For the last four days of the trip, we were camping at Mount Rainier, at Cougar Rock campground. This is one of our favorite places and gives great access to Paradise and the surrounding area. This was also planned to be a bit more relaxing, as we only had one big day of hiking planned. As usual, things did not go as planned…
Read MoreMount Rainier Photo Gallery - Skyline Trail
Continuing the photo gallery approach with the pics from my big camera, these are all from our hike on the Skyline Trail on Mount Rainier. It’s organized fairly logically - mainly chronologically, but I did group some of the photos by themes in some galleries to make things a little more interesting.
Read MoreMount Rainier Photo Gallery - First Day on the Mountain
This first photo gallery post from Mount Rainier will capture all the photos from our first day on the mountain, as we explored and re-acquainted ourselves with this spectacular place!
Read MoreHood River Photo Gallery - Hood River
Continuing with the photocentric posts, this one covers the rest fo our time in Hood River, including lots of bird photos, photos of people on the river, the local scenery and lots of pics of the mountains. Again, very little commentary in this post.
Read MoreRoad Trip Part 3 - Hood River Mountain Biking
The second part of the Hood River section of our trip started poorly, after a day of sightseeing that was supposed to be relaxing but did not turn out that way. It turned for the better the following day as we got up to Post Canyon to do some mountain biking. We had a great day, including another swim in the river, before heading to Mount Rainier for the last stretch of our trip.
Read MoreWashington and Oregon Road Trip - Part 1
For one of our longer vacations this year, we decided on a road trip, camping in Washington and Oregon. Pre-COVID, we used to do a trip down to Hood River almost every year. Since COVID we have not been at all, so this was the year! With the long weekend in August, we were able to get a full 10 days in. We decided to break the trip up into three sections - Leavenworth, a German-style village in northern Washington State, Hood River and Mount Rainier. It’s like a “best of” of all of our road trips over the years.
Read MoreLeavenworth Photo Gallery
I’m trying something new - a separate post that’s mainly just the photos I took with my camera, rather than my phone. So there will be some that are similar to what was in the related main post, but there will be some new things as well. There will likely be less textual content to go with it, but let’s see how this goes.
Read MoreA Longer Galiano July Visit
In the summer, we like to spend as much time on Galiano as we can. With the addition of StarLink we’ve been able to work from the cottage, which has meant that we can also stay for longer stretches. This trip was two full weekends, bookended around the week of work. It meant we were able to tackle a few projects and also that we were lucky enough to catch up with some friends that came to visit Galiano.
Read MoreCanada Day on Saturna Island - Lamb BBQ!
On Canada Day, we had a little excursion over to Saturna Island with our friend David and his family for their annual Canada Day Lamb BBQ! It was a great day on the water, as David picked us up in Sturdies Bay and we boated over to Saturna and spent a lovely day celebrating Canada Day!
Read MoreAn Ontario Visit and a June Galiano Update
It’s been a while since I posted an update - it’s been a busy stretch. I had a quick trip back to Ontario to visit with both of my families (after my work trip to Florida), and then we had a nice stretch on Galiano. There was a weekend in Squamish mountain biking squeezed in there as well. Lots of fun!
Read MoreThe Caterpillar Apocalypse - and Lots of Birds!
We spent a full week on Galiano with big plans to tackle lots of projects around the property. That came to a crashing halt as we discovered how bad the tent caterpillar apocalypse had become. I’ll share some of the details, an update on how the gardens are doing and because it’s migration and nesting season, lots of birds!
Read MoreA Crazy-busy Spring Week - Spring Flowers, Baseball, Reifel and a Quick Trip to Galiano
This is going to be a long post that covers quite the range of topics! It’s been a busy couple of weeks for us and we’ve done a lot of different things! I bought a new bike; we went to both Whitecaps (soccer) and Canadians (baseball) games; we got the roof opened up, stopped at Reifel and we made a quick day trip to Galiano. Keep up - I’m going to move fast!
Read MoreWhiskey and Words, Spring on Galiano and Vancouver Sunsets
On Friday night I had bought us tickets to Whiskey and Words, a fundraising event for the Vancouver Writers Fest, before heading to Galiano on Saturday morning for a long overdue trip. We stayed through Tuesday night getting lots of projects done around the cottage, before heading home to spring finally arriving. Wednesday night we went for a nice walk and had an amazing sunset.
Read MoreSun Run 2023 and Some Vancouver Spring Flowers
The Sun Run is the unofficial start to spring in Vancouver, a 10 km race that regularly has between 30-50k participants. Justine had registered with her company team and for whatever crazy reason, on Thursday I signed up too. I haven’t run in over a year and neither of us trained for the run. Despite those factors and the pouring rain, there we were at the start line on Sunday morning…
Read MoreA Bluebird Day Playing Hooky
Friday, Justine and I played hooky from work and took the day off to head up to Whistler for what we expect will be our last day of skiing for the season. As it turned out, it was a spectacular, bluebird day on the mountain and made for a great final day out.
Read MoreGaliano - Spring Has Arrived!
I’m taking a short break from the Maui updates (a couple more to go…) to share our weekend on Galiano. IT had been almost a month since we were over and it finally feels like sprint is arriving. We missed what hopefully will be the last storm and snow for the year, and we have lots of projects to tackle. More than we knew…
Read MoreWinter Events and Activities
I’m taking a short break from the Maui posts to add an entry for some of the more interesting things we’ve been up to over the past week or so. It’s been a very busy time since we came back from Maui, and with the upcoming trip to India, time is just flying by. This post covers some fun rugby and soccer events we attended, as well as a weekend spent in the great outdoors!
Read MoreMaui, An Overview
At the end of February, Justine, Mom and I went to Maui for a week. As you can imagine, I took a lot of pictures (and video this time, so itis going to take a while to get through it all. I’ll try and post updates in smaller batches, but I thought it might be fun to do a quick photo-based summary of the whole trip. I’m sure I’ll miss a bunch of cool stuff, but that’s why you’ll have to come back for the full posts!
Read MoreOur Last Day on Maui
It was finally here - our last day on Maui. We had a long day ahead of us with a 10:00 p.m. departure time, but that meant we could cram a lot into our final day in paradise. We toured the north part of the island and went to see the Nakalele Blowhole and did a short hike into a tropical rainforest at Honolua Bay. We made a final stop at Coconuts and then did the drive up to the top of the volcano in Haleakalā National Park. We wrapped it all up with one last amazing sunset on the beach. What a trip.
Read MoreMaui Day 6 - the Road to Hana
On Monday we chose to head back towards Paia and spend the day driving the Road to Hana and on to Oheo Gulch. We expected it to be a full day, but as events unfolded, it was much more than we expected…
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