Amgen held their annual company meeting/getaway at Deerhurst Resort this year.  Of course I tagged along and took advantage of the free room and board.  Thanks Uncle Amgen!  :-)

Deerhurst Resort, in case you didn't know, is the birthplace of Shania Twain.  Okay, well, she's not actually born there, but Deerhurst's Musical Stage Show was the start of her career - she was discovered there and the rest, as they say, is history.

Deerhurst is a big-time resort and is very nice, however I don't think the rooms were all that amazing.  The room was very large, but the bed was... well, as Sara puts it: "It's no Heavenly Bed."  :-)  At $300/night, I'm glad I wasn't footing the bill.  The food was very good, though, especially their buffet.  I couldn't get enough of their roast beef - I ate about 3 portions more than I should have... but it was soooo good.

Sara and I went what I'll loosely describe as "canoeing."  We were paddling... well, actually I was paddling and Sara was admiring the scenery and occasionally dipping her oar into the water for a couple strokes.  I'm sitting there, struggling against the strong headwinds and lake current, grunting and cursing under my breath, and all I hear is "Ooooh, so beautiful!  Do you see that?  Wow, it's so nice out here, ohmigosh, is that a bear?"  Hah.  Musta been an enjoyable canoe trip for her.  When she started to paddle full-time, our paddle strokes were all out of sync and we were zig zagging our way across the lake and generally working extremely hard to go a very small distance.  Needless to say, we got pretty ticked off at each other.  We can look back on it and laugh now, but boy, we were close to killing each other on that little excursion.  :-)

We also got a chance to hike up a waterfall, which included a bit of rock scrambling.  I love rock scrambling - something about hanging onto cold, rough rock with your bare hands and jumping from rock to rock just utterly satisifies the primal neanderthal in me.  Maybe I've missed my calling as a mountain ranger.

After the canoe trip and waterfall climb, we relaxed on a pier beside a serenely peaceful lake.  Perfect opportunity for black'n'white shots...

Take a look at the pictures.