Weekend travelling

A whirlwind tour of Salt Spring Island and Nanaimo thanks to BC Ferries. We had wonderful weather and had a great time.

The first stop was Salt Spring to visit Andrea and see her new house. We've only seen pictures which is not the same at all. It's very much a character house with tons of personality quirks. It was built about 25 years ago by folks of Danish heritage. There are some really interesting bits such as barn-style doors with interesting pieces of wood for handles. Or what looked like an old switch of some sort with a huge handle. It would appear that some of the materials were found from architectural salvage. Very neat visually.

As you can see from the pictures it has lots of windows for the water views and outside deck space to sit out and watch the boats go by. The decks are one of the priority jobs for the next year, though, as they need to be replaced. The property is quite big but mostly wild. There is a huge fruit and veg garden with a sturdy deer fence as they are constant visitors. But the garden was left for the last summer and is in need of a lot of hard work. It'll be worth it, though. There's lots of interesting stuff growing in there. In fact, the former owners had won an award for conserving heritage/native plants.

Inside there are three stories. The loft is where she is forced to sit and watch the boats while she works at her desk. The main is mostly open plan with huge high ceilings (right to the top of the roof in the living room) and big windows all around. There are exposed cedar beams which make heart-stopping catwalks for ambitious felines. But the downstairs is what I covet. There's a studio which runs the full width of the house overlooking water, garden, woods! Oh, I can imagine hooking my rugs here. Salt Spring has an artisan tour circuit and this studio has an outside entrance which would bypass the living area. I'm so jealous. The possibilities...

We did pay our 'rent' however. We undertook the restoration of the pathway lighting down to the house. For some reason, they had been put aside in favor of Christmas lights which didn't do much for visibility.

Then,on Sunday, we jumped on another ferry and drove up to Nanaimo for the (what is becoming) huge family Thanksgiving. It was one of the noisiest dinners in a long time. There are now four kids under age 5 running around pulling on arms and demanding stories to be read or balls to be thrown. The babies cry for their needs - or just generally cry - and all the adults talk at once. Or so it sounded. But the dinner was amazing and we were all decanted on to the ferry home with full tummies and happy memories.