It’s been a pretty slow year for interesting blog posts - I’m sure most of my tiny audience is getting sick of hearing about Galiano. Believe me, I wish we were still travelling to interesting places, to make these posts a little more exciting. But with COVID-19, it is what it is, and so for a break from the monotony of home, we took a week off and spent it on the island. It was a combination of some time with friends, a little bit of relaxing, some small adventures and a lot of work to be done.

We took the ferry over on Saturday morning, and we’re staying through until the following Sunday night. More than a week on the island - this was going to be our longest stretch by far. Thankfully, by installing the composting toilet and outdoor kitchen, we were pretty well set-up. We did notice that after almost 2 years, the fly on our tent had finally failed (all those days baking in the sun), but some duct tape took care of that little problem. For the first weekend, one of Justine’s friends Nicole and her partner Anthony came over to spend the weekend with us. They were there Saturday and Sunday, and then headed home on the Monday morning ferry.

After driving up to the property and giving Nicole and Anthony the quick tour, we each got organized -me watering plants and checking out the property and them getting their tent set-up. That didn’t take too long, and then we made some lunch to take with us on a first excursion. We still had a bit of time, so we headed down to the Saturday market to see what was going on. We’re big fans of the new set-up - a lot more space - but it’s still pretty small, and there’s only so much to see. After spending the requisite 15 minutes, we headed up to Bluff’s Park to enjoy the view (see above) and have some lunch in the amazing sunshine.

After relaxing for a bit, we headed dow to what we call the “low tide beach” to have a poke about. It was pretty quite (and actually about mid-tide), but the usual collection of seals were out on the big rock in Active Pass, and there was one seal hanging out on the rocks not too far away. It kept an eye on us, but wasn’t too concerned and stuck around.

A harbor seal, keeping an eye on us but generally not too concerned.

The usual collection of harbor seals hanging out on the rocks.

Saturday afternoon and evening were pretty relaxed. We hung out, and then ordered dinner from Wild1, which was as amazing as ever. Love their Thai food.

Dana and Bradley were up as well, and we ended up over at their place. That resulted in some early evening badminton shenanigans, and then an evening by the fire. There were marshmallows, smores and a beverage or two until it got a bit too cold and we called it a night.

Sunday the main plan was to do the mountain bike ride up to the north end of the island. We had done the ride for the first time a few weeks ago, and it was a lot of fun. We backed some lunch and a beverage and headed out.

The ride is pretty nice. There’s the awful hike-a-bike to start, but after that it’s pretty nice. There’s one really nice stretch through a complete arbutus tree forest that I can’t wait to see in the winter when it’s wet. It’s going to be a great ride to do frequently.

After the main ride, we continued north up into Dionisio Point Provincial Park. The park is such a beautiful spot, sitting up at the northern tip of the island. With it’s two crescent beaches (one sand, one pebble) that opens up onto the two sides of the island.

Looking out over the eastern beach at Dionisio Point Provincial Park

After getting there, it was a beautiful day, and a warm one. We jumped in the ocean (on the colder, sandy side) but didn’t last long as the water was freezing! It was definitely an in and out. We then had some lunch and a drink, and I jumped back in the water before we headed back. The rest of the day was pretty low key - we did use Anthony’s truck to rip out the stump of the big arbutus tree that had fallen, which was entertaining.

Sunday was also the start of a week-long, very odd encounter with a small brown bird. As we were hanging about on Sunday afternoon, this fairly nondescript little bird flew in, and seemingly unafraid of people, started hunting for food in the grass all around us. We didn’t think much of it at the time, other than it was strange. More on this front later.

Monday, Nicole and Anthony headed to the ferry early in the morning, leaving Justine and I to ourselves for the rest of the week. We had a lot of projects to tackle, but also wanted to try and relax and also enjoy all the fun stuff around the island. It was going to be a busy week.

We started with some smaller projects around the property. I worked on cropping up the arbutus stump that we has pulled out, and Justine hacked away at broome. Later that morning we switched focus and headed up the road a bit to “borrow” a couple of bags of gravel. We filled in a big pothole on our road and had a enough left for our little projects around the property.

We also started working on a set of stair for the back side of the deck. We had bought metal stringers, but need to level the area, lay a patio stone and cut the boards to the proper length. We were making good progress until we realized that we didn’t have the right fasteners for the step, so it would need a run to the hardware store.

As we were working on projects, and when we stopped for lunch, our little brown bird kept coming back. It was even more bold, being willing to land on the picnic table, and even on my shoes to pick at seeds caught there. It was very strange behavior.

Since it was mid-afternoon, we decided to call it a day (from working anyway) and headed down to the hardware store to pick up the pieces we needed, and then headed to Montague Harbour to hang out at the beach and swim a bit. As the beach is on the Trincomali Channel side of the island, the water was cold! It took me a while to get in, but took Justine forever. But she eventually did. We weren’t in for long, but it was really refreshing and nice to relax for a bit.

Monday evening was relaxing, just hanging out and we ended up making it a bit of an early night.

As we were taking all day Wednesday to go kayaking, Tuesday was a full day of work. We had lots of projects to attend to, with the primary one being a wood shed that I wanted to build for all the logs I have lying around the need to be cut into firewood, but that I have no place to put the wood.

We had good plans to follow, and all the material had been sitting around since the spring when (pre-COVID) I had planned to build this project. Our little bird was back, and we decide to name him “Joey”. The behaviour continued to get more and more strange, as he was following us from one side of the property to the other, as we worked on different things throughout the day. We’d be working on something, and this little bird would come flying in.

Joey, come to check out our latest project.

The little guy was completely unafraid, even with all the wood being moved around, the drill and all the other construction behaviour.

Our wood shed came together quite well. We pre-cut all the wood back near the main shed, then carried all the pieces over to the far side of the property to do the assembly. That worked pretty well, and also help get lots of steps in. And Joey got lots of practice flying.

After leveling off the footings, we got the platform assembled and installed.

The side posts went in pretty well.

Pretty soon we had the whole frame together.

Taking a break for lunch.

Who knew that I had a future in roofing?

Most of the roof on, and time to add the sides.

Mostly complete!

As with almost every project we did this week, we were unable to complete the wood shed. The original plans called for the roof to be cut to size, but I figured we’d just use the whole sheet of plywood and get more overhang on both the front and rear, Better coverage for the wood, right? Well what i didn’t account for was the number of shingles I’d need - and we ended up 4 singles short of a full roof. Another trip to the hardware store… But that we’d save for tomorrow.

Joey came and had dinner with us and we had another relaxing night ahead of our big day out kayaking on Wednesday!

heading out for a perfect day on the water.

Wednesday, we had booked a couple of kayaks out of the marina to spend the day on the water. Neither Justine nor I had been kayaking in years, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect. Neither of us ended up in the water as we got in our boats, so that was a good start! The day was perfect - calm and clear, with nothing but blue skies.

We headed out from the marina and skirted around Montague Harbour Provincial Park. As we did, we had our first good wildlife sighting, a small flock of oystercatchers.

The plan was to stick close to the shoreline and work our way around the coastline, checking out the sandstone formations Galiano is known for. There was one in particular that Justine wanted to see, but the guy at the kayak place told us we’d see interesting formations every kilometer or so. He wasn’t wrong. Once we had worked our way up a bit, we were going to cross over to the offshore islands, and then make our way back.

Heading out from the harbour.

The tide was going out a bit, so we had lots of marine life to see, like this purple sea star.

Justine paddling along.

Parts of the coast line had beautiful scenery.

We did see lots of great sandstone formations along the route.

This piece of sandstone is pretty iconic, and is in many paintings and such by local artists.

This was the formation that Justine had wanted to see.

As always, there were lots of bald eagles about.

This exposed sandstone had very cool lichen on it.

A closer view of the lichen on the wall. Much bigger than you would have expected, and such an interesting pattern.

Heading out to the outer islands.

There were lots of seals once we got a little ways offshore.

The seals were not too worried about us.

A baby harbour seal, pulling itself up on the rocks.

We found a nice secluded beach, all to ourselves to pull out for lunch. It was good to get out of the boats, and again, neither of us ended up in the water!

Heading back at the end of our day.

The paddling was really nice. It was generally calm out on the water, and not too hard. We got to explore a lot of the coast line and parts of the island we’d not seen previously. Sadly, my watch only got about half of our day before it died - basically as we pulled in to a secluded beach for lunch.

Most of our day on the water. We worked our way back along Parker Island and back to the marina.

The moss, lichen and succulents provided a beautiful display of colour.

We had brought our crab traps along with us, and while we had lunch we threw out the traps and let them sit for a while. After lunch, we reeled them back in, and were pleased to find three red rock crabs ( two keepers) - while having lunch we caught dinner!

After wrapping up the kayaking, we headed to the hardware store and picked up the last remaining bits we needed to wrap up a couple of projects. I love this store - they sold me four shingles, rather than a whole package. Once back, we relaxed for a bit and then made dinner. The crabs we had caught made a fine addition to an excellent meal!

Thursday night we had dinner plans at Pilgrimme, the best restaurant on the island (and one of the top 100 in Canada). Pretty good for a small island in the Salish Sea. Still, we had lots of work to do. With the extra parts we had picked up, we completed the stairs. What a difference that makes in moving around.

We then finished off the wood shed, putting up the last few shingles. Now I need to find some time to use the chainsaw and take care of a bunch of logs. And after we had abandoned him for the day yesterday, we didn’t see much of Joey, but he did make an appearance towards the end of the day.

It’s a pretty good looking roof for a first attempt.

Once again, we split work and fun and headed to a beach in the afternoon, as the tide came in. This time we stayed a bit closer to home and headed to Pebble Beach. it is so names as the whole beach is made up of small stones, making for a nice effect. Especially at high tide, where the water gets deep. It’s also on the warmer side of the island, and while still cold, was easier to get in, and we stayed in longer.

After coming back from the beach we had showers and got dressed for dinner. We’ve been to Pilgrimme a few times, but always in the winter (around Justine’s birthday), and always when it’s been dark outside. This was our first visit in the summer, and in the daylight. Dinner was the usual amazing affair. Pilgrimme does a fixed menu, multi-course extravaganza, made mostly with local ingredients. I think we ended up with 11 courses by the time it was all done.

Justine did another excellent collage of all the courses in our meal.

The great thing about the menu is that its always unique, always different (you don’t recognize half of it) and always amazing, even if you think you won’t like something. We’ve never had a bad experience, and this was no exception. Another excellent meal, even if we didn’t get to sit outside.

Friday was another day to tackle the last major project we wanted to complete - installing a solar panel on the roof of “shed 2” to run the fan on the composting toilet. We had ordered all the components, downloaded the instructions and even watched some youtube videos on the installation. Despite all that, when it came time to put it all together it still didn’t work. We had all the pieces, they just didn’t fit together. So it was another trip to the hardware store, and they once again came to our rescue, pulling out some obscure electrical components that allowed us to fit out mismatched components together. On the way to the store, at the end of our road we had a unique encounter - a turtle crossing the road. We stopped to move it along and out of harms way.

We stopped to move the turtle off the road.

It was a pretty good size, bigger than the ones we normally see.

For scale

It wasn’t very happy at being picked up - there was hissing.

Once we had all the parts, the actual installation and set-up were actually pretty easy. We got everything connected together, and got the panel installed on the roof pretty easily.

Working on the installation

Final set-up inside

The finished product

With another project successfully completed, we had a chance to relax and enjoy the day. We had our second dinner booked at a restaurant that evening, that we were very much looking forward to. Strangely, these two meals were the first restaurants we’ve eaten at since the pandemic hit full force in March. Given that we normally eat out at least once a week, that’s been a big change for us.

For dinner Friday night, we were going up to Tranquilo at Bodega Ridge. Bodega Ridge is a small resort just north of us, that is normally a wedding venue. They have not typically had the restaurant open for general dining. But with the pandemic affecting their regular business, they put up a limited, “baja-inspired” menu that looked really good. And the fact that it was an outdoor patio made it more inviting. As the name suggest, the restaurant is up on the top of the ridge and provides great views.

The whole resort is just beautiful - large cabins scattered across the property, with the main lodge and restaurant overlooking Salt Spring and the channel. We had a beautiful night, a great seat on the aptio and strangely enough the same waitress as we had at Pilgrimme the night before.

We had a an excellent meal - the food was fantastic - and enjoyed the warm summer night. We were there quite a while, and it was dark by the tie we got back home.

Saturday we had planned to do a hike in one of the parks on the island that we had not yet explored. Tapovan Peace Park is a privately owned park that sits about halfway up the island. It has a number of trails, one of which crosses one of the big ridges on the island, and then heads down to the beach.

Heading up the stairs to the top of the ridge.

We expected it to be a fairly sizeable hike with some exploring, so we packed towels, swimming gear and lunch and headed out mid-morning. The hike starts with a decent climb up to the top of the ridge, with great views out across the channel.

The path lead us through some large, mature forest and up the face of the ridge. It was a steep climb, but on a well-maintained trail with proper stairs set into the steep cliff-face. It was generally pretty easy going. All the way up we were surrounded by old arbutus trees, and the underlying sandstone of the area was exposed in a couple of places in interesting ways.

The hike to the top didn’t take too long, but the trails at the top were not well marked and we ended up heading out the wrong way. It didn’t really matter - it was essentially a big loop, and we’d be coming back that way anyway,

The trail we ended up on was lightly used, and in a couple of places we needed to do some trail finding to find our way. But eventually we did, after some fun climbing up and over some downed trees in a particularly hard-hit section of the forest.

The sandstone was exposed on the cliff face. You normally only see it on the beaches.

It was another beautiful day, perfect for a walk in the woods.

Sap running off the limb of a pine tree.

The old arbutus forest was beautiful and peaceful.

The view from the top of the ridge was pretty nice.

Some fun ways over the downed trees.

Huckleberries, almost ripe!

Eventually we found the path down to the water. It went past what must be the biggest arbutus tree I have ever seen! There are some big ones on the island, but this one is the biggest yet!

After some fun hiking, we found the ocean!

Once we got to the water, we were not all that impressed with the swimming options. So we started exploring, working our way down the shoreline. Eventually this led us to a set of three bays that we later discovered was called Cook Bay. The tide was mostly out, and we decided it looked like a great place to stop for lunch.

All along the rocks as we made our way along the shoreline we saw these old anchor points that were left in from days past.

Before settling down to lunch, we explored the rocky outcrop for a while. As the tide was a out a bit, what was normally covered was exposed, and we could get out onto the edge of the ocean. It was a beautiful spot.

Our lunch spot ended up being quite entertaining. We had lots of bird life - kingfishers, turkey vultures, bald eagles and an osprey that landed in the tree right above us. It was a bit nervous with all the vultures and bald eagles about, but eventually it settle down and started watching the water for a meal. It was lunchtime after all…

It didn’t disappoint, making two full on dives into the ocean, once totally submerging. The kingfisher also did a dive at one point. It was all pretty eventful.

A pano of the spot we stopped for lunch.

The osprey made a couple of dives into the ocean for us - wasn’t successful, but it was very cool!

As we were finishing our lunch, a small family wandered up and got themselves settled not to far away from us. As we were sitting in the shade, they didn’t really see us. After a bit, it became clear that these people looked familiar - it was our neighbors, Dana, Bradley and Owen. Way too funny. We chatted for a bit, and then we made our way back along the shoreline to the trail, to hike back to the car.

We had a great view of Mount Baker from the walk back.

The rocky outcrop we had been exploring before lunch.

The walk back was pretty nice too. It was a lot more climbing than we expected, but it wove through that same mature forest, and we saw lots more birds - chestnut chickadees, lots of woodpeckers and some others. It was quite nice.

We got back to the car and headed back for home. This was our last night, and we had a relaxing evening. Sunday was pretty uneventful, as we prepared ourselves for going back to work after a very relaxing and enjoyable week. We got a lot done as well, but it was great to disengage for the full week.