OK, this post is a month in the making. It took me forever to get to it. Thanks to Justine for most of the photos and all the videos!
In our continuing experiments to understand cottage living, and how well we can work from Galiano, we decide to spend 10 days on Galiano, starting with Justine’s birthday weekend and through the following week. We were expecting to get some rough weather, so we wanted to see how the Starlink internet access would fair, and if we’d have any issues with power with the weather.
For Justine’s birthday, I bought this amazing carving from the Coast Salish people. The hummingbird seemed like the perfect addition to our cottage.
For this longer trip, we came over on the evening ferry on Friday night. It was pitch black when we arrived, and it makes the drive up to the cottage seem very long.
Justine’s birthday was the follow day, and we had dinner booked at Pilgrimme, one of our favorite places on Galiano. The weather wasn’t too bad when we arrived, and we got settled for our longest stay. There was lots of stuff to bring in from the truck to get settled.
The one standout memory from this week will be the whales – from the moment we arrived we could hear the humpbacks. Their surfacing, especially at night, is so clear when it’s calm out that it can be clearly heard when we’re out on the deck.
Saturday morning was Justine’s birthday! I gave her the little gift I had purchased for her, and we had a bit of a leisurely morning. We eventually went outside and did a little bit of clear up around the property. We raked some leaves to add to the compost bin and started to clean up the mess that was all the dead trees that we took down, to avoid having them come down in one of winter’s coming storms.
A varied thrush and a finch in the trees at the bottom of the hill.
Later in the afternoon we went for a walk, heading down to the beach access below our property. The other consistent noise we’ve been hearing since we arrived were the steller sea lions.
Every time that we went outside you could clearly hear them barking from the cottage, so we wanted to see if there was a big “raft” of them at the beach.
The stormy weather was heading our way, and even at roughly 4:00 it was starting to get dark. The huge storm clouds back over the city were not helping either. On that front, the next day we learned that a tornado had touched down near UBC not long after – so we pretty much would have been looking at it. Wild. When we got down to the beach, the noise from the sea lions was incredible – they were definitely there!
A little map of the walk down to the beach.
As it turned out, the next 45 minutes ended up being one of the most event-filled hours we’ve had. Normally when we go to that beach, there’s a few harbour seals, bald eagles, maybe a kingfisher or on the odd occasion, an otter. This time, it was a whole wildlife show.
We started with a huge number of harbour seals – probably a dozen of them. They’re so funny – their heads pop up out of the water, and they just float there and watch us. But there were so may more than normal! Just out past them were the noisy sea lions. As we suspected, there was a raft of them floating out in deeper water.
A short video of the marine wildlife show we saw on Justine's birthday while on Galiano Island. All video taken by Justine!
Selfie from the beach in the middle of our wildlife show!
There were at least two dozen – maybe even more. And they were active! Lots of barking, splashing about and every once in a while, a full breach out of the water. Over the course of close to an hour, a couple of other groups also came and went – probably another 15-20 sea lions more. They were super-active, porpoising back and forth in front of where we were watching on the beach.
The to top it all off, we were able to see whales from the beach! This was a first for us, but we could see a number of groups of humpbacks just out at the horizon. We could see blow spots, but as well the backs of the whales and their tail flukes as they dove. The whole time we were on the beach, you could see groups of two or three whales at a time. It was amazing.
Sadly it was getting dark and we needed to head back up to the cottage. Plus it was time to get ready for dinner and our big night out at Pilgrimme!
Pilgrimme
Pilgrimme is the nicest restaurant on Galiano, ranked in the top 100 in Canada, and this quote I stole sums it up well:
A patio lit by fairy lights, earthenware jars filled with wild flowers and flag-stone floors. This romantic cabin in the woods exudes escapist charm.
We’ve been a number of times over the years and it’s always one of our favorite experiences. We were supposed to have gone for my birthday back in May, but the COVID flair up shut all the restaurants down, and we had to cancel. It took us until Justine’s birthday to get another reservation.
The tasting menu is always interesting - you end up eating a bunch of things your would never order on your own, and it’s always interesting.
The birthday girl!
OUr amazing meal!
Sunday morning the rain held off long enough for me to get out for a quick round of golf. Sadly the rain is getting the golf course to a state where it is almost unplayable, with standing water on many of the fairways. The weather was already getting unsettled. The positives - lots of rainbows; the negative, we got absolutely soaked while dropping in to see a neighbour when it was supposed to be sunny, only for a downpour to start.
During the week, we maintained a pretty normal work day. Our Starlink satellite internet has been amazing, and it’s looking like working from the cottage is going to work. It’s harder - lots of distractions, from whales to birds to deer outside my office window - but it’s a nice change of pace.
One day, when the rain had stopped we stole the last couple of hours of daylight to do a bit of exploration, and went for a walk near the cottage. We didn’t go too far - there’s a small lake (but the biggest lake on Galiano) at the end of our lane, and we had heard that there are trails that lead to it. We didn’t really find anything other than small deer trails, so we ended up bushwacking down to the lake.
The map of our little hike down to the lake.
Throughout the week, we had so many good views of whales. It seemed like every time you looked up, there were more whales to be seen! Justine got some decent footage, given the distance.
A very short video from Justine showing humpbacks breaching from our cottage on Galiano.
The weather is definitely starting to turn, and it’s getting cool. We had fires going pretty much every night.
Birthday Lego!
For my birthday, I had received the amazing lego Land Rover Defender set. We had done one part of the over 3,000 piece set earlier in the summer, but the weather had generally been so nice when we were at the cottage that doing lego didn’t really make the cut. Now that the weather was turning, the rainy days meant it was time to get it back out.
After two pretty lengthy sessions over the course of the week, it was starting to take shape. We’ve completed 3/4 of the sets of pieces. With one more to go, we should be able to complete it next time. The level of detail it just amazing.
We did have the odd nice day, and even had a chance to sit outside on the deck.
One of our primary tasks for the week was to do some burning. We had cleared a pretty good section of broome, the last time we were over, and we needed to get rid of it. The weather was good enough, as the heavy rain had not rolled in yet.
It was good weather for making Grandma’s soup…
A huge banana slug out back.
One of our other projects was transplanting some ferns. One of our neighbors are in the process of building their own cottage, and the area they are planning to build is has a ton of really nice ferns. We’ve been wanting some for around our place, and we’d hate for them to go to waste, so we drove up to their lot and dug out eight ferns to transplant.
On Sunday, we wanted to tackle some additional broome clearing. With the weather, it didn’t look like burning would be an option, but we thought we could make some more progress cutting down a section near the top of the hill.
The broome in this section was a mix of small, new growth and some absolute monsters. We’re trying to buring in place, to kill seeds on the top of the ground as well, so the plan was to cut into a section and clear an area to burn in later. The path I took led me through some absolute monster plants. we worked at it for a few hours and made some good progress. More burning next time!
By now you will have heard about all of the devastation that has happened in BC in the month since Justine’s birthday weekend. Sunday night as we went to bed, the rain really started coming down. By the time we left Monday morning, we had flooding on our property, and the drive back to the ferry terminal was unlike anything we’d seen. There were rivers rushing over the road, huge lakes in places and there was no sign of the rain stopping.
We got out OK, but later learned that half of the main road got washed out. On the mainland, all the fields in Delta were lakes, and then we learned about the insane devastation that occurred in the interior and the north. We’re going to be a long time recovering from this.
Justine snapped this screenshot to show the amount of rain that fell.
Justine also grabbed this one. It shows all the highways that were wiped out from the flooding, and how completely Vancouver was cut off from the rest of Canada. Later on the road north of Whistler was also wiped out.