Trip by the Numbers

Bryn, Tyler and I made it home just before 10 p.m. yesterday. It was a long trip, but we had so much fun driving across the country together. We met our parents at Yosemite on Monday afternoon and had a mini vacation together for the last few days of our travels. All in all, it took us several hours more than a week (even with crossing time zones and gaining three hours) to get from Collegedale, TN to Kelowna, BC. That's definitely the longest we've ever taken to get home and by Thursday night Bryn, Ty and I all just wanted to be back home. But we made a lot of interesting stops for fun excursions during our trip, so that's why it took the extra time. Here are some random number-facts about our latest excursion.

Miles driven: 4,095.4 (6,590.9 km)
Hours spent traveling: 180.5
States driven through: 11 — plus 1 province, obviously
Interstates taken: Five — I40, I15, I5, I205 & I84
National parks/areas visited: Three — Yosemite N.P., Crater Lake N.P. & Oregon Sand Dunes National Recreation Area
Other attractions seen/visited: Hoover Dam (way too hot and way too many people to get out of the car), Las Vegas strip (definitely counted as an attraction) & the Stratosphere in L.V. (not nearly as exciting or tall as we imagined)
Wildlife seen: Numerous deer, golden eagles, squirrels & sea lions, plus 1 whale (seen only by me)
Animals hit: One — by my dad just after leaving Yosemite at night (It was too dark to see what it was, but I'm convinced it was a sleek, long-tailed baby panther, Bryn's sure it was a fuzzy, curly-haired dog, and Mum claims to have seen the ink-black wings of a huge raven.)

(Thanks to Kevin for this depiction of the mysterious animal.)

Oceans seen/waded in: One — the beautiful Pacific
Notable mountains seen: Six — Half Dome and El Capitan at Yosemite, Mt. Shasta, Mt. Hood, Mt. Ranier & Mt. Adams
Times pulled over by a cop: Two — Our parents both times for "possible drunk driving/driving too slowly and hesitantly"
Tickets received: None
Pictures taken: Still being tallied, but, with four cameras along and our picture-loving mother on the trip, the number is definitely in the thousands.

Heading Home

I finished the Insight Writer's Workshop at 5 p.m. today. I managed to write two stories (both more than 1100 words) during the last four days. I spent lots of yesterday and almost all of today editing the stories and then started on a third one to finish up later and email in to the associate editor of Insight. We ended the workshop by each of us seven students eating ice cream bars and then reading our favourite story out loud. It turned out to be a great week. I learned a lot and found it really fulfilling to just be able to sit and write for four whole days without any distractions. Of course the best thing is that now I have another upper division credit and I'll probably have more articles published to add to my portfolio.

After the workshop finished, I came back to Bryn's room and we've been packing and cleaning, off and on, ever since. Tomorrow we're leaving for home. I'm so excited to get home and sleep in my own bed and unpack my stuff and play with my dog, Pepper. I want to go swimming in Okanagan Lake (although that will have to wait for a month or so before the lake warms up) and quadding at my uncle's cabin and taking Pepper for walks on the Mission Creek Greenway. But another thing I can't wait to do is eat Canadian food (and candy)! These are just a few of my favourites.







(I know vinegar can't really be classified as a food, but I've been craving it on my French fries since I left home last summer. Restaurants down here just don't seem to understand that there are alternative (and superior) condiments to ketchup.)

If you'd like to try any of these awesome treats, just come up to BC and visit. We'd love to have you. Happy summer everyone. I'll see you next school year!

Insight Writer's Workshop

Tomorrow, while other Southern students are relaxing (or sleeping) at home, or finishing up cleaning out their rooms/apartments, I'll be starting a new class. Bright and early at 8 a.m. I have to be in the School of Journalism and Communication's Mac lab in Brock Hall for the Insight Writer's Workshop. I'm not exactly looking forward to more class-type activities and writing so soon after school is out for the summer, but it's for upper division credit, so at least that will keep me motivated. It will be interesting to see how many stories I can turn out during the next four days.

What's really inside a VCR?

Today I went to my last class of the 2008-2009 school year, Foundations of Broadcasting. I should have taken it last winter with Ty because he said that his class had a riot. My class was not quite so exciting, but I did learn a bunch of stuff. Mostly, I perfected my multi-tasking skills by listening to the lectures/watching the video clips while doing the daily word find and sudoku in the Chatt. Times Life section. But I also learned a lot about important current events in the media and telecommunications world. Here are two of my favourite video clips from BRDC-201.

The future of the media?


And for fun... Today Mr. Ruf started class with the following informational video.
Feel free to try this at home. Just make SURE to have marshmallows on hand.

Waking Up Canadian

Even though I've never lost my Canadian citizenship, I wish I could wake up to a room like that (maybe minus the hockey player in the room and the Mountie waiting right outside the door).