Weekend Trip to Canada

During Spring Break, Dad took Joseph and Henry to Canada for a long weekend (Mary Jo stayed home with Jack who had baseball practices).

We left on Saturday and drove up to Whistler, a skiing mecca about four hours from our house. There's a very nice village there with restaurants and the lifts taking people up the mountain. The Olympics had been held here in 2010 and much of the town is newly constructed for that.

Henry in Whistler Village

The three of us skied on Sunday, with Joseph getting in lots of runs. It was a little foggy but amazing skiing, with really long runs, no real crowds, and good quality snow.

On Monday we drove south from Whistler and stopped in Squamish for an amazing hike. The Squamish Chief is a large rock overlooking the town, valley, and sound - it was a strenuous two mile hike up (about an hour), including some ladders and chains at the top to get over some really large rocks. The view from the top was amazing - it was a clear day and we could see for miles.

Views from the top of Squamish Chief

From there we drove down to Horseshoe Bay, where we took an hour-long ferry to Vancouver Island. There we took another hike along an old wooden railroad trestle that has recently been restored. We stayed that night in Victoria, the largest city on the island.

On Tuesday we headed back home, taking another ferry - this one a three hour ferry that winds its way through the beautiful San Juan Islands. It's just starting to be whale season there, but we didn't get to see any from the boat. We landed in Anacortes, Washington and then drove home from there.

Joseph's High School Track Season

Joseph ran for his high school track team this spring, his first varsity sport he has played in high school. Joseph runs long-distance track, usually competing in the one-mile race. It involves practice nearly every day of the week, many times running 4-6 miles at a time. He's competed in several meets (every Thursday through April and May) and some invitational meets on Saturday. His best time so far is 5 minutes, 5 seconds, which is almost a minute faster than where he was at the start of the season.

Joseph (in second place)

Jack and Henry's Science Fairs

This spring both Jack and Henry did science projects for their school science fairs.

Jack's project was an analysis of web browser speeds. Jack tested four different websites on five different browsers. He timed how long it took for each website (e.g., amazon.com, seashepherd.org) to fully load using Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Maxthon.

He found that Internet Explorer was the fastest loading browser of any of the ones he tested.

Henry's project was on whether soaking seeds before planting them would cause the seeds to grow into plants faster. He tested five different types of seeds - pepper, tomato, cucumber, and green bean. He took some of each type of seed and soaked them for 24 hours, some others he soaked for 2 hours, and some others he didn't soak at all. He found that the seeds that were soaked grew faster and taller than seeds that hadn't been soaked.