This weekend was our last weekend at home before our trip back to Ontario to spend time with our families over the Christmas break. The weather wasn’t looking too bad, and we were hoping to sneak in a couple of activities on Sunday - a trip to Reifel to see what birds were about, and a last trip to the Christmas market. There are a couple of other random things here as well…
I’ve been doing a lot of physio over the last few weeks recovering from my recent knee surgery. As my physio is downtown, I’ve had a chance t see the city all lit up for Christmas. It’s looking very festive!
Outside the Art Gallery, they had a huge Christmas Tree set-up!
A closer view of the tree - and there was a Ferris Wheel.
Justine and I both like pumpkin beers, and this year it seemed like there were quite a large number of new ones, along with some of our old favourites. We purchased an assortment and Saturday night we did a little beer tasting of the different options to see how similar/different they were.
It was a tough call, but we persevered and tried them all! At the end of the tasting, I think my order of preference went:
Schadenfreude - Parallel 49
Crooked Tooth - Phillips (a nitro, so it may have had a slight advantage)
Porch Ornament - R&B Brewing
Pumpkin Ale - Steamworks
Crow’s Hollow - Stanley Park Brewing
None of them are bad - I’ll happily drink any of them, but Schadenfreude came out on top!
Sunday - A Trop to Reifel
Sunday the weather was much better than what we had on Saturday, and we were lucky that Justine had been on the ball and booked us a slot. We drove down to Delta after running a few errands, and were almost late for our allotted arrival time. We just snuck in before 11:00.
Lesser Scaup
We had a pretty good day for raptors in the park. We had a number of eagles fly by, the great horned owl was hanging out and there were lots of northern harriers.
Juvenile Bald Eagle
An almost-mature Adult
The Great-horned Owl was hanging out in his tree, but he would not show his face.
There are always chickadees about…
As we were walking around the sanctuary, all you could hear were the snow geese. They were fairly far away, but the noise was something crazy! To try and see them, we walked along the outer path, which get’s you as close to the ocean as you can. And sure enough, there were thousands of them right at the water’s edge.
There were also quite a few herons about - not nearly as many as the snow geese, as you can see off in the distance.
Heron in flight.
I don’t usually take a lot of photos of the herons, but I really liked this scene.
As we were walking along the outer path, we heard a kingfisher. They are usually really hard to get photos of, as they always seem to fly off in the opposite direction. This time, I did manage to get a few shots.
There were also quite a few sandhill cranes. We saw some out in the fields as well as a few at different spots around the sanctuary. They are always great to see, and the light was getting quite nice while we were with them.
Our walk around Reifel.
We took the long way back to the entrance, doing a loop around the inner ponds. We had a few more nice sightings, but it was getting a little past lunch time, and it was time to head out.
After leaving Reifel, we headed into Ladner and made a stop at some of the local shops to pickup some groceries and other things we needed.
With some of those errands out of the way, we headed over to Barnside Brewery for lunch. They have such a great outdoor space, and we had grilled cheese sandwiches and a beer while enjoying the afternoon.
After wrapping up our lunch, we headed for home. Thankfully traffic was fairly light and we made good time. We stopped in to see Simon to drop off a load of Arbutus wood for his fireplace and then stopped and did a bit more shopping.
The plan for the late afternoon was to head back downtown and make a last visit to the Vancouver Christmas Market before we headed for Ontario.
The Christmas Market is a great event, and we like it so much that we get an annual pass. This was our third visit, so we got good value out of it. They have great German-themed food and drinks, and we particularly like the mulled wine. As we hand been twice already this year, we were content to wander about, pick up a few last things and just enjoy the festive atmosphere. It’s a great event!
