I saw a bear.

a real. live. walking. brown. bear!

I've lived in North America for almost 10 years now and it took me that long to see a bear.  When I lived in Canada, and went to such places like Banff, Whistler the Muskoka etc, I really expected that I would see one.  I mean on tv, they show up all the time...  I even dragged Bryce to the dump one time in Ontario just to see if we could see any bears...

Last weekend we took Bryce's mum, Cathy to Yosemite, as she had NEVER been!  It was my 4th time and each time it never fails to surprise me.

The pictures just don't do it justice - you just have to see it for yourself.

Bryce and his mum

Mirror Lake had water in it this time, and the weather was perfect.

Ta da!  Cathy, Bryce and Mabel

Bryce, Mabel and me

Mabel trying out her water shoes in the lake.

Who needs pants or shoes anyway...

On the bus

 We camped at Camp Curry,

in those infamous tents...

and they were awesome!

We ate dinner at the fancy place

 where Mabel perfected her birthday candle blowing skills

 Oh look, a bear!

 Just kidding...  we really did see a bear.

We saw a small crowd of people looking and pointing across a field as we were walking back to our tent, and then I looked over and saw a flash of brown.  I was so excited I wasn't scared at all...  Bryce and I, and 2 other guys started walking over and following him.  Not too closely (obviously) but enough so I could grab a few pictures.  He knew we were there, but wasn't really interested.  We watched him gathering food from branches and he just toddled along.  It was amazing to see such a huge creature in the wild!  

and we lived to tell the tale :)

What's your favourite part of Yosemite?

Monterey Aquarium

I know it's been a while since I've posted anything here, but I miss this blog.  I love looking back at stuff we've done, this was a place I have stored so many memories and stories.  So why stop now right?

This past weekend Bryce had a mountain bike race in Monterey, so we decided to make a weekend of it and hit up the Monterey Aquarium while we were down there.  We've lived in California now for almost 5 years and hadn't been.  Now that Mabel is almost 2 (can't believe that!) we figured it was time.

So, we set off in the campervan and headed south.

the way to travel :)

When we arrived this huge tank was the first thing we saw - we stood there for about 20 minutes, just watching it all go by...

 Mabel was amazed by all the fish

 and sharks

 she was most impressed with the huge whale on the ceiling though...

 crab!

 Found this little guy sticking out from behind a rock - ewwk eels!  but his underbite was pretty cute.

 the jellyfish display was very cool, and of course I took a bazillion pictures...

 Hammerhead shark

 Baby sea turtle

 My unexpected favourite though was the puffins.  They had so much charisma it was hard not to be impressed :)

 they were total show-offs too.

 I loved their cool hair do's

 

 the seahorses were amazing also

 Did you know it's the man who gives birth for seahorses?  I like it :)

This is the point where Mabel was done... and the naughty girl kicked in...

 who me?

 so we found a great little French restaurant called Bistro Moulin which was amazing!

 We headed to our campsite after dinner so this little crazy could go to bed... distraction mode fully activated here...

 On Sunday we got up early (way too early...) to get to Bryce's race.

While he raced his bike up and down crazy hills, we leisurely road our bike around on the flats

 I didn't get any shots of him racing as I wasn't about to ride my hefty bike with baby seat up those big hills... but 

here he is is after the race - in need of a nice cold drink!