Rinda’s Scavenger Hunt–Adventure in the Rocky Mountains

We spent 2 weeks in August motorcycling round the Canadian Rockies!  We were on a guided tour,so that meant everything was booked up for us, including rental of motorbikes, hotels, etc, and there was a back-up van for our luggage!  We met some great people on the tour and saw some awesome scenery. 

I decided to try and do the Scavenger Hunt while we were on our trip.  I didn’t get them all,but here’s what I did get:

1 a wild heart

2 foot print or paw print.  There must be a paw print somewhere in this quilt- mustn’t there?

3 skeleton bone or x-ray

4 book or magazine read in 2016

5 porch or deck.  We were lucky enough to have lunch on the patio/deck at Banff Springs Hotel, and the weather was perfect!  Must be one of the most scenic places in the world to have lunch!

6 camper or RV.  I was fascinated by the HUGE RVs!  They were everywhere!  We stayed overnight at this RV park – we had a wooden cabin – in Clearwater, BC.

7 family gathering.  These guys were brilliant!  They certainly felt like my family while we were on the trip.

8 drawing art journal scrapbook page etc made by me

9 someone playing in or around water.  Canoes on Moraine Lake.  So pretty!

10 bicycle.  Rental bicycles in Vancouver.

11 fresh produce.  Granville Island Market in Vancouver

 

12 window. I found this window in the Chinese garden in Vancouver’s Chinatown

13 the moon.  How about this moon face on one of the totem poles in Stanley Park, Vancouver?

14 buffet of food.  Maurice felt like he was eating a whole buffet of food when he was served this humungous burger at Whistler, BC.

15 team logo.  The Whitecaps FC team store in Vancouver.

16 map showing trip

17 twins.  Maurice and Stewart hired the same BMW motorbike rather than a Harley.  They are BMW R1200RT’s with twin cylinders.

18 supermarket trolley full of groceries

19 seasonal cocktail

20 someone laughing.  We really did laugh a lot on this trip!  Here’s a great picture of Aussie Pam laughing(who rode her own Harley Davidson Fatboy!)

 

21 photo of me with newspaper or calendar from period covered by hunt

That’s it for this year from me!

Scrapbooking a Holiday!

I’ve spent time over the last few weeks since we got back from our Australia and New Zealand trip scrapbooking another epic trip from 2013: California and Oregon Road Trip in the USA.  I used mainly Project Life pages, using the Kraft edition of PL cards.  I added in a few 12 x 12 pages, mainly because I had several portrait photos which didn’t fit in my PL pages.  Do you find the photo orientation to be a problem with the PL system?  I also used 2 collections of 12 x 12 paper pads, one called ‘Recollections’ by Michaels, and Studio Calico’s ‘Atlantic’, both purchased from TK Maxx locally.

I printed far too many photos, and started off using them all!  Eventually, I realised that I could cut some down or not include some of them.  I still have a very full album, and to be honest, it is a bit too big to show to anyone!  I am sure they will get bored quickly!  It’s a lesson I will learn for when I scrapbook the Australia/New Zealand trip.  I did do a small album of a few choice photos as soon as we got back, which I showed to lots of friends, like a brag book!

My process is first to put the photos into the album in more or less chronological order, then sort out which ones I will put on 12 x 12 pages.  Once I have that sorted, I go through adding cards and journaling.  I scrapbooked the 12 x 12 pages as I went along.  Finally, I sorted out all my stickers, stamps, and cut apart pages for embellishing.

I haven’t actually done a title page yet because I want to print off a 7x5 photo of the Harley-Davidson bike we hired.  I’ve included an itinerary on the first page.  Last time at my crop we had ‘calendar page’ as our challenge, and this just fitted the bill!  I made quite a detailed diary of the trip, so there is lots of journaling throughout the album.

 

Pictures taken at Santa Cruz, where we spent our first night.  How we loved the sealions!  Here’s one page where I have included a portrait photo on it’s side!  The sealion sticker is an old one I found in my stash!

 

Motoring south along the Pacific Coast Highway.  Another portrait photo on it’s side, but I did manage to include most portrait photos on a 12 x 12 page like this one.

 

Then we rode inland and spent a couple of nights in Yosemite National Park.  The wing symbol card comes from the Recollection paper pad.

 

And then north to Lake Tahoe.  Lovely scenery!  I used sketches for most of my pages by searching ‘scrapbook sketches’ on Pinterest.  Sorry I didn’t keep a record of which ones they were.

 

Up into Oregon and back down the Pacific Coast Highway.  The weather was rough and grey at first, but only served to make the coast more dramatic!  This page of the Yaquina Lighthouse uses the Atlantic papers (even though it is the Pacific Ocean!)

 

We stayed in a lot of cute B and B’s including this in Eureka, California.  It’s called Abigails Elegant Victorian Mansion and is decorated, furnished and styled in high Victoriana!  We thought it was completely eccentric!  It was like stepping into a Disney movie set!

 

It wasn’t all plain sailing with the bike!  We had a problem with the gear lever and had to tie it up with my boot lace!

 

Back down into California near San Francisco, we found the Earthquake trail at Point Reyes Station fascinating.  I included quite a few ‘California’ stickers I purchased especially for the album.

 

Just occasionally I had enough portrait photos to do pages like this one on the right hand side.  Here is the interior of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco which had a spectacular art installation of these long, long ribbons hanging from the ceiling on which the congregation had written prayers.

 

 

It was a wonderful trip, and I so enjoyed revisiting it all through the making of this scrapbook!  I hope you have enjoyed a little peek into my album and process.

New Zealand!

Hi!  Long time no see!  I’ve been back from my trip to Australia and New Zealand  for 2 weeks now, and am well and truly over the jet lag – but not the post-holiday-blues!

It really was a trip of a lifetime!  We loved every minute of it!  Here are some highlights:

Our first stop was Adelaide in Australia to visit my cousin Richard and his lovely wife Jacqui.  Here they are with Maurice on Brighton beach!  They spoilt us rotten for 3 days, showing us the sights of Adelaide.

Glorious empty beaches, huh?  It was a bit of a thrill to be paddling in the warm sea wearing shorts in February! And we had a lovely wine tasting in the McLaren Vale.

Next stop was Sydney, where we visited Maurice’s nephew Mark and his young family.  Mark showed us the sights of central Sydney and the harbour, but sadly, the weather wasn’t good, cloudy and rainy! Most disappointing!

We spent a day touring the Blue Mountains.  Awesome!

And we visited a little wildlife park to see koalas and kangeroos

 

All too soon, it was time to leave for the main bit of our holiday, touring New Zealand by motorbike.

 

Once we got to NZ, we joined our tour, organised by Paradise Motorcycles. There were 4 bikes already on the trip and we joined them on day 3 of their tour. Our old friends Stewart and Sue were already there. More people joined the tour along the way until we were 12 bikes in total. We spent a few days on the North Island – where we saw lots of beautiful scenery and rode twisty turny roads - but we were assured that the scenery would be even more stunning on the South Island.  We visited Hobbiton and went to a Maori evening, where we ate food they had cooked in the earth, using thermal heat, and watched Maori traditional dances including the Hakka.

We had the calmest possible ferry crossing. It must be one of the most beautiful ferry crossings in the world!

There were lots of highlights on the South Island, not least Queen Charlotte's Drive right from the ferry! It was stunning! Every day's riding bought different scenery, from native rainforest to snow capped mountains and crystal clear blue lakes.

Highlights include;

Helicopter ride over Mount Cook and the glaciers

Trip to the glow worm caves

Boat trip on Milford Sound

Seeing the albatrosses and their chicks(the only mainland landing site in the world of these majestic birds)

Staying at Larnach Castle in Dunedin, with the most marvellous view from our toilet!

The road down into Queenstown, and having a glass of wine at the top of the gondola overlooking this wonderful view of Queenstown

and lots lots more!

We hadn't done a tour like this before (we organised our California trip all by ourselves), and this bought pluses and minuses! We weren't able to stop when we wanted to take photos, but the interplay and group dynamics was really great and bought a whole new dimension to our holiday.

 

We stayed in excellent accommodation and ate some wonderful food!

We loved being with our friends Stewart and Sue, sharing our holiday-of-a-lifetime with them! We'll be talking about it for years to come!