Blogs from British Columbia, Canada, North America - page 2

It was a drizzly morning. Not enough to make packing up miserable, just enough to let you know it was there. As I said in yesterday's post, Mike and I went to the on-site restaurant for dinner. The dining area had a high curved ceiling. At about the height a regular ceiling would have been built, there was a wide wooden shelf that ran on three sides of the room. Now on this shelf there was some greenery; some bushy greenery, some viney greenery. The greenery on the shelf, and the shelf on the wall and the walls there in the dining area-o. Oops, sorry. So among the plastic pine boughs and fake trees were several taxidermied animals posed to attack, alert or flee. It was a little too dark in there last night to take ... read more

After a chilly night we woke early to get started on the longest leg of our trip. After a quick breakfast, we broke camp and continued east. I know, you're thinking, "But Alaska is northwest." We're heading over the Canadian Rocky Mountains to the official starting point of the Alcan Highway located in Dawson Creek, BC. We took the lead again to start the leg and an hour down the road I realized I'd left my phone in the trailer. We were now relying solely on Mike's phone for communication as well as navigation. This is not good because his phone has been having issues connecting to the internet and we kinda need that to help us get from here to there. All was going smoothly for about half an hour when I screwed up while ... read more

After returning from La Paz, Mexico, Leslie and I made a brief stop in Golden followed by a brief stop in Vernon to repack suitcases with foul weather sailing gear before heading to Sidney for 2 weeks of sailing on the west coast; a week sailing around Salt Spring in the Canadian Gulf Islands followed by one week in the San Juans Islands, USA. Ladysmith and Butchart gardens were highlights in the Gulf Islands. The Ladysmith Maritime Society marina is home to the largest Purple Martin colony in BC. After spending the winter in Brazil, the Blue Martins had returned to Ladysmith for the season. Purple Martins were first observed nesting there in 1989. Several nest boxes were installed in 1990. By 2002, there were 75 nest boxes and 35 pairs nested that summer and produced ... read more

Spring Break I am 41 years old and Spring Break has NEVER been a thing for me... until now. Growing up, I don't remember any big trips over spring break. This was always a week to clean the house or pick up extra shifts at work. Likewise, in college, I was always working on that 1-2 week break in late March or early April. I don't actually remember any spring break vacations in my life. (Maybe one to Vegas when I was really young? I'm not sure, you'd have to ask my mother.) But, now that I have two boys in grade school and a wife who's returned to college, Spring Break has become a thing in my home. Too bad their respective spring breaks don't overlap though. Chelly's spring break was the last two weeks ... read more

“It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport.’” - Douglas Adams And we’ve spend quite a bit of time in airports the last two days! If you read my last blog, you know we were concerned about making our standby flight from Rome to Vancouver. Spoiler alert, we missed it 😢. But, first things first, back to our last morning in Rome. The morning started with an email from WestJet saying our flight to Rome was delayed (an hour or so). We weren’t concerned about that, since there were several flights from Calgary to Vancouver we could take (we had to connect in Calgary). As long as we made the flight from Rome to Calgary, we’d be fine. We were up, showered, breakfasted, ... read more