour we spent together, he was bewildered by the whole thing and now matter how much I told him weird stuff like that happens to me all the time, it didn’t seem to matter. I’m pretty sure he thought I was some kind of witch.

My ghost town pics are from all over Canada from abandoned fishing villages in NFLD, to Dawson City in northern Yukon with some BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan thrown in there.

Stubs.

The world with no air

If I had to name the one thing I was passionate about more than anything, it would be diving. There is something about the size and mystery of the ocean I have always been drawn to. It’s like a whole other world filled with things most people can’t even imagine and the ever-present danger make it a sport not for the weak of heart.

I like warm water diving but I’m oddly drawn to the colder dives. I’ve dove the Atlantic in April, northern Ontario in October and the rocky mountains in late September and none of those were warm. The coldest would have to be the SS Atlantic, which I dove with my father just a few weeks before I left NS (also, just several days before the time I did a 54km hike in NS with Poncho and we had to get helicoptered out but that is a different story altogether), to move to AB. The wreck had the title of the biggest loss of life in one ship wreck, before the Titanic. It was also a White Star Line ship! There isn’t much left of that wreck now, just mostly the steel, the boiler and hull and a few other sections and a big area where there is scattered china (the ships then used to carry cargo to make extra money), so the china didn’t have the White Star Line crest. It was funny, I didn’t feel cold at all, and when I got cold, I got messed up cold fast. It was ok because it was the end of the dive and it was time to go up but if I would have had to have done a long decompression… I can’t see that being cool. Regardless, it was badass.

In March 2011, I went to Mexico/Belize with a fellow adventure seeker (The Spocker). We did 9 dives on that adventure, the first two were cave dives in Mexico which were intense. 40 minutes of being in a tunnel under the ocean will get just about anyones heart rate up. In Belize we dove atolls, walls and of course… the blue hole. World famous, this is a must when diving in Belize. 145ft you bottom out at (you, not the hole) where you hang out and see some stagnates/stalagmites from when the hole used to be a cave, before the ice age. From there, you wind your way up the sheer wall, passing a school of sharks, then a bigger school of barracuda before doing your decompressing over a reef. This was the first time diving I had ever experienced narcosis (being narced). Easiest way to explain that is being high from breathing the nitrogen rich air. I had done some pretty deep dives and never experienced the symptoms and I was wondering when it was finally going to happen. When it did, I just cracked myself up a few times but I definitely didn’t hear any talking fish.

Here are some of the cool things I have seen while diving: 3 or 4 different types of sharks, seahorses, sting rays, lots of eels, ship wrecks, airplane wrecks, octopus, squid, fish that can kill, three-foot long turtles, buried town and its old dam, huge atlantic lobster, fossils in flooded caves, sunken drug running ships and more fish then there are stars in the sky, easily.

The bad thing about diving for a person like me, is that my imagination is always running wild. I actually have the thoughts about the shark coming out of the abyss straight for me. In and around wrecks can be creepy too, knowing you are close to a piece of history makes my mind go in a million directions. Having read lots of books about good divers who have lost their lives, you can’t help but think of them sometimes and it keeps a healthy little bit of fear near the front of your brain.

I mostly wrote this blog as an excuse to post a bunch of my diving pics for most of my first while diving I never had a camera but here are some pics from some of my latest trips.

Stubs.

Why Stubs?

Years ago, it happened. It was a day like any other day, I remember it clearly. Hanging out with friends, having some laughs probably causing youth type trouble of some kind when I did something most people don’t think twice about, I gave a thumbs up. That is the day my life changed in a profound way and I went from the person I had been my whole life, to Stubs.

See, I have small hands and especially freakishly short thumbs. My feet also follow the same trend (which was always awesome because as it turns out, junior shoes are way cheaper than adult shoes). It’s one of those things in life that you never think about yourself, you’re never self conscious about until someone else points it out and if you’re young and someone is pointing it out, it usually involves pointing, laughing and of course, the new nickname.

All of the nicknames that have come and gone, of course, this is the one that has stuck. Now, it’s become such a part of who I am that when I go home, to my old, life long friends they will grab my arm and take great pride in showing someone new my freakish thumbs exclaiming, “you have to see her thumb” to which the reaction is always the same, a loud, “no way!” followed by them grabbing my hand and comparing mine to theirs in an attempt to assure themselves that they do not have this same short coming.

As any person like me would do in this situation I have learned to use this “situation” to my advantage. I will use my stubs to make others feel better when they’re sad. If I feel like someone needs a pick-me-up, I’ll give them the thumbs up and say, “well at least you’re thumbs aren’t this short.” Usually, their eyes will widen, they’ll grab my arm and of course, compare hand size. It’s a little thing I like to do, to give back. If I can use these thumbs for anything, it should be to help people, cause they sure don’t help me with much. You know, cause they’re short.

Stubs.

And now, I’m thirty

I am now thirty years of age. After sixteen days of celebrating, I have finally had my birthday and the extravaganza has come to a close. Two countries, two provinces and I don’t know how many km’s of driving and now, I sit in one of my favourite spots in the world, totally alone and thankful my vocal cords are getting a rest. In front of me, the Pacific Ocean and huge mountains in the distance with my trusty dog Caper sleeping on the bed where she’s not supposed to be while I drink coffee and Bailey’s listen to the tide come in. Paradise.

The continuation of my 30^th celebration involved a night out in Calgary where we hit up a beer market  (Craft) and had a great evening filled with some of my favourite people, I don’t think I stopped smiling all night. Poncho and I had a great shoeless walk back to the hotel, just like old times.

December 27^th we hit the road with the Pacific Ocean as our destination. Finally after all these years, Poncho and Stubs can say they went coast to coast. Once in the mountains, the weather was not cooperating and we hit just about any kind of weather you can imagine. By the evening, we had only gotten as far as Revelstoke and it was time to call it a night. Throughout the day we had seen one bad vehicle accident involving a roll over and also a huge train crash where about twenty cars were just folded up like an accordion, it was wild.

Next, we arrived in Victoria where one of my oldest friends (Mermaid) had just moved to and the three of us had a great dinner in Vic and got in some quality girl shopping time. After that it was time to head out of town. Last year, while cruising the coast on my BC birthday trip, I found this cottage which I am currently sitting in. After a long day of hiking in the rain, not liking and then leaving the original place I had booked and feeling like my trip luck was running out, I found a place called Point No Point Resort outside of Sooke, BC. I stayed for two nights last year and it changed me a little bit, one of those places. When I thought about where I wanted to wake up on my 30^th and really considered places all over the world, the sudden thought of being back in that cottage again made my soul happy, so… that’s why I’m here. There is a feeling in this place; all of the elements of the earth are at your finger tips as well as some of the best hiking, fastest changing weather and nicest people. Why even leave Canada when we have so many amazing corners to be explored right here?

Originally, I thought this part of the trip would be solo as well. Having your birthday on New Year’s Eve is always tricky because most people already have plans or places to be. I have long since resolved myself to the fact that If I want to have fun on my birthday, I’m going to have to count on myself alone to make that happen. Over the last few weeks, Poncho decided to come on my adventure and then I found out my other good friend Mermaid was in for the trip too. The whole dimension of the trip changed from waking up in a place that would be stunning to set a peaceful tone to 2012, to having two of my best friends in the world in paradise with a hot tub overlooking the ocean causing trouble together for a few days. My birthday was filled with laughs, huge waves and crashing surf, some of the best friends a girl could ask for, way too much food, the perfect amount of booze and a dog who couldn’t be cuter if she tried. I will say again: I am, without a doubt, the luckiest girl in the world.

On January 1, 2012, I took both of my lovely ladies to their airplanes and apartments and came back to the cottage to pack, reflect and enjoy the view for a few more hours. This is one of those places that you’re never sad to leave because you always know that at some point, you’ll be there again.

Stubs.