Off to the Netherlands - Pre-trip Check In

My big trip for the year was to be two weeks in the Netherlands with Mom and Mackenzie. We’ve been planning this trip for over a year, focused on some family reunion plans in the Netherlands that Mom really wanted to attend. It seemed like a great opportunity for me to spend some quality time with Mom and Mackenzie, and for me to meet some of our Dutch relatives that I have either not met, or not met since I was very small. I’m going to have a huge number of posts, as we had two full weeks and visited lots of cool places!

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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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A Last Couple of Stops in Ontario

I think this will be the last post from the Ontario trip. We have two more stops - one with our friends Carolynne and Graham at their home on Stoney Lake, then a quick stop in Alton with Mom and the rest of the family. It’s been a great trip - very relaxing and we got to catch up with a lot of different people. There’s never enough time, but it was time well spent.

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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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Las Vegas and Bruce Springsteen

This past weekend we flew down to Las Vegas for a fun weekend of music and escape from the Vancouver winter. We did not get the weather we had hoped for, and the trip ended up being a day longer than we had planned, but the main event, Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band at T-Mobile Arena was everything I have been imagining and hoping for, for the better part of 40 years. There’s lots to cover…

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