Travels

Welcome back to another, and perhaps my final post on our adventures in Morocco. My apologies for the slight delay between posts. I was off to Toronto for a conference, and had other family obligations. At any rate, on the plus side, we now have all of our pictures put up on flickr. I've even added a folder of videos as well, with a few clips that I shot in various places. For this post, I'm going to take you on two unique journeys. The first will be a camelback ride out into the dunes of the Erg Chebbi, where we spent the night in a Berber camp. The second part of the story will be our exploration of the ancient Roman ruins of Volubilis, an expansive site which was one of the farthest trading posts of the Roman empire. Both of these little adventures was pretty amazing, and this was the first time that either of us had ventured by camel into a desert, and spend the night under the stars in the desert. Once you've had chance to peruse the desert pictures and Roman ruin pictures, hop on back and read the whole tale.

Welcome to the second post detailing some of the awesome experiences Deanna and I had in Morocco. This time, I'll take you a bit off the beaten path, and talk about two particularly awesome experiences. Namely, the high of trekking and climbing in the High Atlas mountains, including sumitting the highest peak in North Africa, as well as the lows of heading to the depths of the deepest caves in North Africa, the Friouato Cave system. For Deanna, these were particularly fun, as she had never climbed a mountain before or gone cave exploring. In another post, I'll visit a first for BOTH of us, but this time, it's all about Deanna's firsts. If you check into flickr, you'll eventually find pictures from both, but for now, only the Atlas Mountain pics are up. Eventually, they'll all be in the collection though. For now, I'll just give you a bit of the blow by blow in written words. Enjoy!

Hello world! It has been simply far too long since I've taken the time to write a few words to all my dear readers. This is partly due to a number of distractions at home and with work, and partly due to the fact that Deanna and I were quite busy jet-setting. As you may have guessed from the marvelous alliteration in the title, we were off to Morocco taking in the sights, smells, and sounds of that amazing country. I'll split the story into 2 or 3 posts, starting with this one. In this post, I'll focus on the cities that we visited. Our trip was broken into bits of urban exploration, then some adventures in the mountains, desert, and caves. We covered a lot of ground and had a lot of experiences in our two weeks, far too many to cover in full detail. So here's hoping I can be somewhat brief! Of course, there were also a LOT of pictures taken, and we'll sort those all by day or location to make it easiest. You can check out all the pictures over on flickr. We're in the process of creating one big collection with many sets. Keep checking back for more pictures as we post them. Have a look now, then head back here to read more.

Hello all! It's been quite some time since I took a trip out East to where I grew up, and I recently had the perfect excuse(s) to do so. Firstly, my dad was celebrating his 70th birthday this year, and my sister and I decided that we wanted to throw a little celebration in his honour and invite friends and family from around the world to attend. Secondly, Deanna has never been further east than Quebec City, and it was high time that she experience a little Maritime hospitality and meet some more of the family. As a result, we booked a week off work in July and made our plans for a whirlwind driving tour of the area. Over 4,000km of driving in about 9 days! Lots of time sitting in the car, but also some quality time with friends and family. Check out a whole pile of pictures then head on back for a taste of what we did and what the highlights of each day was for us! We definitely wished we'd had more time down there, but with another vacation already booked in October, we just couldn't spare the time.

Greetings friends. So have you figured out what this post will be about yet? Well, here's a hint; normally what you do there stays there. Yep, that's right, I just got back from spending nearly a full week in Las Vegas. The occasion for such frivolity? Well, I was actually on the company nickel for this trip. I was attending the 2011 National Association of Broadcasters conference. Sound dry to you? Well, apart from the yearly CES show, this is one of the biggest conferences in the states. Estimates pegged attendance at over 90,000 people. How insane is that? In a word: insane. I was the only attendee from my work, and unfortunately, I didn't know a single person at the conference. I know a fair number of people in the telecom industry, but not the broadcasting space. As such, this wasn't going to be the typical Vegas trip. In spite of that, i managed to do some fun things, and will tell you about those things. Also, I took a few pictures while there, which I've split into two sets: Natural Fun, and Hotel and Conference pics. After you've checked them out, read on for the rest of the post.

Well, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year all in one. Looks like I’m technically about 8-9% late on this one, so I had better at least write a quick little tale about what I got up to over the holidays! After all, it turns out I’m also two race reports behind as well, and by the looks of things, may very well be three race reports behind by the end of the weekend! Eek. My sincerest apologies to one and all. That being said, my reasons are good, and I do plan to rectify that and fill you in on my happenings, beginning with this little post. Every year, we make Christmas wishes for what we’d like, and this year, rather than really wish for any tangibles, my wish was more of a desire. Most importantly, it came true! You may remember in the last post where I talked about Deanna’s interview with a local law firm. As luck would have it, a mere few days later she got an offer... and accepted! This was in November, so from then on, it was scramble time to get ready for the move. For a few pics of Christmas, clicky the linky, then read on for a bit more colour around this!

Holy smokes ActiveSteve readers, it’s already into 2011, but this here blog is stuck back in time at November 2010! I guess I had better do something about that. Here goes nothing :-) Allow me to start off with a skill testing question for you: How can you have a honeymoon without actually getting married? Give up? Just ask for it, and take a vacation with me! Yep, in fact a honeymoon is exactly what Deanna and I managed to get away on during a great week in mid November. Well, technically, it was just a honeymoon special, but we just treated it as a full-on honeymoon to make the most of it. Where did we go? An awesome place known simply as the Couples Resort, located just outside the east gate of Algonquin Park. Read on for the full details of the deal as well as what we got up to that week. And of course, don’t forget to check out all the great pictures that we took while up there for an amazing week!

Howdy world. Well, I suppose I'm breaking some cardinal rule of Las Vegas by writing this post, but lets just say I'll stick to the relatively family friendly aspects of the trip to share with you all. To save you the wondering, yes, I did see 'The Hangover', and yes, things went down a little like that. Not quite to the extreme, but there were some interesting moments for sure. In respect of the code, I'll keep this post short and to the point, and just give you an overview of the whole trip. For a great overview, just click your little fingers over to my flickr site and peruse some pictures and video from the weekend. Then come on back and read the whole sordid tale, including the why, the where and the what.