A week ago, Jeff invited a few friends over to help him eat a big roast beef he cooked.

We had carrots and potatoes and a herb and cheese bread, and gravy, and roast beef, and a mixed salad, and I even made a jello like it was 1983! Unfortunately, I’m not sure these friends were alive yet in 1983 and didn’t understand you really can put jello on your main course plate!

And the pie lady opened her new shop for the season! Jeff picked up a fresh apple caramel pie for dessert with some vanilla ice cream!

It was a busy week – my second week back at my > 5km walks each work day. It’s been really easy to get back into the routine and it feels wonderful! I’ve been doing 12-13k steps every day. Each morning I walk along the river, which is open and flowing, with large piles of ice and log debris along its shore. The water level is very, very low still though.

It’s been 0-2°C each morning and only drizzly once so far.

Friday night was the opening night of Gertie’s shows for the season! A few of us chipped in to buy our friend Alex VIP tickets to the opening night of shows and he invited us to join him! We first went to the Triple J for our first supper outside on the deck this year.

Our friend Kevin who works at the Triple J, popped his head out of the door to the patio and asked if any of us were ordering the crispy chicken. “One of you HAS to order the crispy chicken! Trust me!”

Curiously, Kyle agreed, and when it came out, it was the biggest crispy chicken you’ve ever seen!

They had a chicken breast so big that instead of just filleting it once like they usually do, they did it a second time in the other direction, leaving this monstrosity! It needed two buns to hold it! Fortunately that gave Kyle an entire second crispy chicken to go home with after he cut it in half!

After dinner we walked next door to Gertie’s for our seat at the front of the floor!

The VIP package included a free drink for all of us, and a bottle of champagne halfway through the night!

The same Gertie was back for another season and the first 8:30 show blew us away! The strongest early show we’ve seen in 10 years!

The place was packed! It was loud!

Gertie’s male companion was so entertaining! He is a great addition to the shows!

The costumes were even more fabulous than last year!

And for a first night, there were no evident rough edges to their performances at all! Each show is different, one at 8:30pm, one at 10pm, and the final show at midnight.

Gertie even interacted with Jeff!

That’s what happens when you sit at the front!

It was a very enjoyable evening. Everyone needs more live entertainment in their lives! And a front row seat from time to time!

Jeff had to skip the midnight show so he could get to bed. He was teaching another firearms safety course on Saturday at the college.

But I had other plans – a day of ATV’ing!

We weren’t sure how far up in the hills we were going to get before we got stuck in snow, but we were going to find out!

Six of us went out for the day. 3 quads and 2 side-by-sides.

I couldn’t find my helmet in the garage so I had to wear Jeff’s, a 4XL! My big melon wasn’t big enough so it was pretty floppy in the wind and sometimes I’d turn my head and the helmet didn’t turn with it!

We thought we’d try to get up to the Ridge Road Trail, the one Jeff and I hiked last year. We found the snow pretty quickly! And in between the snow there were some HUGE water puddles, like over my ankles while I’m sitting on the quad! So much fun! Fortunately I wore my knee high muck boots!

This type of snow is dense and crystally. It makes the riding really fun. When you start getting slowed up, you can stand and slowly rock your body weight from one side to the other and that allows your tires to bite and keep climbing!

But eventually even Tim, on the bigger quad, was getting too stuck. He thinks we were still probably a kilometre or so from the top! So we turned around and headed back down.

Where it wasn’t snowy, it was muddy! I was covered!

It was supposed to be +15°C and full sun, but the forecast must have changed because we had warm sun, but also clouds, and cold wind, and snow pellets, and rain!

The best parts of quadding are stopping for snack breaks and exploration! Something about riding makes us all hungry!

After we didn’t make it up to the Ridge, we crossed the Eldorado River (meaning we drove through the actual river) and headed up to the old post office.

There were several trees down, one that the guys had to winch out of the way (the others we were able to drive over), and we actually made it up to the post office through so much snow!

Under that roof is the old post office log cabin, with a partially collapsed roof. It’s pretty neat. There are old mail sacks tacked to the wall, with some old flattened cardboard boxes, surely as an attempt at insulation.

This is the best time of the year for quad exploring – no leaves so cool old relics are spottable through the trees (cabins, vehicles, cans, pails), and the dust wasn’t bad yet on Bonanza Road so I didn’t have to wear my goggles much (I HATE goggles).

I ripped one of the zip ties holding my license plate off in the snow (but was able to make an emergency repair!) and one of my headlights went out (probably when I had it under water haha!).

My new Garmin watch has a ATV activity setting, so I turned it on for the first time, and left it on the entire trip. It tracked our location via satellite, and my heart rate, and our elevation and speed. I hit (close your eyes Mom) 75.4 km/hr as a max (road driving) and my heart rate hit 142 once (probably when I went into that one water hole and was sure I was going to end up tipped over or floating!) What a rush!

Over all, awesome day, great ride. I was able to get home, unpack, hose off my quad, and take Hank for a walk before Jeff came home from teaching. As another seasonal first, we hit the ice cream shop last night for a couple of scoops.

The BBQ we were supposed to join today was cancelled so I’ve been busy replanting a couple of eager tomato plants to keep them happy until it stops freezing at night. Jeff just sent this picture from the garage. He’s got his boat reinflated! Next he’ll work on installing its floor (it’s a tricky job!)

The ferry will be returning to the river this week and the US/Canadian border is rumoured to be open before the long weekend (next weekend). The weekend of the annual gold show here in town! (think a plowing match, but for gold miners, so lots of booths and equipment, and all the miners come into town for social time). We were planning to go for our first camping trip in our new camper but the truck threw a bunch of error codes last week and is speed limited, so it is waiting at the mechanic’s for a free moment for a diagnosis so we don’t know yet what we’ll get up to! Maybe the boat?