Fore!

Notice the new driveway cutting across the field behind Carol

Saturday was Alex's birthday and being a young, single man, he likes to sleep in on the weekend. We were going to take him golfing and then out for dinner later in the day, so we took a trip up to the property early in the morning so we would be back to meet him at noon. The weather has been quite good, if a bit cool for this time of the year, but we were hoping that the road had dried up even better than last week. All our good thoughts were rewarded as we easily drove all the way up to the house site. It was impressive to see the ground again, with virtually all of the snow melted off our construction site. Joey was having fun exploring all around without getting all muddy - yay! We decided to move the house a few feet further down the hill and away from the road - only about 30 feet from where we had originally planned to build it. We don't want the back of the house pushed right up against the trees behind the house and wanted to leave our options open for the position of the driveway and future outbuildings (e.g. garage, barn, etc.). Before leaving, we drove the truck up and down the driveway a couple of times, trying to flatten any ruts that were developing and compact the surface a bit. I can see that we need to do a lot more of that before we can get the concrete trucks up here.

The mounds of dirt left over from the septic test holes

The day was overcast but quite pleasant. The forecast was for 16*C and sunny in the afternoon. It would be nice for an early season round of golf. We picked up Alex and went out to Pineridge Golf Course, in Barnhartvale. Pineridge is an "executive length" course meaning that there are no par 5's and limited par 4's (3, in fact). Being that I hadn't swung a club in anger in over 7 years, I thought it would be a good course to get started on again.

Joey about to pounce on some unsuspecting (imaginary?) creature

It turned out to be perfect and we played most of the round in our t-shirts - beautiful, warm and sunny. The views from the upper portions of the course was fantastic. To the north was the South Thompson River with the Hoo Doos rising up behind. To the south, we looked straight up the bluffs - too steep to walk in most spots, and east and west was the beautiful river valley, lush and starting to green up nicely.
We had a wonderful game - what a great way to get some exercise and enjoy the early season warm day. We loaded up the clubs and retired to Lynx's Grill in Sahali for a great meal. Later in the evening, sadly, my beloved Calgary Flames lost to the league-leading Vancouver Canucks...again. It was the final game of the regular season and my Flames had been eliminated from the playoffs earlier in the week so no big deal. They'll soon be joining us on the fairways!
Just wait 'til next year!