Nova Scotia: Causeway

The first book I completed for the 2015 Reading Challenge was Causeway: A Passage from Innocence by Linden MacIntyre. This was an autobiographical book set in Port Hastings, Nova Scotia in the 1950s and 60s. 

Goodreads says:
Causeway is Linden MacIntyre's evocative memoir of his Cape Breton childhood. At once a vibrant coming-of-age story, a portrait of a vanishing way of life and a reflection on fathers and sons, the narrative revolves around the construction of the Canso Causeway that would link the small Cape Breton village of MacIntyre's childhood to the wide world of the mainland. Shot through with humour, humanity and vivid characters, Causeway is an extraordinary book, a memoir that has set a new standard for the genre.

Having recently traveled to Nova Scotia, including Cape Breton and the Canso Causeway, I had a bit more connection with what the Canso Causeway is, and how it could change life. Even without that, I really enjoyed this book.

New Skills for a New Year

This year R and I decided to set a goal (rather than a resolution) to learn 12 new skills.

We've only have two figured out so far, and the first was easy: my siblings gave me a cheddar cheese making kit for Christmas. The second will be archery sometime in the summer, mostly for R. Growing up, my aunt and uncle ran a traditional bow & arrow making company, and they made some stuff for us. Being in Guiding forever helped as well.

So, that leaves 10 new skills to learn (and figure out!). Good thing it's only January 4th.

A borrowed lens

Sometime at the end of August, R borrowed a lens from his coworker for me. It was a 11-16 mm f2.8 Tokina wideangle lens, and it was really fun to play with.

Neither of my lenses are wide angle (55mm vs the 77mm of the borrowed), so that was a fun treat to play with. I have an 18-55mm and a 50-200mm, so it was quite different from what I'm used to.

camera + borrowed lens

We headed up to Kamloops for a wedding, and stopped near Shumway lake to try some night photos.

Milky way and the mountain

More Milky Way

Unfortunately, it was quite cold so we didn't stay as long as we would have maybe liked. It was still fun though, and a good use of a different lens, and my tripod and timer. I don't think either of my other lenses would have worked very well, because you wouldn't be able to see enough of the sky to get the same perspective.

Fence near Tranquille on the lake

 I was playing with my camera mostly in manual mode, but I managed to overexpose most of my photos.. Oooh well!

peeling birch bark

 We had a picnic lunch with R's family down on the beach, where we saw otters, loons, grebes and random people..

Tranquille pasture through the SUV window. Nice UV filter!

Adirondacks at Tranquille on the Lake

I enjoyed playing with this lens, and borrowed another similar (12-24mm, f4.0 wide angle) lens to play with for a while. We're heading back up to Kamloops this weekend, so we'll try for some more star photos!

Color Me Rad 5k

Saturday morning was Color Me Rad - a 5k run where coloured cornstarch and water is .. splattered? on you. The point is to wear white at the start, and end up being completely covered in a rainbow of colours.

Me and M before the race. All nice and clean!

 I couldn't find a white shirt, so R very sweetly lent me one of his..

A fire extinguisher of orange stuff at the start line.

 Busy start line. People were stoked to be neon-coloured soon!

Feet & colour packs.

 At about 4.5 km, they give out a pack of colour to everyone.

Finish line! And the purple cloud just before..

Me.. at the end (with a creepy hand??)

 I was pretty clean looking, compared to some people.

Colour toss!

Every few minutes there's an annoucement, and people tossed up the colour.. Pretty cool looking.

Fall

The days are getting shorter, the mornings crisper, and the leaves redder. It's definitely fall in Vancouver, and while I'm sure it's not, it feels way earlier than it should.

I've started wearing tshirts or even long-sleeved shirts on my runs, and I almost want to wear a toque on my way to work (except that I feel dorky, since it's still September!). Maybe tomorrow..

I'm not really ready for it to be fall.. I don't enjoy getting up before the sun, or going to bed three hours after the sun has set again.

To look on the bright side, fall is a great time to take photos. We're having Thanksgiving dinner with friends this weekend, with family the weekend after that, and then I get to fly away to visit my best friend and her sister, who is basically my almost-sister. And then, the month will be half over. Crazy!

Leaves on the sidwalk

W 19th Ave on a run.

Tree on my walk from work

I really like having a camera that's always with me and takes good enough photos.

Happy (basically) October!

Insta-update

It's been a while since I've blogged. I don't really have any desire to update with a long post, since I am most definitely not a writer. However, some photos that I've taken are kind of cool, so.. that's what's going up.

Home made blueberry pies and tea at R's grandparents.

Fireworks at R's birthday in July

Beautiful reflections in False Creek

Windmills near Tumbler Ridge

Flying home from the Peace in August

Borrowed lens on a beautiful camera.

Trip over the new Port Mann!

And more of the Port Mann

Cloud bank leaving Vancouver for the Peace, again.

Sunset at Iona beach

Monday night bike ride!

Fall sunrise and sun flare

That's a quick life update. I'll try and post some photos from our long hike this summer sometime, too.

Hike: Lynn Peak

A few weeks ago, R and I did the Lynn Peak hike. We'd seen signs for it last summer while hiking the Lynn Headwaters, but it seemed a bit off the beaten track. I was talking to a coworker about hikes in that area in early April and took another look at Lynn Peak. I saw a recent comment on one of the hiking sites that said that it was good to hike now. We packed our gear (including R's new backpacking pack!) and headed out. We started hiking shortly before noon, I believe.

The top was a bit of a slog - it was covered in snow and fairly slippery. The view at the top was pretty worth it though!

Yes. That is Vancouver..

Burnaby & Vancouver

panorama of it.. Burnaby - Vancouver

 Stats:
Length: 3 hours, 45 minutes (from sign at trailhead)
Distance: 8.5km
Elevation gain: 720 m (according to this)

I'm not sure I'd do this hike again - the view was nice, but it wasn't an overly exciting trail. It was good as a starter for the year though.

San Francisco - day 4 (and trip details)

Our last day in San Francisco wasn't overly exciting - it was a clean up day, in a sense. We hadn't made it to the Mission, the Castro or the Painted Ladies. We realized though that since we were up so early and there was a BART station close by, it made sense to just check out early and walk towards the Painted Ladies, and then down.

On our way, we saw the civic centre (and city hall).

City Hall

 What a gorgeous building! I'm not sure what's up with the kind of weird looking trees, but maybe in the spring and summer they look nice. For now, they just look a bit funny!

After that, we walked to Alamo Park to see the Painted Ladies. I wasn't really blown away by this 'attraction' .. They looked nice, but so did most of the houses in San Francisco! Ahh well. Took the obligatory tourist photo and headed on to the Castro and Mission.

Painted Ladies

With the last few things seen and done, we headed back towards the Castro and Mission districts where we wandered around, ate a bit more and headed to the airport.

The details:
We stayed at the Mosser Hotel. It was cheap, really central and really cute. I like old-style buildings with big trim and old doorknobs.. this place fit the bill. We opted for the shared bathrooms mainly because neither of us care that much, and it was cheaper.

Some of our favourite restaurants from the trip are:
Cassava - a really cute cafe in the Richmond area. We had a grilled veggie panini and a salad, both of which were awesome!
Restaurant Lulu - our fancy dinner out. This restaurant was fairly close to our hotel. We shared some seriously amazing and tender beef and a grilled eggplant pizza.
Tropisueno - this was my favourite of the trip. Also close to our hotel, this was authentic Mexican.
Boudin Bakery - This is San Francisco's original sourdough bakery. We headed there for lunch after going to Alcatraz. Pretty awesome sour dough, and clam chowder in a sourdough bowl (I didn't try it..).

I forgot to mention that I searched "San Francisco" in the Apple store before I left, just to see if there might be anything useful. I found this "Top 25 San Francisco" and loved it. It worked while in airplane mode (map included!), had prices, etc. It was really useful, and I will definitely be looking for another similar app next time we travel!

San Francisco - day 3

Today we took the bus to Golden Gate Park. We planned to spend the day in the park and at the Golden Gate bridge. This part of San Francisco is actually larger than downtown, but our map was condensed so that what 2.5 miles looked twice as big as 4 miles..

We started off in the Japanese Tea Garden (free on Mondays before 10am!). We wandered around for a little while and then had some tea.

Pagoda in the Japanese Tea Garden

The weather was gorgeous, and being in such a quiet place in the morning was quite peaceful.

Japanese Tea Garden

Japanese Tea Garden

From there, we wandered west through the park toward the ocean. We saw a herd of bison (yep! in a park, in San Francisco..), many ponds and lakes, and along some nice trails.

Windmill at the west end

We came out near this windmill and then headed straight for a gorgeous beach..

Gorgeous beach!

From there, we wandered east to find some food, and eventually a bus to take us to the glorious Golden Gate Bridge.

Bridge!

 I'm still not over how gorgeous this bridge was, how amazing the weather was for our trip.. or how good it felt to be away from home in February!

More bridge.

 We walked under, hoping to be able to walk across on the west side of the bridge (to get photos of bridge + city) but for some reason it was closed.

Underside..

 We walked to the first tower on the east side of the bridge. It was pretty busy..

Cables.

 Gorgeous though. As awesome as it was to see this with clear blue skies, I think that it would be pretty neat to see it covered in fog, too. Next time, perhaps!

San Francisco - day 2

Sunday was another gorgeous day (what more would you expect from California?!). We had booked tickets to Alcatraz for 10 am, so we decided to take the cable car assuming it would be less busy than other days. We missed one and ended up waiting for the third because every other car went where we wanted it to.

Cable car!

 When we first started exploring on Saturday we really thought people were joking about the hills. Where we started out, it was mostly flat with a little bit of slope. About half an hour later we understood..

Looking straight out from the cable car.

 Hilly.. yes. Just a little!!

We finally made it on the boat to Alcatraz, where we were rewarded with gorgeous views of the city.

San Francisco!

About 10 minutes later, we had a close up of Alcatraz.

Alcatraz. The penitentiary is at the top.

A tree!

With your ticket to Alcatraz comes an audio tour of the cells, which talked about some of the bigger events in the history of the penitentiary, as well as the layout and what all of the different functions of the rooms were. It was a good tour, aside from being with a ton of people and having it sort of back track to places where we'd already been once. Made for quite a few people standing in the hall, staring at a clock..

Cell in Alcatraz

San Francisco - complete with hills!

The view of the city from Alcatraz was gorgeous - tall buildings, hills... very pretty.

One of the wardens started gardening at Alcatraz, and many of the gardens still remain. There is (of course) a friends of the garden type of volunteer association. 

Geraniums, wire and the ocean (with Angel island in the background)

Flowers looking up (the hill..) at the penitentiary.

Alcatraz was a fairly interesting place, although the park rangers mentioned it's history aside from the penitentiary, there was not very many signs that really pointed it out. Obviously the history of the penitentiary with Al Capone, a few escapes and all that was way more interesting.

We spent the rest of Sunday wandering the east side of San Francisco and had a relaxing evening before heading for some awesome food.