Likely the Last Post for the Year - Vancouver and Reifel

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…

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Updates from Vancouver and Galiano

It’s been a while since I posted any recent updates. I’ve been trying to catch up on posts from the Netherlands, and I’m most of the way through those. It’s been slow for a number of reasons, which I’ll go through in this post. There are some interesting updates from Justine’s birthday, mushroom foraging, and our recent “bomb cyclone”.

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Hiking on the Sea to Sky Gondola in Squamish

I just got back from a 10-day work trip to Nashville and Boston. And then had knee surgery, and so I am falling further behind on posts. This one is from before the trip, when Justine and I did a hike up on the Sea to Sky Gondola in Squamish. We needed to get another day on our season pass, and it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. So it seemed like the right time to do it!

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Northern Lights, Bioluminescence, Whales and More! 2 Weeks on Galiano!

We headed over to Galiano on Sunday morning for what was to be our longest ever stay - two full weeks. I had to head back for work for one day in the middle, but other than that we were working from the cottage and trying to enjoy the end of the summer. We had a rangle of adventures, including seeing the Northern Lights, bioluminescence while kayaking, whales on numerous occasions and more.

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Canada Day Birds

The last post was starting to get a bit too long, so I thought I better cut it off at the end of the day on Saturna. After getting home we spent the rest of the day just relaxing, and managed to get quite a few good photos of the birds around the property. This post might not be for everyone, but consider yourself warned!

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Canada Day! Saturna and Hanging Around Galiano

With Canada Day being on a Monday, we used the holiday to spend 10 days on Galiano. We headed over the Friday before, and had the weekend to relax, get some work done and enjoy summer (finally!). On Canada Day, our friend David was picking us up for our 2nd annual trip to Saturna for the epic Lamb BBQ. The rest of the week was working, then our friends Cindy and KJ were coming to stay - but we’ll cover that trip in the next post.

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A Visit from Mom

We were lucky enough to have Mom come and stay with us for a week over my birthday weekend! She was in town for a Wednesday to Wednesday, over the long weekend. We had a couple of days in Vancouver and then we headed over to Galiano, as she really wanted to see all that we had done. We did need her help with one last project to finish off the new deck…

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A May Galiano Update - Northern Lights!

We were headed back to Galiano for the weekend to complete (or mostly complete?) our deck building project. We had a couple of final pieces to put together, and we really wanted it done and ready for when Mom was visiting over my birthday weekend. The big surprise we ended up with was the amazing Northern Lights show that happened on Friday night. It was spectacular, a once in a generation solar storm that light up the skies!

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A Spring Visit to Reifel

With spring upon us, we were long overdue for a visit out to Reifel to check on the birds. And with the spring migration in full force, and with it being time for baby birds, we were hopeful that we’d have a good day out. Alex has moved out to Vancouver for the summer for her “summering” at a local law firm, and as she had expressed an interest to come along, she and Matt joined us for a fun day out.

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Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory

Wednesday, we were excited to join Risa for a day exploring the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory and general surroundings. I had been looking forward to this almost (but not quite) as much as the eclipse, as it gave us a chance to to see a bunch of birds we normally wouldn’t see out west. So yes, you can skip this post almost entirely if birds aren’t your thing.

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Total Solar Eclipse and Visit with Risa and Jeff

for the second leg of our trip, we headed east to Prince Edward County, as they were going to be in the path of totality, and by great coincidence, our friends Risa and Jeff live in the area! So we could watch the eclipse and get caught up. The other cool opportunity was to spend some time at the Prince Edward Point Bird Observatory, where Risa has been volunteering. So yes, be prepared for lots of bird pics…

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A Visit to Ontario

This year, there was another solar eclipse, with totality able to be seen across some parts of Southern Ontario. As it happened, our friend’s Risa and Jeff’s home was sitting right under the path of the totality. So that seemed like the perfect excuse to plan a trip - total solar eclipse and a chance to visit family and friends.

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Las Vegas - the Sphere and the Arts District

My previous post from our trip to Las Vegas was starting to get a bit long, so I thought I’d post it and pick up the details from the weekend in a separate post. We still had Saturday and Sunday to enjoy our mini vacation and we had lots on the go. We were visiting Las Vegas’ most recent attraction - The Sphere - and then we spent a day exploring the Arts District, where the locals hang out to get away from the Strip.

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