Gear
Gear manufacturers have realised that lots of women like the outdoors and they're different shapes from men. Here's what's out there, and where you can buy it.
Sioux Lookout - Town of Adventure
Sitting on the train to Edmonton, catching up on blog entries and articles for the website, I’m looking back at our time in Sioux Lookout and wondering this - is there anything, outdoors or otherwise, that you can’t do in Sioux Lookout?! We went snowshoeing, skiing, snow hiking and collected water out of a frozen lake. We saw moose tracks, some sort of cat tracks, squirrel tracks, beaver tracks and GO! Girls Outdoors tracks. Of course you might expect all that in winter from a little town based on a lake. However, it doesn’t end there! We also learnt how to make fresh pasta, went to yoga classes, tried raw vegan food, saw a movie about same sex marriage and adoption rites in Quebec, went to a multicultural supper and learnt how to make Nuts&Bolts. We ate moose sausage, caribou and rice, elk kabobs, bison mince and lots of blueberry muffins and pies. And perhaps best of all (because it appeals to my sense of humour), we met some ice fisherfolk (3 women and 1 man) who knew my dad who, I should point out, has lived in Australia for the past 35 years. 
We’re all about the new experiences while we travel, and we went and stayed on an island, but we walked there!! There’s something that you struggle to do in Australia. It was on The Island that Dave went cross country skiing for the first time ever and had a blast, and it was while we were skiing that we met the ice fisherfolk who knew my dad, and we saw a lot of the animal tracks I mentioned before.
In a flurry of firsts for Dave, he then he experienced about 20cm of snow in a 24 hour period. While everyone else in Sioux Lookout was looking out the window and bemoaning the fact that summer wasn’t here yet, we were looking out the window and going ‘Woo hooo!! More skiing!!’, which perhaps wasn’t the best way to ingratiate ourselves with the locals. We did go skiing again after the snow, but it turned out to be more like walking - I learnt the true meaning of the snow plough as I went down the hills, my ski tips invisible under the snow and pushing a massive wave of snow in front of my feet. That said, I shouldn’t complain because we carved up some sick powder and can now officially call ourselves powderhounds.
We left Sioux Lookout thrilled at all the activities we’d done (thanks to Jon and Kim) - and with a list of ‘things to buy for the house when we get back, after we’ve got the house’ that includes a pasta maker, lots and lots of cupboards for the kitchen and snowshoes, skis and a snow maker. Snow sports and fresh homemade pasta, coming soon to a Tasmanian Maple Syrup Farm near you.