On Friday, we drove to the Old Country Market in Combs which is north of Nanaimo. It is supposedly a major tourist attraction. The original market was created in 1973 by Kristian Graaten. Kris, who grew up in the small community of Lillehammer, was inspired to include a sod roof in his design of the… Read More Old Country Market

On Wednesday, I took a delightful rest day and stayed at the house. My big accomplishment for the day was to go swimming in the lake. The house has a hot tub which I’ve been enjoying in the morning. Here are some pictures of the house and the lake. The big adventure for Thursday was… Read More More adventures on Vancouver Island.

Janet, Jess and I charted a fishing boat out of Sooke for the afternoon. We left the guys and the kids home to do the grocery shopping and dinner cooking. Here are the pictures taken while we were out on the Juan de Fuca Strait fishing. Unfortunately most of the fish were too small to… Read More First full day in Canada

Today, my daughter and her family, my son and his wife and I headed up to Canada. We have rented a house on Cowichan Lake on Vancouver Island. To get there from Portland, we drove to Port Angeles in Washington and took the Coho ferry over to Victoria. From Victoria, it was a two hour… Read More Family excursion to Canada

For a number of years now, my family and I have been going up to the Hood Canal area of Washington to gather shellfish. This year we decided to try going to Harstine Island in the lower Puget Sound, just north of Olympia. My daughter, Janet, was determined to get a geoduck clam. Supposedly they… Read More In pursuit of the elusive geoduck 

As some of you know, I was supposed to leave last Friday to visit my friend in Frankfurt and then go on to a tour of the Caucasus. Unfortunately, my body decided that last week it needed to have its gallbladder removed. I had to postpone my trip. I just wanted to let people know… Read More Didn’t make it to the Caucasus

Low tide today was at 9:45 am. Our first stop was in Garibaldi to buy some bait for the eel fishing. There is a fish called a monkey faced eel, which is not a true eel that hides in holes in the rock. Janet was determined to see if she could catch one. So we… Read More Hunting and gathering. Day 2 at the Oregon Coast

My daughter Janet, and I drove over to the Oregon coast to spend three days hunting and gathering. The objective is to gather things that people don’t usually eat and see if they taste good enough to repeat. We spent the first night in Newport Beach. We had dinner at a restaurant called Local Ocean… Read More Hunting and gathering at the Oregon Coast – Day 1

Dan and Berni have a timeshare on the north end of Mazatlan. On Monday morning Berni and I went there to spend two nights. It is a charming resort with a swimming pool and beach. We mainly came here to just hang out and relax. This morning Berni and I went to a cooking class.… Read More Last day in Mazatlan