Archives for posts with tag: BC

champagne-rose-petal-jelly-212ml-400x480

If you’re looking for a treat for your sweetheart, or just looking for a way to take your camp kitchen to the next level, we’ve got a suggestion: Artisan Edibles jellies and chutneys. We bought a jar of their Champagne Rose Petal Jelly while visiting the Saltspring Cheese Company on Saltspring Island in B.C. and it’s absolutely amazing. Delicate, not overly sweet, it lasts longer than a bouquet of roses and tastes better too.

Their products are only available in western Canada, according to their website, but they do offer gift boxes available for shipping. They don’t list prices—I’m sure they’re not cheap—but if the rest of their creations are as good as what we’ve sampled, they’ll be fantastic.

Link:
Artisan Edibles Gift Boxes

img_6978
OK, I may be biased, but my fiance, Natalie, writes a great blog over at The West County Bramble. She’s been doing a much better job than I have posting about our day-to-day travels.

Here’s a link to her post about our stop in the little town of Chemainus, BC, on Vancouver Island, where we happened upon a First Nations (Canadian native peoples) ceremony as well as a very well done musical. Both were quite unexpected.

The town is full of murals. Below, Natalie sneaks into the scene of one of my favorites.

In the top photo, our boat, Carmana, lies just offshore in gorgeous twilight.

Link Trail: The West County Bramble > Chemainus, Vancouver Island, BC Read the rest of this entry »

IMG_6812
Well, a few weeks ago we were on relatively remote Wallace Island. It’s a 200-acre silver of land in the Gulf Islands in British Columbia. It’s not on the ferry route so you have to get there of your own devices.

We stern-tied our boat, Carmana in tiny Conover Cove and had a walk around. We’d read about this place in the book Once Upon an Island, at home in West County last winter, so it was nice to finally make it up here and see it on a glorious summer day. Then, come evening, we rowed to watch the setting sun, and made something extraordinary happen… we got engaged.

You may have seen Natalie in posts of our trips or seen her photos. She’s amazing. I’m looking forward to life of adventure together. Woo-hoo!

Natalie wrote about it on her West County Bramble blog. Check out the Wallace Island post in two parts. Part 1 and Part 2.

circletlakecamping_med

If you’re planning a trip up to BC, check out this post on the best campgrounds in British Columbia.

P1070892
We finished this lovely little book a few weeks ago. It’s a collection of stories, told by Wylie Blanchet, of cruising the coast of British Columbia in the summers of the 1920s, with her five children (and sometimes a dog), in a 25-foot motorboat.

They traveled at a time when the BC is coast was changing from a traditional land to a modern one. They came across Indian villages abandoned for the summer, remote inlets with perhaps a single cabin and a sole occupant, and, at one point, a bear, which the children mistook for a man standing in the forest watching them.

These days you don’t often read about adventures as told from the perspective of a mother and her children but there they were cruising up the coast of Vancouver Island, a woman and her five children setting off every summer and coming back with adventures to tell.

Link: The Curve of Time

I love this short demo film of a seaplane in flight by Canadian DP, cameraman, and producer, Steve Fagan. Click the link or the picture to watch it on his site. Gorgeous stuff.

Curious about the plane itself? It’s a Dehavilland Beaver DHC-2.