travel

A neighbourhood approach

/ Greg / Leave a comment

Across a few trips to Vancouver last summer and fall I sampled the bounty that is that city’s craft beer scene. Vancouver is a favourite city of mine for a number of reasons – the direct flight from where I live, the ability to see mountains and water in the same place, the varied food scene, and definitely the abundance of craft beer.

Using a neighbourhood approach to exploration, I got one day kicked off in West Van at the earliest to open patio at Parallel 49. I created a tasting flight of a selection of hazy IPAs from that brewery and also from a couple of guest taps they had of Superflux. Luckily I was doing this neighbourhood tour by public transit and by foot, because these were all potent (and delicious!).

Parallel 49 Brewing Company
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The tradition continues, kind of…

/ Greg / Leave a comment

One of my favourite travel traditions is taking an annual self-indulgent, solo trip to satisfy my inner baseball nerd. Over the years, that now has me sitting at visiting 16 of the 30 major league ballparks with my brain constantly working on the logistics to tick off the final 14. The pandemic years put a halt to my progress that I’m glad is changing this year as I have plans to visit Detroit and Cleveland later this summer.

Last summer, looking to scratch the itch of live baseball, I decided to take the relatively short trip to Vancouver for a few nights of minor league baseball. The Vancouver Canadians, an affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, play out of the cozy and idyllic Nat Bailey Stadium. For the low cost of $25 you can have the best seat in the house behind home plate. A beautiful Vancouver summer evening, cold local craft beers and the crack of the bat….. couldn’t be better!

Vancouver Canadians game
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Tofino in three beaches

/ Greg / Leave a comment

There was lots to love about Tofino – the food and the whale sightings being prime examples – but what sticks with me most almost a year later is the time wandering along three beaches over my stay. After seven years living in the middle of the country, any time I can be near salt water feels a little more special than when I took it for granted when I lived in Halifax. So while I will always carry with me great memories from Tofino, the story of Tofino, and what will draw be back again is really the story of visiting these three beaches

Tonquin Beach

I hiked here early in the morning from our glamping pod right on the harbour. I picked this beach for its ease of access and location and it ended up being more special to me than I would have ever expected. The beach even came with this arrival preview during a short walk through the woods which pulled me to the water immediately.

Tonquin Beach
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Dreams of Tofino

/ Greg / 1 Comment

For a very long time I had made up my mind that I would fall in love with Tofino when I was finally able to visit. That really isn’t much of a stretch as I have always been partial to west coast locations with their beaches and wonderful sea air. When we planned out our Vancouver Island trip last summer there was no doubt that a significant portion of it would be based out of Tofino. While the warm up acts of a few days in Victoria and spending some time at a cottage on the east coast of the island were splendid, I was giddy when we pointed our car toward the west coast and Tofino.

On our way there we made a few stops to break up the drive. First up was MacMillan Provincial Park and Cathedral Grove. Finding a parking spot in the tight highway lot was a bit of a chore, but after that was sorted out, our hike through the forest was perfectly serene.

MacMillan Provincial Park
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Back from Arizona… finally

/ Greg / Leave a comment

If absence makes the heart grow fonder, there was no way I wasn’t going to be head over heels for finally making it to Spring Training in Arizona. Thanks to the pandemic, my baseball nerd dreams of lounging in the Arizona sun watching baseball got shelved in 2020 and it took until last week to finally make that trip. It was a trip that, truthfully, I’ve wanted to take for a much longer time.

The hook for the trip was spring training baseball – small stadiums, lazy afternoons and getting a close up view of the game I love so much. This year, as scheduling luck would have it, the World Baseball Classic was happening with a round of games in downtown Phoenix at the Diamondbacks stadium. I got the schedules for all of those games, a map, and got to work planning out the kind of visit my baseball loving heart has always dreamed of.

At Rockies-Padres in Scottsdale, AZ
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Some needed time beside the water

/ Greg / 1 Comment

A bit of a warning… You’re going to see a lot of beach photos coming up below.

By the summer 2022 portion of the pandemic, my Atlantic Canadian soul needed to spend some significant time sitting beside a fairly substantial body of water. With that in mind, we planned out our Vancouver Island explorations with a few days at a cottage overlooking the Strait of Georgia. Immediately on driving up to the place I could feel my pulse slowing down. My wife and I glanced at each other and with no words passing between us we both knew we had made a perfect decision on location.

As the sun set on our first night in Qualicum Bay we walked the beach with the tide starting to go out. This was a walk we would do a number of times.

Qualicum Bay, BC
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Gone to the birds

/ Greg / 1 Comment

My wife and I over our years of traveling together maintain a friendly, slightly tongue in cheek banter about one aspect of our travel plans for every trip. When we’ve settled on a location, her internet sleuthing very quickly goes to searching out zoos, aquariums and other animal-related adventures we could get up to. Somewhere on our life journey together I issued an edict…. only one zoo per year. Don’t get me wrong… I love animals. An occasional zoo, especially a renowned one like in San Diego, say…. I’m all in. But given the choice of spending part of a day looking at animals or wandering a new locale, I’m going to opt for the latter 99 times out of 100.

When we were making plans for our time on Vancouver Island my wife found a wildlife sanctuary focused on birds of prey that was serendipitously located just off the highway on our way to a cottage as we travelled to Qualicum Bay. As she dug further into it she discovered that not only could we walk around and look at hawks and owls and such, but we could also get up close experiences with a variety of raptors. I’ll admit, that sounded pretty cool. So my 2022 “zoo” was going to be something called “The Raptors” just outside Duncan, BC.

The Raptors, Duncan BC
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Back to a coast

/ Greg / 1 Comment

Our summer west coast adventure around Vancouver Island kicked off with a few days in Victoria. On account of the pandemic and a less frequent travel schedule, we both were looking forward to some time on the coast. This was my second and my wife’s first visit to this beautiful city. We had incredible luck with weather in what can be a very damp, grey and dreary climate. Our stay came during an extended heat wave and perfectly blue skies, perfect for exploring Victoria on foot. What’s a trip to Victoria without a walk around the inner harbour and a stop to gaze upon the Fairmont Empress?

Fairmont Empress hotel in Victoria, BC
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A perfect unplanned day

/ Greg / Leave a comment

Anyone who tried to travel by air in the summer of 2022 in Canada will have some sort of horror story to tell. The day before our planned trip to Vancouver Island I received the dreaded text message from Air Canada with a flight cancelation for our flight the next day. In the end, we lost the first day we were scheduled to spend in Victoria, but on the positive side, we at least arrived just in advance of the airport’s rental car location closing so we could snag our car for an extra late night drive to our downtown hotel.

We woke up fresh the next morning, but quite hungry as the previous day’s delays and flight changes left us woefully little time to actually eat en route to Victoria. My wife had picked out John’s Place, a diner a block from our hotel that had an extensive list of gluten-free goodies (waffles!) and while she had done significant research on this place, I knew nothing about it…. until we walked in and I was greeted by this sign. Instantly, I knew this was a good omen for a great day ahead.

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