July FNSI and Summer Travelling

I managed to squeak in on sign-ups for Friday Night Sew In for July.  And I actually managed to sew a little bit too!  I have a third block done for En Provence.  Not the side panels, just the block.

  

The reason I just made it to FNSI signups is because we were away on a trip.  We went to Atlin, British Columbia.  While we were there we attended a music festival, where we listened to lots of great Canadian performers.  My favourites were a "girl group" called Sweet Alibi and our own local Declan O'Donovan.

Then we went off on a boat tour of Atlin Lake.  We examined turn of the century cabin remains with beautiful gold and silver enhanced wallpaper...

Visited the Llewellyn glacier...

Saw lots of goats and sheep, but only three bears...

And even got to do a bit of sailing...

But we also spent a lot of time watching it rain... it rained for seven out of ten days that we were out.

But it is sunny today and we are going out again overnight.  I have to go back to work on Monday, so I have to enjoy as much of my vacation as possible.  

I hope you had a great Friday Night Sew In and have fun checking out what everyone else did.

Janet 

A day filled with boats

Today was definitely a boat day and I didn`t  even get to go in one!  In Whitehorse there is a yearly boating race - the Yukon River Quest - 444 miles on the Yukon River.  I haven`t ever done the race and probably never will.

But my hubby did the precursor to this race.  It was called Dyea to Dawson, and involved following the route of the Klondike gold rush from Skagway, Alaska to Dawson City, Yukon.  The first part involved climbing over the mountains, the second part boating through the lake system, past Carcross to the Yukon River then on to Dawson.  They only ran the Dyea to Dawson race for two years.  I think logistics were pretty intense, crossing the border between the U.S. and Canada and getting boats to the place where the water part of the trip started - Bennett Station.  But the River Quest has been going on since 1999.

The start of the race was today and I went down to watch it on my lunch hour.  I know a couple of people who are racing - my God son, Wesley, and an old neighbour, Noreen.  They are both in voyageur canoes.  But with 95 teams in a mass start I didn`t see either of them but I did see Wes`canoe go by.  Here are a couple of photos.

Running to get the boats in the water when the gun goes off.

And they are off!

There were people lining both sides of the river watching the boats take off.  Lots of fun.  There is a tracker on the website too, so I can keep track of how my friends are doing. :)

After this excitement I wandered over to an exhibition that is happening a little further down the riverbank.  There, people are building boats.

This will be a caribou skin kayak.

Sewing the skins together.

This is a river boat.  It will be covered with moose skin.

And a birch bark canoe.

This one will be a dugout canoe.

I have been going by this exhibit every few days watching the progress.  Very fascinating!

That`s all for today.  The only sewing happening was on that caribou skin.  :)

Janet