Through the end of August and the first weekend of September, we were spending our longest stretch so far this year on Galiano. While we were working during the week, we had two full weekends, including the long weekend to enjoy island time. On the long weekend we were doing our annual Panorama Lane Party with all the neighbors! And with Dana and Bradley hosting, it was guaranteed to be an event!
Read MoreTime for the New NFL Season - Seahawks Preseason Game
Back in April at the Whiskey and Words fundraiser, I ended up “winning” two tickets to a preseason NFL game in Seattle. Amazingly enough, summer has almost come and gone, and this past Thursday was the date for the game. Justine and I drove down to Seattle in the afternoon, hung out in Seattle a bit and watched some really mediocre football.
Read MoreRoad Trip Part 5 - Mount Rainier and the Drive Home
A last post for the camping road trip. Well until I get through all the photos I took. So there will be more to come, but for this last post we’ll cover our last days mountain biking and hiking in Mount Rainier, and then the long drive home.
Read MoreMount Rainier Photo Gallery - The Rest of the Trip
Last post! This collects the rest of my photos from our time on Mount Rainier. This included some great shots at Christine Falls, our hike around Reflection Lakes and some last bird, wildflower and waterfalls pictures. It was a great trip, and I hope you’ve enjoyed all the photos!
Read MoreRoad Trip Part 4 - Mount Rainier and the Skyline Trail
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 MoreRoad Trip Part 2 - Hood River Hiking
For the second part of our trip we headed south through eastern Washington State and across the border into Oregon, for our stay in Hood River. As expected it was hot, bit we had a good campsite on the river, and we had lots of activities lined up for our four nights in Hood River.
Read MoreHood River Photo Gallery - Eagle Creek Hike
I’ve had a chance to sit down and go through my photos on my “proper camera” from our hike up the Eagle Creek Trail. Rather than repeating the whole narrative from the day, I thought I’d just share a bunch of pictures from the hike. Just a warning - there’s a lot of pictures of waterfalls!
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 MoreA Visit from Alex and Squamish Weekend!
We had a couple of weeks back home in Vancouver and the timing could not have been better! We had a surprise Visit from Alex and we had a fun weekend in Squamish planned with our friends Nicole and Anthony.
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 MorePortland Road Trip!
The weekend before my birthday, the Vancouver Whitecaps were playing an away game in Portland. We’ve gone to these games a number of times over the years (this was my 4th) and so we decide to take a couple of days off and make a 4-day weekend out of it. The game was great, we had some fun in Portland, got out to our favorite winery, and took the long way home along the coast. Our friend Stuart came down for the game as well, and we had a great weekend!
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!
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