Cars and Waterfalls!

 
Hello and welcome to another blog with the traveling Findlaters. 
It's been awhile since our last blog as we have not had access to a vehicle and have not been able to get around and explore places. However that has all changed now and so we bring you our first blog from the the surrounds of Salmon Arm with the service of our new car (see below). 

It is a brand new (on a 2 year lease..) 2015 Ford Focus titanium 5 door hatchback with a black trim kit! Super sexy.

So enough about the car, this week has been hectic for me as I am in a change-over of jobs, however one afternoon we managed to sneak out to go see the close-by Margaret Falls. The falls are located on the northern shore of the lake from Salmon Arm.

 Route: Red dotted line.

The following are some photos we took along the way:

It's amazing because it is spring now, but as you can see in the background there is still snow on the mountains and it still snows up there sometimes (like last week). In the valley where we are it is quite warm at about 13-16 degrees during the day.

The following photos are some photos from the short walk we had to make in order to reach Margaret Falls.   

These trees are so tall and the whole environment makes you half expect to see a stegosaurus walk by any minute. Its the stuff you see in dinosaur movies!

The above photo was a fluke by Kyran but ended up looking somewhat artistic.

I was so excited with the size of the rock formations and the movement which can be observed in the layers.

When you stand out on the bridge, the rushing water is so fast and so cold that it's like standing in front of a giant frosty fan - there is a real gale blowing there! The rushing water is mostly from the snow melt further upstream. We hear that in summer it's less crazy, and you can climb up and go into the cave which is about halfway up the waterfall.

We had a healthy snack picnic at the car after the walk to see the falls, and then back home. On the way we stopped off at Walmart! Everything is so cheap!

 That's it from us this week! Hopefully we can get out and do more exploring next weekend, and have more to show you all back home.

Peace out - Mercedes and Kyran

Scuba Diving in frozen water

Hello out there and welcome to another update/ blog in the life of the traveling Findlaters.

It seem that these blogs are becoming a fortnightly things as it is still cold here and there isn't much opportunity to get out and about. 

However this fortnight we bring you an episode of "no brain no pain" as we decided to join a group that my work got together and go out diving in the local lake.

To start with I would like to remind you all that the ice has only just melted off the lake and as you can see in the photo above the mountains still have some snow on them.
I think that in the end there was some contention as to the temperature of the water with some reading it as 2 degrees and others reading it as 3. In any case the water was not very warm and the rest of the divers were prepared and had dry suits. 

Dry Suits as the name suggest means that you stay dry despite being underwater, this means that they also wear warm 'underwear' under the suit and can inflate it a bit with air to insure a little more comfort on such chilly waters.

Which leads me to the next photo - this is a warm tent that was brought to cater to those who needed it after a near-freezing dive!. In mine and Kyran's case it was inevitable as we went in wet suits.

Wet suits as the name suggest means that you get wet! from one end to the other you are plunged into the water with no mercy or the comfort of thermal 'underwear' you simply wear a two piece 7mm neoprene  wetsuit that overlaps at the core of your body and get wet!
You do wear gloves and boots etc. but once the cold water has frozen your extremities there is little you can do to warm them again. 

Ok enough talking lets see some photos!

Everyone gearing up on the beach getting ready to get in the water. 

As you can see they are all in their dry suits all warm and cozy!

This was a very photogenic father and son team that came on the trip with us

The Boat and the Boss!

Kyran and I retreating after our failed attempt at going under water! 

By the time that we arrived at the site where the boat was my ankles were seizing up and my fingers had lost all feeling. A last ditch effort was made to descend to see the thing we came to see and within 1-2 meters underwater the brain freeze began and it was all over!  Abort Abort!

So in the end we did not see what we went to see but we did prove one or both of two sayings;
1. No brain no pain - it did hurt so for all you that were wondering there is a brain, and 
2. I'm an Australian born and bread long in the legs and thick in the head! but really I think we did better then what they had expected us to do.

Getting out of the water, you know the feeling when your hands are really cold and you knock them some how and it hurts so much more than it should! Well that's the feeling that I experienced in my feet trying to walk out the water, they were so cold it hurt to walk! 

This is the warming tent, and I was so glad that we had it. All dressed but still frozen to the bone!

This photo is of two of the others that were on the trip. Besides looking like troopers i'd like to mention that their dive equipment on their backs and coming over their shoulders to the front, are called rebreathers.

Here's an explanation copied straight from Wikipedia:

A rebreather is a breathing apparatus that absorbs the carbon dioxide of a user's exhaled breath to permit the rebreathing (recycling) of the substantially unused oxygen content of each breath. Oxygen is added to replenish the amount metabolised by the user. This differs from an open-circuit breathing apparatus, where the exhaled gas is discharged directly into the environment.

So the difference is that a normal diving cylinder does not last as long as a rebreather, which could go for 2.5 hours compared with a normal cylinder only giving 35-40 minutes. Also when diving as you exhale the air usually goes to the surface, however with rebreathers they do not lose any air into the surrounding water. - meaning from the surface you can see where a normal diver is from their bubbles, but a rebreather diver on the other hand, you have no idea where they are! 

AMAZING!!


OK more photos!
 

This is a dive flag! boats are not suppose to go within 100 meters of it. It is on the boating exam that people have to do before being able to legally drive a boat. 
There are a lot of dumb boat people out there! 
I was told a story of one boat crew that came over and took the flag out the water because they were wondering what it was while there were divers right underneath them! So if you see one of these THERE ARE DIVERS IN THE WATER!

 The following are some random photos of the beach set up.

 And then some random photos of things in Macro

The life-giving fire!!

 

 And then some photos of when we were getting ready to go out, at the boat launch dock.

This last photo is of where all the house boats are moored, during the summer this lake is a huge house boating destination and during the winter this is where the boats live.

Thanks for reading! Have a good one!

- Merc and Kyran