West Coast Wonderlust : Bio of Kait

Kait

Thats ME....

The view of Shuswap Lake From Bastion Mountain

Now that you all know some stuff about Aaron,
I suppose it's my turn to spill.

I was originally born in lower mainland of British Columbia, but grew up in the interior near in the Shuswap Region.

The View of White Lake from my Family Home

My childhood was consumed by the outdoors. I grew up on 7 acres of land, and my days were filled with stacking firewood, feeding and maintaining our horses' pens, building tree forts and massive ponds that were filled with Koi, bushwhacking, long drives on rural logging roads, swimming in the warm, white clay lake, and fishing on the Shuswap with my parents and my older sister Lindsey. In grade 2 my family and I drove across canada and back it took us about a month to do the entire trip. This is one of my fondest memories as a child. I must say, my childhood feels like a wonderful dream and I miss those days of freedom and lack of adult responsibility. My parents always told me it's all down hill from 16 and I now understand what they mean ;-).

Our Fishing Boat out on the Shuswap

My Parents and Kuli

My sister and I in the Garden

During my High school years, I was a very busy active girl playing and competing on the Varsity Basketball,Volleyball, X country running, and track and field team. I had gone to provincial championships for all teams except for volleyball. Needless to say I had no life expect for sleep and sweat. I had also begun my Lifeguard and Swim Instructor training, which led to my at the local Recreation centre.

BC Provincial Championships Track and Feild

I lived in the Shuswap area until the age of 20 where I moved to Kamloops to attend Thompson Rivers University to persue an education in Physical Education.

TRU X Country Team Photo

In my second year at TRU my life continued to be busy. I joined the university's Cross Country team, and also worked as a Resident Advisor at the university's Rez on top of full-time classes. Being a Resident Advisor was like being a paramedic, a therapist/councillor, and a cop for the 500 plus students living in the 12-story building all at the same time. I must say I learned a lot about people during that semester, and many hard lessons were learned from such an intense experience. Later during the Fall semester, I competed in Canada's triple AAA X-Country Running Nationals representing TRU and the Province of British Columbia. This was an incredibly exciting, and at the same time scary experience. During the Fall semester I had also been in the process of applying to Capilano University's Early Childhood Education Program in North Vancouver. I left TRU needing a change and a break, so I moved back to my hometown to work at Supported Child Development to work as a Program Assistant for children with specials needs.

Finish Line at Nationals

That May, after being accepted to CapU, I moved down to
the lower main land to begin a summer position. Once my busy summer ended I started school and began working for the local recreation centres where I met the lovely, charming Aaron and my life changed completely.

Photos by Timothy Nguyen

This brings us to the present. I have now graduated from Capilano University with a Diploma is Early Childhood Education with a focus in Special Education.

We are now prepping and training for the West Coast Trail. Aaron and I have start this blog as a way of sharing the beauty that is the West Coast with all of you. We hope that you as readers can start to find places close to where you live, places where you can loose yourself in the outdoors. I love this province and am passionately drawn to the outdoors and love being physically active, hiking allows me to combine the two.

Photo by Kath Charlton

Aaron and I spent our first date hiking quarry rock together and we have continued to grow closer. The West Coast Trail is going to be a huge challenge for us, both finically and physically, but we could not be more excited to start preparing for such an extraordinary adventure.