Tofino. ahhhhhh.

well what can i say about tofino....if you have not been you simply must. it's without question the most amazing place in cananda i've been to. it has everything one wants.....mountains, rainforests, ocean and very little snow. the drive to tofino is so beautiful. winding roads climbing up mountains, driving along side beautiful lakes and rivers. upon arrival we went down to the marina where we immediately saw the local sea lion who likes to hang out there. we took this as a good sign. after finding out host geoff johnson we loaded in to set up. there were windows all behind us and during sound check i turned around just in time to see a bald eagle swoop down and grab a fishy right outta the water. unreal.

these are only some of the pics that we took. i wanted to put a few up so you can see what i'm talking about even though you wont really get it till you go see for your self......this pic right above is of the amazing long beach. true to its name it really stretches out!

the  pic here is from the top of radar hill and the pic  below of ruby is literally at the end of the line. this is the END of the trans canada highway! the pic below ruby is the marina/harbour. the sunset pic below i took right outside of our hotel room door! we had just enjoyed a feast of crab!!!!

the next pic i believe is another beach right in front of sarah mclauchlans house. this is where we hung out and swam. below that is meares island. this place is full of bonafide rainforest! we strolled around in it for a while and then picnicked on the beach!

i dont know if you can see the sign on the tree in the pic beside this but i thought it was hilarious....it said...beware of flat tires if blocking the driveway......just another local educating the tourists!

well during our time here i took a lot of video and i wanted to put some up for you to enjoy so here is a few......the first one is of a GIANT tree in the rainforest on meares island. you could see right through the tree and if you were brave enough you could go right through it. we tried to convince shawn but he wouldn't do it......the second video is a tree that had a few protrusions on it...it appeared to be some sort of anatomically corrected -ness on the tree......when you are dealing with grown men who are approximately 14 in mentality this is what you get...........

well the first one here is a little sign that we found amusing....again going with the 14 year old mentality.....the second is our big key lime pie find. shawn and i asked every single spot we ate at across canada if they served key lime pie....not a single one. we were duped once in kelowna (big surprise) when we bought what said key lime pie and ended up eating key lime cheesecakes...amateurs....any way we found a spot in tofino with homemade key lime pie. it was freaking awesome!!!!

well it wouldnt be right to talk go on about tofino without putting up some pacific ocean vids. we just had to go swimming....wll in fairness shawn had to go swimming and since none of us can be out done by the other we one by one went into the pacific. it was cold. no, not as cold as the atlantic but freaking cold just the same. in the first video shawn leads the pack and i resist through out...right after this though i succumb and decide i wont be outdone by the bastards and i put the camera down and join in the cold fun. everyone we asked said really? swam? did you wear a wetsuit? (everyone there wears a wetsuit) and we replied...NO! we're form the east coast. we aint a bunch o' sissies! here are the pacific vids.....

well there you have it. some memories from tofino. it's safe to say that as long as we tour to the island we will ALWAYS go to tofino now. its soul soothing fun. big thanks to sean davis in medicine hat for hooking us up with geoff johnson and many many thanks to geoff johnson and all the folks at the weigh west resort. you all showed us an unbelievable time and we can't thank you enough. you truly changed our lives. most of all thanks to rock n roll for taking us such amazing places.

Vancouver Island

well hello there

been a while eh? sorry bout that. we haven't really had real internet that would allow us to upload anything for quite some time.....but now we are in edmonton for the week and i should be able to get caught up......lets see, when i blogged last we were in kelowna. that means our next trip within the trip was to vancouver island. last tour this was easily my favorite spot. we had some fun shows and met great people AND the island is freakin beautiful! we went to the cathedral grove (big ass trees) and just had a great time. this trip was par for the course. we started in parksville which is a small beach resort sorta town. we played at the rod & gun pub. nice folks, modest crowd. decent size room with an adequate PA system. they treated us real nice. the next day we had off so we decided to keep a hotel room and hang out. turns out that night at the rod n gun was stripper night!!! and they were staying at the same hotel...although this did not influence our decision to stay.....we went to the beaches and hung out in the sun. great day for sure. for supper we decided to grab some grocery and cook at the hotel kitchenette. we thought, hey, lets grab some fresh shrimp! we went down to the docks and got some spotted prawns. if you have nt eaten spotted prawns before you should find some....these little babies were awesome! they tasted like little lobsters! guilty of being delicious. 

Friday we headed into nanimo for our weekend stint at the queens. on the way we stopped at the tourism centre which is in the bedan house. this place is rumoured to be haunted so it sounded like fun. upon arrival we were told that the tours really arent happening anymore and the fella there didnt seem to keen to do anything for us.....well after a little conversation the next thing we knew he was taking us all over the house! i mean every office, nook and cranny, including the room where the previous owner and namesake died!!!! although we didnt see any ghosts it was extremely creepy. definetly something going on in there! here's a little video ofus getting psyched up for  our in house tour:

 

after our adventures in haunted housing we were off in search of a nanaimo bar to sample. after all you cant be in nanaimo and not have a nanaimo bar can you? check it....

once we got settled into our classy hotel we hit the queens to load in and set up. we had a different sound dude than last time but it was equally good sound. last time we played here was a sunday night and it was sorta quiet. this time it was a friday and saturday. they gave us our set times and we were surprised to see that we only played 40 minute sets. the tunes between our sets was hardcore dance music and we quickly realized that on the weekends the queens is a kiddie dance bar....ouch! turns out that we were filler between sets of dj music. the first set was kinda awkward but the second was better and the third rocked pretty well all things considered.  Saturday we decided to go get our tarrot cards read by a local gal. first time i have had that done in quite a while and it was fun for sure! after hanging most of the day and enjoying the humour of watching the working girl downstairs we went back to the club. we were surprised this time that our sets had been cut back even more and that our second break was an hour! while on that break the owner came down to notify us that the kids were packed in and having to good of a time for us to go back on. not surprised by this but a little stung we went back to the hotel to drink our sorrows away. the owner did say that he would have no problem having us back and we agreed that it would be better mid week! 

Sunday we packed it up and headed for tofino. we had such a blast in tofino that i'm gonna give it its own separate blog so stay tuned for that....

tuesaday we sadly left tofino and headed for our old pal longevity john's showroom in duncan. this is a funny little hippy town. the showroom is a great little theatre filled with millions of trinkets to look at. lots of fun. we ended up crashing right at the venue to avoid spending the $$$ on a hotel. big thanks to long john for that! long john also owns a handful of tiny little dogs and at the end of each night has "the running of the dogs". its quite funny really. i happened to grab a little video for you enjoyment!!!

Wednesday AM we got up and made a run for the ferry to vancouver. we were stoked to play the yale. probably the most reputable blues club in all of canada where just about every great blues icon has performed at one time or another. it was nice to catch up with some old pals and even our label manager, brian thompson came out to get some on him! 

we had a fun gig but due to the fact that we had to make penticton it was an early night for us. thursday AM we hit the road and after a wrong turn out too made the TCH for penticton. another great day for driving we made it to the dream cafe just in time for load in and sound check. the dream cafe is one of those special places where the food, people service and crowd are all this sort you would wish for. we did this one low key and i played mostly acoustic. the folks dug it and we ended up rocking the joint in the end. we met some wonderful people and started what i hope to be a real long term relationship with the dream cafe. cant wait to get back here. its just awesome.

Friday we had another long haul to jasper. we did two nights at the downstream and its always nice to be surrounded by mountains. gigs like that really make you thankful for being able to do what we do. we got to hang with some old friends, had a great bbq and partied way to late/early on saturday. sunday after some napping we got into ole ruby and made the trek for edmonton. somehow after supper i went to bed feeling funny....i woke up with a case of food poisoning. not sure how this happened as we all at the same stuff but it did. needless to say the gig on monday night was pretty rough for me. we made it through though and i look forward to rocking up blues on whyte for the rest of the week!

well there. that is a lot to get through. i'm gonna sign off now and in a day or so i'll put up our amazing time in tofino, the most beautiful spot in canada!

cheers,

MB