We’ve had a busy stretch - Justine was “away (from home)” for 6 weeks straight, and this trip made it 2/3 weekends on the island. This one was a work weekend coupled with some relaxing, celebrating Justine’s birthday. As it was a holiday for Remembrance Day, we had a nice long weekend to enjoy.
We took the ferry over on Saturday morning at the usual time, and after a stop at the bakery to grab lunch, headed up to the property. Our neighbors Dana and Bradley were up, and we got caught up a bit. We were both planning on doing work around our properties, but they kindly invited us for lunch later that day. The plan was to try and clean up by burning off some of the piles of broom, thistles and construction debris. So we got a fire going, and started that process while working on all kinds of other little projects that needed doing.
We got a fire going and started feeding in all the debris around the property.
As we were working away, we found this Pacific tree frog
They make a lot of noise for being so tiny.
Saturday was super socked in with clouds - nothing to be seen!
Around lunch time, we headed over to Dana’s and they made us an excellent butter chicken for lunch. Quite yummy! After lunch, we went on a bit of a wander, exploring their property and looking for edible mushrooms. We didn’t really have much luck - a few, but nothing that I’d consider actually eating. A few weeks earlier they had found some good ones, but we were not as lucky.
Our mushroom foraging wander.
Around 3:00 we had to pack up and head back to the South end of the island to check into our cottage at Driftwood resort, and get ready for dinner. As we did last year, I was taking Jus to dinner at Pilgimme Restaurant, the best and most interesting restaurant on the island. Pilgimme currently ranks #76 of the best restaurants in Canada. Not bad for our little island. We had a little bit of time, so before getting ready to go, we walked down to Maryanne POint to see what we could see. It ended up being somewhat quiet (no whales for example), but there were a few things.
The only reservation we could get was super-early - 5:00! So we headed over, and not surprisingly we had the place to ourselves for the first little while. Dinner was a seven-course tasting menu, and as always, they came up with some interesting dishes for us to try.
The menu from the evening.
Justine’s fancy collage of all the courses in our tasting menu.
The birthday girl having desert.
Dinner took over two hours, and was excellent. The best compliment I can offer is that if you put a menu in front of me, I would be unlikely to pick any of these dishes. Yet when you don’t have a choice, all of them were really good and very unique.
We headed back to the cabin and made a fire in the woodstove. We spent the rest of the night playing cards, enjoying the fire and have a drink or two before heading to bed.
Saturday morning we started a bit slowly, but eventually made our way out. We walked back up to Maryanne Point and checked out the Pass, but it was very quiet. We then made our way over to Montague Harbour, and went for a walk along the shoreline of the park. There’s always lots of interesting birds to see there in the winter, and this was no exception.
Our walk around the park.
A view from the park beach
After our little walk, it was back up to the property to continue our clean up. we spent quite a few hours building up a fire and burning through some of the excess material we’ve been piling up over the past year. It was very satisfying to watch the broom go up in flames, and start to get a bit ahead of something.
We had a bit of a nicer day, and of course there were plenty of breaks to watch for whales.
More burning - but lots more to go.
One of the cool things about Galiano is all the different types of mushrooms. Especially this time of year! We’re finding them everywhere.
We put in a full day’s work, and for the first time were up at the property (in the fall/winter) after the sun went down. It wa sa full moon night, and we were treated to a very nice view, as it had cleared up. We also kept our streak alive with some fleeting glances at some humpback whales - I think this is six straight trips seeing whales. This time was a bit special, as we were able to hear the whales for the first time! Both of our neighbours have mentioned that they hear them at night, and this was the first time for us. It’s very cool!
Our dinner reservation on Sunday was a little bit later, which gave us more time to hang out at the property until it got dark. It was a really nice start to the evening. We headed back to the cottage around 6ish, got cleaned up and headed over to the Galiano Inn for their Sunday Prime Rib dinner. It was delicious, and we have a nice evening before heading “home”. We got the fire going again and had a nice relaxing evening.
Sunday was another slow start for us. As it was Remembrance Day, we headed over to the Lion’s Hall at about 10:30, after getting packed up and checking out of the cottage. We went to the ceremony last year, and they do a nice job of it. It’s not too long, and hits all the right notes.
A view out from “our beach”
On the way up to the property, we made a stop at the beach that we can access from the bottom of our property. There’s always a chance to see interesting things, and we were once again treated to some new sights.
We hung out on the beach for a good couple of hours before reluctantly heading back up to the property. We didn’t have a ton of time, so we didn’t start up a fire this time. There will be many days for that to come. I spent the afternoon working on cutting up logs with the chainsaw, and made good progress on pulling out a fair number of downed trees. It felt like i made good progress. Justine continued to tackle broom. It was a very productive afternoon.
While working with the chainsaw, I took out what might be the biggest piece of broom I’ve ever seen!
Eventually, it was time to clean up and close up the place for this trip. It’s always hard to leave, and seems to get harder each time. But it was getting dark, and it was time to head towards the ferry and find some dinner. Which proved to be harder than it should have been.
In the winter months, many of the restaurants don’t open, and because of the holiday, it seemed that the pub was the only place serving food at all. We got lucky and got the last seat at the bar, and the last order in before they too shut down. That’s the craziness of island living. The ferry home was uneventful after that. It was a great long weekend, and just what we needed!