Bluegrass and Shakespeare... or not!

One Saturday morning at the end of August, we headed across the border with Angharad for a blissful overnight trip to Whidbey Island.  The plan for Saturday included going to a bluegrass festival at the Meerkirk Gardens, and then seeing a free outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Lunch at Calico Cupboard in Mt Vernon

Here are some photos we took at the peaceful Meerkirk Gardens as we meandered our way towards the distant strains of bluegrass music...

Once we reached the music, we realised that "festival" may have been a bit of an overstatement.  There were three bands playing throughout the day, one at a time.... and no queues for the site's three port-a-loos!  Anyway, it was a pleasant setting and we listened to most of the second band's set before deciding it was time to hit the road again if we wanted to have time to purchase the makings of a picnic dinner before the Shakespeare performance.

The band and the crowd

18 week photo

After getting ourselves picnic-ready, we headed to the outdoor performance venue, arriving only to find cardboard signs and sympathetic volunteers advising us that the evening's performance was already full. They'd had hundreds more people show up than they expected and were now turning carloads more away. Even our sob story of driving all the way from Canada was to no avail!

Anyway, we drove to a nearby beach - the same one we had eaten at with Kelly, Janae and Etta a month earlier - and enjoyed our picnic dinner there instead, watching cruise ships pass by and happy dogs frolic on the sand.

That night we stayed at a Dutch-themed motel in Oak Harbor, and on Sunday morning we had a hearty breakfast at a typical American diner down the road.

Our motel

Low-fat breakfast...?

After breakfast, we followed some of the locals to a meeting back on the mainland at Anacortes, and had lunch with them afterwards at their favourite Chinese restaurant.

That afternoon we drove home again, having had a slightly different kind of weekend to what we had anticipated, but a very nice one nonetheless!

Summer boating

During August and September we were invited out three times to go boating/ wakeboarding with some of our boat-owning friends.

We hadn't been wakeboarding since before we left Australia 5 years ago, so it was amusing to suddenly receive three invitations once I'm not in a condition to go wakeboarding! Anyway, I loved cruising along the river and admiring the beautiful scenery. And Ben got to go wakeboarding and antagonise a few muscles that had been getting used to their retirement!

Here are some photos from the first two times we went out, on Gary and Krista's boat. The first evening we moored at Steveston for some delicious fish and chips before continuing on our way. Steveston is a cute little fishing village and popular dinnertime destination for locals. We had been meaning to go for ages but hadn't got around to it, so arriving by boat was a pretty awesome introduction!

(Note: these pics were taken on Ben's phone so aren't very good quality.)

Coming in to Steveston

Fishermen getting a birds-eye view

Where our fish and chips came from
(we moored behind this building)

Sunset

The least-blurry photo I managed to get of Ben

Floating houses near where G&K moor their boat

The third time we went out was with David and Deb and their kids. The scenery that time was even more spectacular - green pastures, deserted little beaches, and dramatic mountains and valleys in the distance. We enjoyed a home-made picnic lunch while the boat drifted in the river, and also headed partway into the city and observed some of the local bridges from a new angle!

Ben

Port Mann Bridge

Deb, Naomi and Tanika

Logging

It was great to get out on the river a few times this summer. Thanks for including us!

Roxy's visit

From August 8th to 12th, Roxy came to visit.  She was road-tripping with her friend April and it was so fun to have them stay for a few days.  I took the time off work and showed them how wonderful Vancouver is during the summer (since Rox only lived here for the coldest and rainiest half of the year)!

Highlights from Roxy's visit included:

Reading on the beach at English Bay...

(Roxy's photo)

Riding the False Creek Ferries (my first time ever!) from English Bay to Granville Island and back...

April and Rox

Korean BBQ with a bunch of friends who wanted to catch up with Roxy...

Left side of table: Layne, Roxy, Samira, Junghyun
Right side of table: April, Amanda, me, Ben, Andrew
(Roxy's photo)

Lunch and a train ride at Stanley Park with Rosanne, Aydin and Gemma...

(Roxy's photo)

Introducing the girls to the fantastic Richmond Night Market...

... And spending Wednesday night, Saturday and Sunday at convention.

(Roxy's photo)

Thanks for visiting, Rox - come back soon!

Coming soon...

Working in the Wilds

Things have been pretty busy for me (Ben) at work lately. Part of the reason is that I am heavily involved in a very large project that requires a lot of different input from me; however, one of the upshots of this is that I actually got to go out into the field for 6 days about a month ago. I don't get let out of the office very often, so this was quite exciting! Especially since it was a pretty fun trip, which included...

Flying in helicopters...

Learning what biologists actually do in the field (it seems to involve a lot of sitting down)...

Seeing some great scenery (and hiking down 45 degree slopes of dense bush with great scenery)...

Including lots of pretty flowers...

And some more unusual finds, like a lightning struck tree...

And a dead moose...

But before you get too jealous, it also involved 14 hour days, long weekends that weren't (weren't weekends at all actually), some fairly heavy hiking, very early mornings, and mad dashes to the airport where you take the wrong car and leave half of your belongings behind at the hotel but are very grateful for lovely workmates who pick up behind you and bring it all home again!