A couple more pictures from Victoria

I finally had a chance to work through all of my pictures from Victoria, BC.  Here's a few more that I didn't post initially.

Koi in the indoor section of Butchart Gardens

Small waterfall indoors at Butchart Gardens

Sturgeon fountain at Butchart Gardens

Outdoor waterfall at Butchart Gardens (Japanese Garden area, I think)

 Smooth rocks at the beach, west coast of Vancouver Island.  We don't get them like this in Juneau!

 This is a diorama at the Royal BC Natural History Museum.  It looks so real!

 I just love octopus.  This is from the Royal BC museum too.

Here are a few more pictures of the seals at the marina.  This one was just floating there on it's back, not seeming interested in performing tricks for food (or maybe this is it's trick!)

Adorable boy feeding a seal.  The seal was flapping it's flippers to try to draw the boy's attention and get some fish.

Homemade cinnamon raisin swirl bread

perfect swirl with no gaps!

I was grocery shopping and really wanted cinnamon raisin bread, but it was ridiculously expensive (like $5-6 for the tiny loaf of pre-sliced bread).  I couldn't bring myself to buy it and figured that if I wanted it bad enough I could bake it myself.  I have a copy of the book The Bread Bible, and I like to look at the pictures, but haven't ever made anything from it because the recipes are rather long and intimidating.  But I finally sat down and read through a couple of recipes and they aren't that bad.  Some of the length comes from redundant directions for hand kneading vs machine kneading, and some tips at the end that turned out to be pretty useful.  In the end, I made that book's version of cinnamon raisin swirl bread, and it was really pretty fool-proof and easy, even in an RV sized oven.

Almost ready to bake.

Turns out, the biggest difficulty was finding warm enough places for the dough to rise on a cold day in an RV...it was only about 58-60 in the RV and the recipe's suggested temp for rising was 75-80.  Yes, it would have risen eventually at 60, but I eventually put the dough in the oven then put a pan of boiling water in the bottom for some moist heat.  Worked great!

The part that made the whole recipe pretty non--threatening was that after mixing the first part of the dough you can put it back in the fridge for up to 24 hours before finishing the mixing, shaping and letting it rise before baking.  That meant I could mix up part 1 of the recipe on Saturday then finish it on Sunday. This made two loaves, so I double wrapped one and put it in the freezer for a couple of days.  Maybe I'll make cinnamon raisin swirl french toast this weekend!

Cooling bread - it smelled so good it was hard not to eat it right away!

I had such good success that I've started another type of bread - a rustic hearth bread - that can be made over several days (I started it Sunday and won't bake it until Tuesday night). 

Back home

I'm back home in Juneau, and so glad to be here.  It's snowing, I have a mountain of dirty laundry to do, Steve ate everything in the fridge so we have no food, and Irv is messy...but I'm happy to see Steve and Seca again.  I have a few more pictures I'll try to post this weekend, once I've had a chance to dig out from the post-travel mess.

Have a great weekend!

A Royal museum

Today we went to the Royal BC museum (a natural history museum) which also had an amazing exhibit of the award winning National Geographic photos.  This is Emily and Carolyn, who were our fantastic guides (along with Mike who's not in the picture).  Emily is a student studying anthropology and was a handy person to have around in the museum!

Julie, Emily, and Carolyn (sorry your eyes are closed!)

A mammoth.  I wish these were still around, though global warming would probably just kill them off again. 

From the museum there was a good view of the Parliament house.  At night it's all lit up in lights - so cool!

After the museum we had lunch as a great restaurant then they took us for a drive around Victoria, Beacon Hill Park, Oak Bay and finally Chinatown.  We stopped at a marina in Oak Bay where there are some seals that hang out, hoping for scraps from fishermen, or for a couple of bucks you can buy some herring and feed them. 

They were really fun to watch, and have apparently learned to do tricks to increase their odds of getting fed.  They would spin in circles, flap their flippers on the water, etc.  One was just chilling on his/her back, paddling around.  There were a couple of boys there feeding them:

What a fun day, and many thanks to Carolyn, Mike, and Emily for showing us around! My favorite part of the day - a toss up between the photography exhibit and watching the seals.  :)

Rain and snow and who knew we'd need 4WD?

I am so excited to be somewhere with roads, and options for driving!  Even though we're on an island here in BC, it's a BIG island, and as it turns out you can drive all day long...which is what we did yesterday. 

I admit that I scoffed a bit at the rental car agent when he told us our SUV had 4WD...I thought, when will we ever need that? 

Turns out, this is when:

Super glad we had 4WD.

We left from Victoria at 8 am, heading for Tofino.  I'd heard it's a cool surf town sort of at the end of the road on the west coast of Vancouver island.  To get there you head north up the east coast of the island, then cut across the middle (through some pretty substantial mountains) then head north again to Tofino.  In normal weather, it should probably be a 4-5 hour drive (each way).  In snowstorm weather, it was probably 12 hours of driving.  There was only snow at the top of the pass on the way to Tofino, but by the time we headed back it snowed for most of the 'middle' section of the island, as well as parts of the drive back south towards Victoria.  And yes, we absolutely needed the 4WD.  There were a lot of cars stuck on the side of the road.

I'd love to bring Steve back here with the motorcycles though!  It was a beautiful, winding, roller-coaster-like road with very steep grade in some places (18%!).  It was sunny for early parts of the drive, but after the snow in the mountains, it was a torrential downpour in Tofino.  We stopped there for lunch, and stopped at a beach and watched the waves crashing on shore (from the warm, dry car). Tofino was indeed a super cute surf town.  In the rain.

Beach near Tofino.

And not many photos were taken that day.

This would be more fun to explore when it's not pouring rain.

On the way back to Victoria we met up for dinner with my Mom's friend's sister and her family (did you follow that?).  They met us at a pub not too far from the road home and it was fun to meet them.  We're meeting up again today to go visit the Royal BC Museum!

Exploring in the rain (ugh, just like Juneau)

The conference I was at ended Friday and mom got into town on Friday afternoon.  Since it was valentine's day and we figured restaurants would be busy, we headed out early to find dinner.  We ended up at a good Tex-Mex place where we had to eat at the bar (at 5 pm!) because the restaurant was already booked up for the whole night.  Yikes!  I hope everyone had a great Valentines Day!

The sunken garden.  The tower in the distance is an old cement stack.

This morning we walked (before the rain started) to pick up a rental car and headed right to Butchart Gardens.  Even though it's winter, there was a lot of flowers outside, and a lot of green stuff too.  We were lucky at the gardens - it only sprinkled a little bit and it was really quiet there so we didn't have a lot of other people to compete with.

Most of the gardens are outdoors, but there was a small indoor section too.  These orchids were inside.

The gardens were really beautiful.  I think in summer they would be even better, though there would be a lot more people (I bet there were less than a dozen people in the whole place while we were there).  Even without leaves on a lot of plants there were a lot of colors and textures.  My favorite part was the sunken garden (above) but the Japanese garden (below) was a close second.

After wandering the gardens for a couple of hours we headed up the west coast of Vancouver Island (in the pouring rain) towards Port Renfrew.  We stopped at a small park with a beach and saw this sign, which is my favorite image from all of today.  

You kind of have to zoom in to see the expression on the stick-man's face as he's chased by the long-necked bear.  Hilarious.  (and true)

The coast here is beautiful!  We don't really get much in the way of waves in Juneau because we're in inside waters, with lots of big islands between us an the ocean, so this was fun.  We turned back a bit before we reached Port Renfrew because it was getting dark.

O Canada!

I'm in Victoria, BC this week for a conference!  We got here about 2 hours ago, it's very pretty!  And warm (well warmer than Juneau...it's about 43 F here).

Here's a view from my room, looking toward the Inner Harbor.  Tomorrow I'll try to explore a bit if I can and will post more as the week goes on!

Winter camping cabin fail

Steve and I and some friends tried to hike out to the Blue Mussel cabin on Saturday for an overnight trip.  We lugged ~20-30 lbs of water, fire logs, food, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, and warm clothes 3.5 miles to the cabin...only to find that we couldn't get the heater or the wood stove to work properly.  It was cold (~15 degrees during the day) and ~20 mph winds from the north, so not having a working stove was enough to get us to give up and hike out while it was still daylight.  It was so frustrating though!  The stoves would start, only to have the wind push all the smoke back into the cabin because the chimney hole thingy would turn with the wind...instead it was stuck in a position that kept it pointing right into the wind.  We tried to get it to work for 2 hours before giving up.  And by "we" I mean Steve and Bryce and Emily.  I stayed out of their way since I was pretty sure I didn't have any useful skills to add to the stove discussions.

But what a view from the cabin on the beach!!

But, it was a beautiful day for a long hike with lots of superfluous gear.  And what and incredible view from the beach where the cabin was located!! (pic, above)

Cold water at Point Bridget State Park

Strong north wind=cold crashing waves

 Seriously, there was a lot of smoke in that little cabin!  It was so bad I had to stand outside to breathe.

 Me, being cold. 

 Steve jumping across a frozen stream.  Notice Bryce breakdancing in the background...What a fun day!

 Steve again.  :)

Moving up in the world!

my new desk!

Actually, I'm technically moving down...to a 'real' office on the second floor!  I'm officially out of grad student quarantine and into an office.  I share with three other students, two who are awesome, and one I've never met because I don't think he ever comes into the lab (or if he does, it's at night).

The best part is that I have a window with NATURAL LIGHT. 

In my new office!

Perfect weekend for not enjoying football

Eagle beach, looking towards the Chilkat Mtns.

Steve had to work on Sunday, and they have a TV in the store that was showing the Super (Distaster) Blowout Bowl.  I, on the other hand, spent the day outside in the fabulous sunshine, hiking out at Eagle Beach and Amalga Harbor.  I think I had the better end of that deal. 

Rocky shoreline at the Shrine of St. Therese.

The fog that's been plaguing us for the past weeks has finally gone away.  I saw two (I think) of the local over-wintering humpbacks out in the channel while driving back from the hike.  I stopped to watch while sitting in the sun and soaking up some warmth. 

But, despite the sun, there's still a lot of frost and ice everywhere that there's shade or on the side of the hills that the sun never reaches this time of year.  

Ice crystals left over from the morning's high tide.