Left to my own devices every day. And totally loving it.

Summer vacation is great! Seriously. I'm loving it like I have never loved it before. There are many reasons for this.

Reason one: I have a perma-friend who is LEGALLY attached to me and promised last July to be my partner. So that means that Arron has to do things with me whenever I need a partner. Well, not all the time, he has no interest in manicures and pedicures, but he is very good to travel with and help me with my crafts when I need power tools or big muscles.
Reason two: I get paid through the summer for the FIRST TIME EVER. Seriously. Being a teacher rocks. I love it. And I extra love that the school I am at now does a 12 month pay scale instead of a 10 month pay scale.
Reason three: As much as we want kids, we don't have any yet. Which means MAJOR freedom for both of us (especially me since I am not working full time). I can take off and work in Barkerville for a few weeks this summer, go visit my family in Kamloops for a few days, volunteer at camp etc.

Because Arron still works full time, I am left to my own devices every day.
Bwahahahaahahahahahaha.
 He has been fantastic at coming home and calmly taking in what I have kept myself busy with. I painted and redecorated our bathroom one day. I painted and redecorated our bedroom another day. I moved all the furniture in the house and steam cleaned the carpets. I sold my car. I turned an old antique door into a headboard. I made a set of really cool stools for my classroom out of old spools he brought home one day. Tomorrow I'm cooking 16 freezer meals. He's really great at humouring me when I start a crazy project and has learned that my crazy craft ideas almost always turn out great. As long as I feed him and make sure he has clean underwear he is happy. (The week of the headboard craft I did forget to do laundry and as we were both going our separate ways for the weekend, he to Bella Coola and me off to volunteer at camp, he was dismayed to find that he only had one pair of gross tighty-whitey panties that I put in his drawer as a joke. He was sad. I felt bad, but also laughed really hard when he found the underwear.)

Some days I plan activities to do such as visiting stores downtown that I haven't been to, or trying out a new ethnic food at the farmers market (does Bannock count as ethnic food because it's not my ethnicity?) One day I decided that I would bike the entire River Valley Trail in Williams Lake.  This is a 12 km trail that goes from the Lake of Williams Lake (called Williams Lake), to the Fraser River.

I've explored a bit of the River Valley Trail on a few walks with visitors, but the idea of biking the 12 km intrigued me, especially since I bought a bike this spring at a garage sale. I figured 12 km, 24km round trip would not be  a problem. I used to bike 16 km a day when I lived in Wells/Barkerville full time, and that was an 8km uphill bike ride to work (and a lovely 8km coast back home at the end of the day.) In retrospect, I should have remembered a few things before embarking on my journey.

1. I *USED* to bike 16km a day. That was 3 summers ago. I haven't biked since then. At all. Like not even at the gym on a fake bike.

2. It's stinking hot in July in Williams Lake. Although mornings are cooler, starting at 30 degrees instead of its normal 35 degrees, it's still hot.

3. Water that flows FROM Williams Lake going TO the Fraser River, will be flowing downhill.

4. "Valley" That means that the very nice, relaxing, effortless, bike ride down into the valley, will be a very frustrating, sweaty, hot, angry ride back up to the main land.

5. Thinking you know where the trail back up to your car is, is not the same as actually knowing where that trail is.

6. Not knowing where that trail is will result in carrying your bike up a bluff, over rail road track and through a hole in a chain link fence only to realize you over shot your car by a good 2 km.

7. There is no cell service in a deep valley, so even though I was going to call Cariboo Search and Rescue to come get me, I couldn't.

Anyways. I did it. Going there was cool, coming back was miserable.
Would I do it again? Maybe. There is place you can drive down to at the 5km mark, so I could maybe be tempted to do a 10km round trip, but probably not the full 24km ever again.

For the rest of the summer I'll stick with my arts and crafts and the houseboating adventure we have planned for next week.

At this point, when I got to the river I was thinking, "Wow, that was an exceptionally nice bike ride. It is going to TOTALLY suck going back"

Made it to the river. See how calm and cool I look? 

It's a really nice trail. Very well maintained, signs, markers, maps, information. Its a great trail. 

This is to show the difference between the river valley and the main land that I would eventually have to get back up to. 

This was at my most miserable moment. Or so I thought when I took the photo.