Our summer home in the Hamptons

Ok, not quite but we are in a summer home in the mountains :o) Hannes's project is nearing the first go-live and has to spend all his time close to the mines now until all is running smoothly. The company very kindly agreed to put us all up in a house for the duration that he needs to be here. It was a win win situation. They save on hotel bills and we don't have to be apart. We are in a little town called Fernie which is right up in the mountains. It is a ski town so in winter that is all people come here to do. The house we are staying in has 6 bedrooms (3 on each level) and is rented out in winter to families who come here for ski holidays. We have been lucky enough to rent the whole house for the whole summer. Hannes is working in Sparwood which is 31 kms from here so it isn't far for him to travel at all. I cannot describe to you how beautiful it is here. The contrast between winter and summer is breathtaking. Everything is so green and lush. The animal life is exquisite and completely untouched. There is so much to see and so many little roads to drive on that take you up mountains and into the bush. We are loving the exploring.

The view from our back deck. People do not have back or front fences here for the most part.

Taken from the back sliding door onto the deck


On Sunday we decided to go for a drive (Luckily we took the 4x4). We ended up in a reserve with a gorgeous little hotel in it and loads of camping sites. Then we decided to just take a drive and see where we ended up. Well, I am sure we ended up on top of the world! We climbed up and up and up a mountain. We were so high up that there was still snow lying on the ground in parts and it was quite thick. Considering the warm weather we have been having it really must have been very high up. We didn't have a GPS with us to measure the altitude unfortunately. We will definitely do that route again sometime in the hopes that the snow has melted by then and we will be able to get even higher up.

So close you can almost touch it

This lake is at the hotel in the reserve I mentioned earlier in my post


This river too

Our mountain climb start. That's Hennie in front (yes the poor man is visiting again) and us at the back

That's us going up and up...

And higher still

Hennie getting through the snow behind us after we decided to turn around. It was very deep and slippery

And down we come!

Taken at the start of the 4x4 climb

Right next to the road

On top of the world!

These little squirrels were on the side of the road. So cute!!

As was this little guy. I think he looks like a Dassie but not sure what he is called here.

I don't know if you remember I said we had bought Jared a train table for his birthday and had decided not to give it to him till we got here because it was just too big to move so many times? Well we finally gave it to him the day after we arrived here. He loves it and 2 weeks later I still have to drag him away from it. He plays with it all day.

The photos are a bit dark because I didn't take out the big flash.

And to finish off this long, overdue update, there was a fireworks display in Sparwood last week Friday. Now because it only gets dark here after 10:30pm in summer the display only started at 11pm so Hannes had to go alone. He desperately wanted to take some photos and as you can see he got some gorgeous shots as usual.