On Thursday night, Justine and I made a first tentative step towards things feeling like they are getting somewhat back to normal, post-COVID. We headed downtown and went to the Orpheum theatre to see a concert! The show was the Bahamas, one of Justine’s favs with Madison Cunningham as the opening act.
Read MoreAnother Visit to Reifel
This past weekend Justine and I went out to Reifel to have a walk in the sunshine and see what was around. We’ve had so much rain this fall (after the drought that was the summer) that it was wonderful to see the sun for a whole weekend. It was a bit cold (close to freezing) but we’d take the sun!
Read MoreExploring Delta in the Fall
I’ve pulled together a couple of posts into one from some time spent exploring around Delta. We normally spend a fair bit of time at Reifel, but we also spent an afternoon walking on the dyke nearby - not something we’ve done before.
Read MoreA Visit with Kathryn and Nesto
As things start to get back to more of “normal”, it’s been good to start catching up with people again. We had most of my family out at the beginning of September, and in October an old family friend of Justine’s came to visit for a few days. It was great to have Kathryn and Nesto come stay and see Vancouver.
Read MoreFall Catch-up
It’s been a very busy fall for Justine and I, so there hasn’t been a lot of activities to report on, and we haven’t spent as much time on Galiano as we have throughout the year. Plus the weather has been awful - 150 mm of rain in September, triple our normal amount. Don’t get me wrong - we needed it, but it didn’t lead to many adventures or photos to share. To wrap up the last month or so, I thought I’d pull together a few random photos into one “catch-up” post.
Read MoreFamily Visit - A Great End to the Summer
I am way overdue on some updates to the website. It’s been a crazy fall with work, and I haven’t had the bandwidth to work on processing photos and getting the web site updated. It’s likely to take some time to get through them still.
The focus is going to be on getting an update from some great family visits that happened at the beginning of September. Shawn and family flew out to spend a few days with us before Mom and Dad arrived from their cross-Canada road trip. That gave us a couple of days to catch up and tour around Vancouver before our ferry to Galiano on Wednesday morning.
The family arrived Monday around lunch time, and got settled into the Granville Island Hotel. That was a great location, as the hotel was super-close to where Justine and I are, and we could easily coordinate our couple of days of local trips. We didn’t have a huge amount of time Monday afternoon, so we headed over to Stanley Park to see if we could get into the Aquarium. Sadly, the new COVID policies meant you needed to book online and couldn’t just walk up and buy a ticket.
Mackenzie outside the Aquarium
We went out for a quick walk around the area and checked out the totem poles and sea wall. The weather was nice, and it was good to be able to catch up, after having not seeing anyone in person for so long!
After Justine got done with her work day, we met for dinner and had some pizza. We wrapped up the day relatively early with a quick visit at our place. Tuesday was going to be a big day, so we wrapped things up and called it a night.
The main attraction of our day was a visit to the Britannia Mining Museum
Mom and Dad arrived on Sunday night and after spending Monday getting settled, met us at the Granville Island Hotel to head out for our day. It was an early start, as we had tickets for the Britannia Mining Museum for the 9:30 a.m. entry. The drive up the Sea to Sky was quite nice, and we were up at the museum with lots of time to spare. Eventually we got let in and headed up for the tour of the mine.
The Mining Museum is a great venue, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone visiting Vancouver.
The first part of the tour is a great little train ride into the mountain. They take you in a short distance, then show you how the mine used to work, including some of the tools that they used back in the day when the mine was operational. One of the fun things is that they shut the lights off and you get to experience the true darkness of a mine without lights. It’s pretty cool.
After the mine tour, we headed into the main mine building. They have a new exhibit called “Boom!” an interactive exhibit that provided great insight into the operations at the mine. It’s set-up in the main mine building and you get a real appreciation of the scale of the place. The exhibit is quite cool, and a great addition to the facility.
We had a busy day - from Vancouver, up to Britannia Beach, Squamish and Shannon Falls, before heading back to North Vancouver for a trip up Grouse Mountain.
They did a great job of explaining the process of how the material mined from the tunnels was broken down and processed using gravity in the mine building. It crazy how many stages the ore is processed through to get the final end result.
After completing the “formal” part of the tours we spent another hour or so wandering about the grounds and checking out the other exhibits.
One of things they really stressed was all the environmental clean up they have done since about 2000, cleaning up the toxic material that leeches out of the mine and that had been contaminating Howe Sound.
The kids had fun panning for “gold” - they did find lots of cool rocks - and there were lots of other interesting things to see.
I particularly like the core samples - the samples drilled from the rock that they use to determine the direction to expand the mine. There’s an entire building of them, still sitting there as if they were just pulled out of the earth.
As this mine produced some crazy percentage of all the copper produced in North America for a very long time, there was a whole exhibit on copper and its use down through the ages. Very interesting stuff.
After a while it was time to call it a visit. We browsed the gift shop for a bit before heading off on our way. We headed further North, up to Squamish where we stopped for some lunch - we had to give them the White Spot experience.
After we finished up lunch, the kids had decided they wanted to see Grouse Mountain, so we headed back south. We made a short stop at Shannon Falls to see the waterfall. It's a great spot, and always worth a stop. The water level was very low, given that we haven’t had rain in two months.
We got to Grouse Mountain fairly early in the afternoon. The weather wasn’t great - some light rain and clouds, and it was colder than I would have liked. But there is lots to see and do up at the “Peak of Vancouver”. We went out on the deck to catch the view of the city, watched a bit of the lumberjack show (where of course, one of the lumberjacks was from Orangeville…) and then watched the bears for a little while. There was lots of other wildlife around as well.
With the cool weather, the bears were quite active. They were out in the pools, and wandering around the habitat. Lane also spotted a small herd of deer that were grazing the rich grass on the ski slopes.
And no, the deer were not in with the bears! The little fawns were safe.
The kids have some growing to do to catch the bears…
The last event of the day was an owl show. They had two owls - a barn owl and a great horned owl. The trainer gave a good talk, and after the show they let the kids get up close and personal with the two birds.
We had a great day, with quite a few different little adventures. We wrapped the day, with the plan to head to Galiano on Wednesday!
Bookbinders and Baseball
For much of July, we spent quite a bit of time with the Bookbinders, as Ethan’s baseball season was coming to an end and we wanted to watch him play, and Justine’s Mom and Dad finally got out to Vancouver for the first time in almost 2 years.
Read MoreVancouver Photos - Sunflowers and More
This year, I planted lots of sunflower seeds. They were pretty old, so I really didn’t expect most of them to sprout and flower. Well, I was dead wrong on that front and we have had quite the summer of sunflowers. Some of them have gotten to 8’ tall, and all of them have produced multiple blossoms. I thought I’d share a few photos of them, plus some random pics from around Vancouver this summer.
Read MoreQuick fun one - We Ordered a New Truck!
We’re getting a new truck - a 2021 Toyota Tacoma TRD Sport Premium!
Read MoreVancouver Wanderings
I’m a bit behind on posts again, so I thought I’d share a quick one with some pics from the rooftop and wanderings around Vancouver. I’ll try and get my post from my week of vacation on Galiano Island as soon as I can get to it.
Read MoreBirds and Blossoms
We decided to spend the Easter long weekend at home, rather than go over to the island. The weather didn’t look like it was going to be great, and we were able to book a trip to Reifel on Saturday. This will be a short post mostly of pictures taken while out on walks while the sun was shining, plus some of the birds while at Reifel.
Read MoreSpring Blossoms
As I mentioned in a previous post, spring is finally starting to arrive! I cannot remember so eagerly anticipating a spring in a very long time. To try and keep active, we’ve been walking a lot. The last few days we’ve been out and exploring, and found some new spots and lots of new pics of spring as it starts to unfold. If you’re not interested in spring blossoms, you can stop now and move on to something more interesting…
Read MoreSpring is Coming
After all the work and stress around getting the cottage delivered and set-up, we were back to the city for a week before heading back to Galiano to continue getting settled in. The weather was nice for a few days,a nd we’re starting to see the first signs of spring as the flowers start to bloom.
Read MoreGaliano Day Trip and a Snowy Vancouver Day
It’s been a slow start to the year, and I have not had a lot to share thus far. Hopefully that will change soon. In the meantime I have two small, separate posts that I will combine into one to save us all some time.
Read MoreA Walk out to the End of Iona Jetty
As I mentioned in my first post, it hasn’t been all that interesting a start to the New Year. This weekend we took advantage of some sunshine to try another local walk that Justine has never done, and that I hadn’t done in years. Iona Jetty is just north of the airport and sticks almost 5 km out into the ocean. Iona park also provides an interesting spot for seeing birds, and this trip we got lots of snow geese!
Read MoreA Walk Around Stanley Park
2021 is here (thankfully) but is off to a bit of a slow start. I have a sense that it’s going to get more interesting, but for now there hasn’t been a lot to share. A couple of weekends ago we headed over to Stanley Park and did the full walk around the seawall. The weather wasn’t amazing, but it didn’t rain, and there were a few interesting birds about.
Our weekend walk around the seawall.
There’s not a lot to say - it was a bit of a grey, overcast day. But it was warm enough and didn’t rain on us, so we’ll call it a win. It was good to get out and walk and get some fresh air. I’ll throw up some of the pictures I took - none of them great, but there were a few fun things to see.
Out on the straight between Stanley Park and North Vancouver, there were big flocks of Surf Scoters.
A female Bufflehead in flight.