adventure Archives - Page 4 of 4

Following the Trail of “Jackrabbit” Johannsen

A warm welcome back to you all. I’m back from another epic odyssey over the past weekend. Although the Canadian Ski Marathon is not a race, strictly speaking, I’m still putting under my ‘race’ cartegory. This is mainly due to the fact that there are strict time cut-offs, which mean many skiers don’t actually complete the entire 160km distance. Ergo, it is a race against the clock in my mind :-). I also wish I got paid to race, because I would have gotten overtime. Over 20 hours outside in the bitter cold, and up at 3am and 4am! Seems like more ‘work’ than my job! At any rate, it was an amazing event, and I hope you’ll all read on for my personal take of the entire event. I covered it for Get Out There Magazine as well (videos appended at end), and took a bunch of pictures. Should give any skiers out there a great idea and reason to try the CSM next year!

Travelogue

Dromedaries, Dunes, and Deserted Ruins

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.

Travelogue

The Highs and Lows of Morocco

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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!

Travelogue

Marvelous Morocco: Medinas, Medersas, Minarets and Mosques

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.

Cycling Through Toledo and California

Welcome back to another report from me, Activesteve, on my latest exploits. This time I’ll be covering a little cycle touring that Deanna and I did with a group of friends last weekend. The tour? Rideau Lakes. The distance? 370km over the course of two days. Biking from Ottawa to Kingston, and then back again. Yes, it’s a lot of time in the saddle, but with good weather and great friends, it really doesn’t feel all that bad. And luckily, we had both those ingredients with us on the weekend. I’ve done the tour once before, but this time, we were a different group, and took a different route. Read on for the whole story, and don’t forget to check out the pictures that I snapped along the way!