Our plan after returning from Ontario was to spend a few days recharging on Galiano before jumping back into work for the New Year. One of the neighbors on the Lane were hosting a New Year’s Eve party, and we had lots of work to tackle on the property. But we also wanted to carve out some time to relax and explore.
Over Christmas, we had an amazing time visiting with our friends and families, and having two full weeks with everyone was great. But after a long time away, it was good to be back home to start getting back on to our more standard routines.
Justine and I headed over to Galiano for New Year’s, after having returned from Toronto a couple of days previously. After taking a couple of days to do laundry and get ourselves reorganized at home, we took the ferry over to Galiano on the 30th. We took the afternoon ferry, arriving just before dark. By the time we got the truck unpacked (we had a lot this trip!), it was dark so we didn’t really get a chance to see what the place was looking like.
In our gifts from Christmas, both Justine and I got some fun new things, including a few Lego sets! As it was a dark, cold night, we built a fire in the woodstove and started my New York City “Postcard” Lego set. It was a pretty small one, so it didn’t take us long to put it together. Still it was a fun way to start the trip.
The city skyline is starting to come together.
The Empire State Building was the first piece to be assembled.
The completed set! It’s pretty fun. Not huge, but a cool little set.
We had a long list of little projects to get to, over the next few days. Most were smallish, and we had decent enough weather on New Year’s Eve to tackle a few of them before heading down to Jeff and Shirley’s for the Lane party.
After finishing up a number of these little projects, we wound down to get ourselves ready for the party. It was starting early - we were supposed to be there around 6 p.m. - so not surprising, we were a little late. We walked down - it’s about 0.5 a km from our place to theirs, but it was not raining, so it was a nice walk.
There were 4 other couples there - mostly the full time residents. It was a really fun night with lots of laughs, good and drinks to take us through the night. The night went much later than we expected. Not all the way to midnight, but it was after 11:00 by the time we headed back for home.
We ended the night and rang in the New Year sitting on the deck, looking over the city. The New Year came, and then we headed off to bed. 2022 has been a mixed bag, but here’s to hoping that 2023 is better! New Year’s Day was pretty low key - watched some football and hockey, tackled a few more little projects. Then we spent a good part of the day cutting broome. We haven’t made as much progress this winter as we did last, and we needed to start getting back into it.
Dionisio Provincial Park
On Monday the 2nd, we had our busiest day of the trip. We wanted to do something fun, but also needed to some work. We decided to walk up to Dionisio Provincial Park, at the north end of the island. We drove to the gate at the end of the road, parked, and then hiked up the trails into the forest to meander north. It was a nice walk up to the park boundary, and on and into the park.
Some cool mushrooms in the moss.
The tides this time of the year were really high, making part of the beach in the park completely disappear, and creating an “island” just off shore. Normally we can walk out onto the point, but this year we’d have to observe from the beach.
As we walked up to the beach you could suddenly hear, very clearly, the noise from the local residents we were coming here to see - sea lions! In the winter, they move south and big groups of them hang out on and around Galiano. It’s always very cool to see them, and seeing them in this level of congregation is something completely different from seeing small groups patrolling the waters offshore.
We watched the sea lions for a while and explored around some different parts of the park. There were some good bird sightings as well, especially a flock of golden crowned kinglets that were feeding in the long grass. So hard to get good pictures of as the flit about so quickly!
There were also a couple of bald eagles that flew in for a visit.
One of the things we love about Galiano are the arbutus trees all over the island. I thought this one was very cool, in that it was an old tree that had died, but a new tree was growing back out of it. Renewal and regrowth.
We had been blessed with a really nice day for our little hike. It was nice and clear, and we could see across the straight to the mountain on the mainland. With all the rain of late there was a lot of fresh snow on the mountains.
One of the really cools things about the park is that there’s a section of it that historically was a First Nations Village. They have archeological records going back a few thousand years, and evidence of longhouses and mindens on the site. They’ve protected that area and put out some pretty good education material to explain the historical context and significance. It’s always great to walk through that part of the park. We wandered down there, then headed to the beach and sat and relaxed for a bit and had a snack.
The map of our hike.
Eventually it was time to head back for home. We had a nice morning and the hike was great. But we still had a lot of work to do and the day was getting away from us.
After having some lunch, we got to work on burning the broome that we had cut previously. We had a pretty big pile to get through, of both the more recent stuff and a big pile that we had cut at the end of the spring. It was pretty rotted, but once the fire got going, it was all good. The broome burns well - even the new stuff - and so we got through it all pretty quickly.
Some very cool clouds over the moon.
Sadly, we eventually had to get back to work after a very nice stretch of off time. The weather cleared up a bit, and we had a nice last day.
In the afternoon, I took an hour out to get some exercise. The Trails Society has been busy building some new trails right near us, in behind Dana’s place. They expand a lot of territory, and so I thought I’d explore. There’s a new trail that heads up to the top of the ridge, and a new connector that goes back down to the road. And from there, there is a new trail down to the water.
From our place I headed (left) up to the top of the ridge. Then worked my way back down to the water, and then back home. It was a great hike, and saw a fair bit.
