Our second day took us from near the Seattle airport to McMinnville Oregon, where we were staying at the McMenamins Hotel Oregon. Along the way, we stoppped for a few hours at the Northwest Trek Nature Park, to check out the wildlife and take some pictures.
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Pretty much every year since we’ve been together, Justine and I have done a road trip down to Washington State and Oregon. This year was no different, except that we managed to arrange the trip around a couple of major events - Pearl Jam playing a live show at home at Safeco Field, and the Whitecaps playing their annual away game in Portland. So we decided to take those two events and add a stop in Hood River for a few days of camping and road riding.
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Each summer, we like to head down to Vanier Park and attend at least one of the Bard at the Beach plays. It’s always a good evening out, and this season they have 3 plays going that I want to see. Our first one was Timon of Athens, which was a play I had not seen previously.
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Another slight departure from Alaska photos - they’re taking a long time to get through! Last weekend Justine and I spent our first night on the new property - camping! We wanted to spend the weekend, so we thought we’d try camping, rather than paying for an AirBnB or other rental.
Read MoreSome shots of the moon and Venus, taken with my new camera.
Read MoreThis post is long overdue and wraps up our 7-day Alaskan cruise. Our last day was spent going through the inside passage between Vancouver Island and the mainland. The weather wasn't great, but we spent most of our waking hours on our balcony, watching the scenery flow by and watching for wildlife.
Read MoreToday was our last port day, as we were headed down to Ketchikan for our last stop before heading back to Vancouver. We didn’t have any formal shore excursions planned, but instead decided to wander and see what we found. En route, we had a chance to see a fair bit of wildlife, and we were “chosen” to be part of a tour of the bridge of the ship. Once in Ketchikan, we did the walking tour and saw lots of very cool totem poles, as well as explored Creek Street and some of the historic areas of the town.
Read MoreOur second port stop was in the capital city of Alaska, Juneau! We ended up really liking Juneau. We had a full day to explore, from first thing in the morning to a n evening departure, and we made the most of our time. We explored the town for a bit; booked a whale watching trip that fully lived up to expectations; explored some more; took the gondola to the top of the local mountain and did some hiking, and even managed to relax and have a beer on a patio. It was a full, fun day!
Read MoreToday was the highlight of the cruise - an up close look at the Hubbard Glacier! It was the furthest point north that we were going, and the captain and pilot did an amazing job of getting us within a mile of the glacier. It was an incredible sight.
Read MoreThis short, image-filled post is a collection of all the cool chucks of floating ice we saw as we got close to the Hubbard Glacier. They are not technically icebergs - not big enough - but still the variations in shape, size and colour were quite fascinating.
Read MoreI’m going to try something a little bit different here. Given that the Hubbard Glacier was the visual highlight of our trip, I’ll devote a few posts to it as I work through the photos. It’s going to take a while, with travel and everything that’s going on. We’ll be back to the main narrative shortly…
Read MoreDay 2 was spent completely at sea, as we headed north past Haida Gwaii and up towards Alaskan waters. It was a good day for us to explore the ship, as we were a long way from land most of the time. We did have some nice mountain views from time-to-time, but generally, it was a relaxing time. Day 3 brought us to our first port of call at Icy Strait Point, where we had booked a shore excursion to go looking for Alaskan Brown bears (grizzlies). As you can see, we had success…
Read MoreJustine and I were on vacation last week - a real vacation where we were able to disconnect and relax. We were booked on the Celebrity Infinity for a week’s cruise up to Alaska. We had four stops - Icy Strait Point, the Hubbard Glacier, Juneau and Ketchikan. It’s going to take me a while to get through the photos and posts, so you’ll have to bear (literally on one day) with me. This first one is going to cover my thoughts on the cruise in general, a bit of an over view of the ship, and some photos from the departure from Vancouver.
Read MoreMy last post ended up being one of the most popular ones I’ve done. Seems the news spread fast! So last weekend, now that our ownership was confirmed, we head over to Galiano to spend the full weekend and see what we got ourselves into…
Read MoreThe city has been working on a new bike path that starts fairly close to us. One of the things they did was plant a wildflower garden along a big stretch of the trail. We had noticed it a few days earlier while out for a ride, so we decided to wander back and have a look…
Read MoreA catch up post from my last trip to Europe. I ended up with part of a weekend (Friday night/Saturday) in Stockholm after our meetings, then was back to Toulouse for a week in the office. This post will be all photos, as I have a huge number of new photos to go through and expect it’s going to take me a long time to get caught up…
Read MoreJustine and I have some exciting news to share - we bought ourselves a piece of property on Galiano Island!
Read MoreA first post from my two-week trip to Europe. I had a short stop in Paris, before heading to Stockholm and then on to Toulouse. This short post covers the start of the trip in Paris.
Read MoreA very short post from our weekend in Whistler.
Read MoreIt’s been a bit of a busy stretch and I’m trying to work through a backlog of old posts and photos. Justine and I have been good about getting out for walks after dinner, and at the end of May we had a great sunset night. Not much of a post, but lots of photos.
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