leaving newcastle

vespers

long live the king

comfort and abundance

There is a beautiful building on Newcastle Island where you can have a party,













relax on a gorgeous wrap-around porch,
















or enjoy a snack and a game of cards (that is us in there at the table).

star power

Mum, I'm ready for my closeup.





















It's the pictures that got small...

oak trees

You know how some spots just speak to you. This row of oaks by the bay spoke to me. I spent quite a bit of time here listening and looking.

life is a beach

tent

Here is where we sleep mostly. The first night was so balmy that 3 of us slept in front of the tent but after that the threat of rain was ever-present so we cautiously slept under cover. That is my red bag and orange mat beside the tent. Colour nausea! The box behind is a storage box so that the raccoons cannot raid your stuff in the night.

gifts from auntie-cousin julie

king of the (new)castle

nanaimo to newcastle island

on the ferry

from tswassen to duke point

home away from home

The flight was disco. Air Canada redeemed itself (on my last flight the crew was quite surly). The cabin lights changed colour on a cycle from purple through red, yellow and orange. The purple was nice and made me feel sleepy and restful. The other colours are a bit alarming.

The seats on the new AC planes are much roomier and you cannot flop them backwards into somebody's lap. Those extra centimetres make a huge difference. I wonder about the new first class seats though. It looks as if people are sitting in a brightly lit bathtub with a lot of sharp edges and annoying distractions. I used to feel quite jealous when I passed through the section with the low, wide leather chairs surrounded by SPACE. But now it looks like a bit of a post-modern nightmare in there.

The tvs, which are the only thing you do not have to pay extra for at this point, did not work properly and we got a coupon. The note said to go to this address for a special compensatory treat. Ha ha ha Air Canada!

Cousin Suz picked me up at the airport and took me for dinner here. We came home, talked literacy, felt exhausted, went to bed, and could not sleep a wink. She got up at who-knows-what time and has done laundry and gone grocery shopping while I am flopping about in my pjs and resorting my belongings for camping.

We are meeting the rest of the family on Newcastle Island this afternoon. I'll be off the grid for a couple of days. See you Wednesday.

waking up at ruckle

My cuz sent these of binocular boy and me.

froggie and frolic

And these of a froggie and a boy who know how to keep swinging.

back to bc

I am back from BC. I forgot to take the recharger for my camera battery and had not charged it before I left so I only managed a few photos before it kacked out.

We went to a bird sanctuary to test out new binoculars,
















feed the birds ... and us :-)

















and take some photos.















Later we went back to Ruckle Park on Saltspring Island.

The blue tent is about where our tent was on our last visit and the white tent is about where the orange tent was in the post below.

Our old campsite was taken so we found one a little further southwest.

On the second and third nights we abandoned our tent and slept on these rocks under the big moon and the starry starry sky. The first tentless night it was just binocular boy, his mum and me. My head was close to a blackberry bush and my cousin awoke in the night to see a deer eating blackberries.


On the second tentless night, my aunt, 2 cousins, cousin-in-law, 2 sons-of-a-cousin (see the post below) and I wrapped ourselves in everything we could find and sailed to the land of nod in our rocky wave-swept cradle.