The next couple of weeks are buy for us with having some friends staying with us on Galiano. I’m very far behind on getting these posted, so some of the details may be a little bit off!
Cindy and KJ were our first visitors, coming in from Toronto as part of one of Cindy’s business trips. We hadn’t seen them in a bit, and we were excited to come have them stay with us! Thanks to Justine and Cindy for most of these photos! Gotta love shared albums.
A late lunch on Friday afternoon and the Crane and Robin!
I met Cindy and KJ through a mutual friend, while I was living in London. They had been there for a while already, had made the expat adjustment and were kind enough to take me under their wing and help me explore my new (temporary) home. That phase of my life was incredibly busy with travel, so we didn’t hang out as much as I would have liked, but we certainly cemented a strong, and as it turns out, enduring friendship. Here we are more than 15 years later.
As they are in Toronto, we try and visit with them when we’re back, and have been pretty good at catching up at least once a year. Plus Cindy has fairly regular trips to Vancouver, so we catch up on this end as well. But this was the first trip to Galiano for them, and we were excited to show off our island.
I managed to mostly get the grass cut in time for their visit.
They came over on the late morning ferry on Friday afternoon, getting to out place just before lunch time. We gave the tour of the place, showing off our outstanding views and providing the very brief tour of the cottage. They had brought way too much food and drink with them, which we got sorted and then sat and caught up for a bit.
We thought we’d go with a fairly relaxing day, and so decided to head down to Montague and check out the beach at our little park. As it was a lovely day, it made for a nice short stroll on the beach. We didn’t spend too much time, and as we were all getting a bit hungry, we headed over to the CRane and Robin pub for some lunch.
Looking out over the marina from our seats at the pub.
The beach at Montague Harbour Provincial Park. It was surprisingly quite for a summer weekend.
We did the short hike around the peninsula at Montague Harbour, stopping for a few photos along the way. It’s a great little walk, and it let’s us show off one of the nicer spots on the island.
Cindy and I admiring the view.
After lunch, we headed back to the cottage and relaxed for the rest of the afternoon. We had a drink, got caught up and generally had a lovely day. Eventually we started to get a bit peckish, and so we broke out a charcuterie board. We didn’t really need a whole meal, so this ended up being a perfect amount of food to snack on as we enjoyed a sunset.
Dinner! A pretty good spread.
The deer decided to put on a pretty good show for our guests.
Our local friends - they’re really not worried about us at all.
Saturday was our busy day - we had lots that we wanted to pack in! We started off with a bit of breakfast, then \headed south to go to the Galiano Saturday Market. While it’s not the most exciting thing in the world, it has it’s charms and we’ve actually been quite impressed with the number of vendors this year. It’s felt busier, with more to see. It’s been good. Cindy and KJ seemed to enjoy it, and they found a few things to purchase as well. We also picked up some fish to make for dinner that evening.
After checking out the market, we drove up to Mary Anne Point, and walked down the trail to the water and the overlook of Active Pass. We’ve had success with orcas here in the past, but it was always a long shot at best. Still the views are quite nice and we took a few minutes to enjoy the scenery.
KJ, Justine and I at Active Pass.
While we didn’t have orcas come by, we did have the Salish Orca come through Active Pass while we were watching. It’s not really the same…
After watching (futilely) for whales, we headed over to Morning Beach to go for a swim! This had been one of the requests from Cindy and KJ, but sadly when we got to morning beach, swimming wasn’t really on the cards. The tide was way out, and while this is a great beach, it’s not so much a swimming beach at low tide. Still, the low tide presented other opportunities, and we saw a few pretty cool things while wading in the sand.
After wandering the shallows and tide pools at Morning Beach, we headed home for a bit, and to make some lunch. As we still owed them a swim, we decided we’d head to Pebble BEach in the late afternoon, closer to high tide for that dip in the ocean.
The hike down is about 15 minutes from the parking lot, but it’s a nice little hike through the forest. It’s amazing how dry everything is already, even though we’re still quite early in the season. When we arrived at the beach, there were a few groupsof people about, but they mainly packed up and left not long after our arrival. Other then a couple of small groups a ways up the beach, we had the place pretty much to ourselves.
After getting in the water a couple of times, it was time to head home. We walked back from Pebble Beach, through Cable Bay and then back up to the parking lot. It has been a great afternoon swim, and a pretty full day.
After getting back, having showers and getting ourselves sorted out, we all collaborated on putting dinner together. It was a very healthy affair, with salmon from the market, kale from the garden and some lovely tomatoes and fresh basil for a salad. Coupled with some good wine, it was a pretty perfect evening!
A great meal to end a great day!
And the evening was capped off with another great sunset.
Sunday, we all (sadly) had to head home. Cindy and KJ were flying back to Toronto late that evening, so were on the afternoon ferry. We were scheduled a couple of hours after them, on the evening boat. So we had a pretty relaxing, loungy day. We started a little later (or as late as the blazing sunrise allows at our place), with everyone getting into at their own pace.
We then whipped up a proper English breakfast on the grill, with bacon, eggs and fried mushrooms on toast. It was pretty great. After that, we just really lounged, chatted, read and relaxed until it was time to pack up and head for home.
It was really great having Cindy and KJ come stay with us, and I hope it;s not too long before they come back for another visit to our little island!