This morning we took the sled out for the second time this winter. I'd snowshoed around the park several times this week, working on getting a good base for the dog sled. Last week we went around once (about 1 km) and this week we went around almost twice (about 1.5-2 km). Since the trail isn't well groomed, Pete and I get a good work-out. :-) The park is very handy to have -- it's right across the street (and over the highway), we rarely see anyone else, so Pete can be off leash most of the time, and it's big enough to have a good variety of short dog-sled trails.

I've uploaded a few more videos to Facebook, and left the access rights to "Everyone", so even if you don't have a Facebook account, you should be able to view all the videos.

js.

Our private and public photo albums were getting kinda dated, so I decided to spruce things up. Oh my... I always forget what joy it is to revisit old code. :-) Especially code that's been re-worked a number of times. I've been coding some new stuff for ChessieDB (a Contact database for breeders, etc.) and got carried away. Hopefully you'll like the new design. If not, well, too bad. :-D

js.

This year was our 4th Jeep Jamboree and the 3rd one in Maine. We always look forward to this nice drive down from Montreal through Maine mountains and parks. The foliage was again just breathtaking. We were join this year by
Simon & Jen (Tadpole) and Rob (Big Blue).

Oct 1 - Registration Day

We lined up quite early this year and were at the front of line for inspection. We wanted to ensure that we were able to chose from all trails and especially register for the Chili Trail that we did not have a chance to do on the previous years. We met enthusiastic new comers to the Maine Jamboree. Beauty and the Beast - Brenda/Daniel had a very nice rig. All of us went out to have dinner at the Sub Pub that night and hit the bed early for the next morning.

We had an amazing 7 days camping with our new Campa trailer. The main objective of this trip was to evaluate equipment list, get some driving experience with the trailer on and off-road, get experience with navigation with our latop GPS setup (Melanie learned the hard way that a soft brown line in the Topo map is not a road), and enjoy the outdoors.

Our journey included the following destinations: Presque’ile/Price Edward County ON; Killbear National Park/Parry Sound-Georgian Bay; Kiosk Algonquin Park; Brent Algonquin Park.

Dates: August 30- Sept 6
Mileage: approx. 1500 km
No Reservations Made in Advanced

We're back after taking a long week-end mini-vacation in Ontario. The idea was to check our equipment list, procedures, etc. before taking a longer trip to Algonquin Park and Parry Sound -- and to visit Janet in Bath ON at the same time. Our packing list wasn't too bad, but we'll have to add more matches, lighters, and portable lights / lanterns. :-) The trailer was a lot of fun, especially the hot shower and hot water for the dishes. :-) The trailer's water hoses developed a few leaks, so I'll have to replace them with a different hose. Campa used what they thought was a better hose on this trailer, but it's too stiff and can't handle the pressure & heat. Aside from that, the trailer pulled fairly well with the 3.8L, but there's a learning curve -- shifting is pretty much always above 2500rpm, and we had to try a few settings on the brake controller to get the trailer to brake smoothly with the Jeep. This was also our first trip with the laptop, and it turned out to be very useful. It'll be a great asset when we drive through Algonquin Park using smaller roads and trails.

js.

View the Jeep > Camping > 2009 > 20090813 - Trailer Camping in Bath ON folder...

Saturday morning we picked up the trailer from Chris and Anne in Champlain NY. Customs was no problem - so far so good! :-) Chris spent several hours with us going over all the features, and doing a few backing-up / jack-knife scenarios, etc. The trailer itself is perfect. The tent... well, I'm not sure yet. It depends on how well it works during rainy days. It's canvas, which I didn't expect. I probably should have done a little more research on the tent. :-) Anyway, it looks like I have to hose it down & let-dry 3-4 times to make sure it's properly watertight.

js.

View the Jeep > Evolution > 2009 > 20090718 - Picking-up the Trailer folder...

We kicked off our off-roading season with the Weir hydro-line trail last Saturday. Matt, Yann, Simon, their friends and ourselves ran the trail early to avoid some other folks that might be running the same trail. We're a 'slow and easy' crowd, where-as some of the other guys who run this trail are not. :-) The trail is fairly easy, except for two challenging spots: The Stairs and the "S". There's a bypass for the "S", but you can't go around the stairs... Luckily the mud wasn't too wet, and with the help of some waffleboards and plenty of winching, all of us made it up fairly easily. This is a picture of the Stairs -- obstacles always look a little smaller in pictures, but you get the idea... :-) There are a few videos in the folder -- be patient if you want to view them, they can take a little while to download.

Everyone made it out without any breakage, although Matt's winch slipped in it's mount and was out of service for the second half of the trail. After getting back, he was able to brace the winch with some longer bolts, which should prevent the same problem from occurring again.

js.

View the Jeep > Off-Road > 2009 > 20090523 - Weir folder...

Yesterday we spent the afternoon working on Steve Jeep and trying to troubleshoot his death wobble problem. We found 2 johnny joints that were in bad shape. Furthermore, some of the connection were not torqued at the right pressure. We could not finish adjusting the toe in as the tie-rod was seized in place by rust (it cracked while JS and Steve were trying to untwist it).

View the Jeep > Repairs > 20090404 - Working on Steve's Jeep folder...

Registration Day

It was a beautiful day getting to Bethel from Montreal, QC. We headed down through highway 10 and through the Stanhope border crossing (just one small booth), then took route 26 and route 2 to Bethel Maine. We had the road to ourselves and beautiful fall views. We had forgotten that our soft doors flap a little when we go over 100 Km. :-)

We got in line for vehicle inspection early at 3 pm, and proceeded to the trail sign ups that began at 5pm sharp inside the convention center. We selected a easy trail for Friday for me to drive and a moderate trail for the Saturday drive for JS.

View the Jeep > Off-Road > 2008 > 20081002 - Bethel Maine Jeep Jamboree > 20081002 - Inspection and Registration folder...

Day 1 - Sunday River/Moose River Run (Difficulty 3-4) – Melanie Driving

JS drove this trail last year on our second day. It's a very nice trail with some mild obstacle, water crossings, some rocks with muds holes/tracks. We aired down to 14 for the trail. The trail was wet and it rained a bit throughout the day. Our guides on the trail were Ron, Rick and Jon. We had some people on the trail that we met last year and made new friends. We were the second Jeep behind Ron. Sport and Merrick riding in Fiona aka “Fefe the Jeep” were in front of us. We had a wonderful time. I made all obstacles with ease (The jeep is far more capable than my driving skills). There was some pulling and some easy trail situations to handle. CB talk was very quiet. As always Ron was super. We met Rick for the first time - a very nice and funny guy. We also had Jon with his girlfriend on the trail with us that help a lot to guide people through obstacle. Overall, a nice day wheeling with just enough challenge for Me.

View the Jeep > Off-Road > 2008 > 20081002 - Bethel Maine Jeep Jamboree > 20081003 - Sunday River - Moose River Run folder...

Last trip we were determine to find our first nudibranchs. Accompanied by our friend/divemaster Linda, we went on hunting for nudibranchs at Bonaire town pier. We did 2 very long dive each @ 2 hour long and saw amazing things - Seahorses sleeping, octopus, batfish, orange ball coralimorph anemone, sponge crabs ...... and many nudibranchs. The most common was the long horn nubibranch (we saw dozen of those); we saw 4 of the gold-line sea goddess; discovered a blue-ring sea hare (who looked very much like a ball of snot).

We need a little help identifying the Doris that we found at town pier though. The only Doris documented in the Reef Creature P . Humann and Ned Deloach that looks a bit like this one could be the brown doris. We believe that the doris we found at town pier looks more like a NODULOSE HOPLODORIS (from the book of Neville Coleman 1001 nudibranchs p.57) a doris found in the coral sea. We would love to get confirmation on our find by nudi experts. If you can positively identify this nudibranch please send us an email.

View the Scuba Diving > 2008 > 20080506 - Bonaire > Nudibranchs folder...