BOAT SOLD! & really, really busy weekend coming up!

It seems every time I turn around these next 10 or so days are getting busier and busier! Tuesday night - finally - we sold the boat, and yesterday the buyer came and paid for it and took it home. I'm feeling ok with the price we got, after having it for almost 3 years we got plenty of use out of it. Grant is still upset he did not leave the kicker off - but Amanda has reminded him that most boats/trailers we see for sale have a motor also. I think both Grant and Amanda want to replace it with something smaller fairly soon, but I'm hoping to wait a bit..

It is cloudy today - hope the weather is not too bad for our GUIDE CAMP here this weekend. Today Amanda and I are doing lots of preparations for it - cleaning, tidying etc, and will continue tomorrow. She has a widup BBQ for her Fish Job this evening, then tomorrow afternoon she needs to follow Grant down to Duncan where we are dropping the motorhome off for a rental. Grant is off tomorrow, but will be very busy - he can relax Saturday and Sunday in between taking Richard to games.

After no-one enquiring, it looks like we may have some HelpExchange helpers during July and August. I'm really hoping I can manage to schedule them so it is not a flood of people sometimes with no one for weeks other times. And that I can keep the chores 'coming'. It is not looking terribly good for Homestay Students for September - but still keeping my fingers crossed.

There have not been any more interesting/suitable jobs for me to apply to in the last couple of weeks - I'm hoping that I get a call on the Habitat for Humanity job, which seems to be a perfect fit for me.

Must run - and begin attacking the TO DO LIST.

HIKE!

This afternoon Amanda, Richard and I drove to Westwood Lake, parked, and after walking on the trail to the (north?) end of the lake, started picking trails [left or right....straight or left?]. We were using a map Amanda found online to the 'Westwood hills'..explored lots of trails, found something that was supposed to be an old Scout Hut, and got to several points on trails where my brain said 'NO' (my fear of heights). We backtracked a bit, and finally ended back on the Westwood Lake Trail. By all the signposts, it seems the Lake Trail itself is app 6 or 7 km, and then we did at least 3 km up and down the other trails, so I'm guessing that we did about 10 km. The morning started out cloudy, but by the time we got to the lake it was sunny, and the beach was full. Unfortunately Amanda forgot a hat, so the sun was bothering her when we were out in the open areas. She was a bit disappointed we didn't get to the points of interest mentioned in the onine article, but it was still a good, enjoyable, attractive hike. And, hey, it got Richard out of the house! When we were back on the Lake trail Heather took a couple of pictures of a wild turkey:

PICTURE OF WILD TURKEY TO GO IN POSTING~

we think it was a male protecting the female who was probably on the nest. After the hike we headed into town and stopped at the Dairy Queen at Country Club Mall: I had a Sundae [with coffee & hot caramel sauce & nuts...yummy!], Richard had a Brownie Dough Blizzard, and Amanda had a Cheesecake Blizzard.

When we were out hiking, Grant took Rod out in the boat in the Newcastle Island area: they both said it was quite windy and too choppy to really do much fishing. When we got home Grant was crashed on the couch and Rod was watching cartoons.