A Visit from Mark, Katherine and Family

Here I am, once again way behind on posts from the summer. It’s been a busy one, and the time has flown by.

In early July, we had a visit on Galiano from some of Justine’s friends from Ontario. Mark and Katherine, and their kids Claire and Julia were doing a summer trip to the west coast and had decided to stay at an AirBnB on Galiano for a weekend. We were of course happy to play host for their visit and show them our island.

Before they got there, Justine and I were on island for afew days, doing our own thing.

It’s been a great summer, and the lavender in the fire pit garden is in full bloom - so many bees!

This was from back in Vancouver, but it was odd that there were baby ducks this late in the season.

Golfing on morning and the deer were in full invasion of the tee boxes.

Flowers from the garden.

We got a great harvest of raspberries from our little patch this year.

As I am woefully late in posting this, I don’t have a lot of details to add. We spent a few days hanging out and exploring the island. We took them to a bunch of our favourite spots - Montague Harbour, Crane and Robin, the Saturday market, hiking at the Conservancy, Valley Grill - but the main event was a day on the water kayaking. That made it twice for us this summer, and we had another glorious day exploring on the water.

Mark and Claire - leading the way.

Julia and Katherine

Ready for an adventure!

There were lots of seals around, including some very little babies.

As the tide was quite low, we were able to shown them a fair amount of sea life, like these purple sea stars

And a leather sea star.

And even sea urchins!

Before heading back, we pulled up on a “beach” and had some lunch.

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Our paddle around Montague Harbour. We went for a nice swim (freezing!) afterwards.

We had a couple of nice evenings sitting on the deck and enjoying the summer nights.

We had deer visitors most evenings.

And lovely sunsets.

The “new” deck is amazing for sitting out on summer evening.

We also went for a nice hike at the Conservancy, to show off more of the forested parts of the island. Then went to Valley Grill for dinner that night.

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The map of our hike around the Conservancy.

We had a great visit and really enjoyed the time we got to spend with the whole family. It was nice having them on Galiano. Justine and I were on Galiano for a couple of days after they left, just doing the usual.

The deer seem to have no appreciation for staying off the greens while someone is trying to putt…

There are lots of babies around right now.

The Bird Buddy got a couple of good shots of the hummingbirds!