Another Day in Paradise, Part 1

We have quit (or temporary left it in Dana's case) our jobs. We have sold our house. Our flights are booked for the 19th of June. Now we wait... and in the meantime we decided to visit our family in Victoria, BC. I tell you, there is something about Victoria that completely envelops me with seemly green velvety tree covered mountain hands. Every time I come I ask myself, "why do I not live here... why?". After living in Alberta for most of my life Victoria just feels like paradise. To make things worse (by worse I mean better), Dana's family is as much a family to me as my own, and so it's super great to come and see them, and just as hard to leave my own family.

But while we wait for the 19th there are lots of things we want to do here. We've been here for a few days now and we're pleasantly assimilating into the island life already. I went for a jog this morning and saw a house only a few hundred yards away from Island View Beach; it was pretty tempting to start thinking about living in Victoria and not just visiting.

Before we show you too much of this beautiful paradise island we love so much, we'll show you a little of the journey that got us here. Many of you have probably made the journey from Edmonton to Victoria once or twice in your lifetime. But for those who haven't, it's an adventure in itself. I'll only show you the highlights here, but there are more in the photo section under the same post name.

This first picture was when we were getting into the foothills near Jasper. To be honest I can't remember exactly where it was, this shot was a bit of a miracle. I saw the fisherman coming up and so I whipped out the camera, and threw my body as far back into the back seat area as I could with the camera facing out the window (which was closed), and then waited for a second or two until I saw the scene. Click! I'm no photographer by any means but it feels good to get a decent shot. We were moving at "highway speeds"- ish, so there is a bit of blur. I absolutely love this drive; it's amazing to see the difference in scenery you can get within about 1500km!

This shot was taken just outside Jasper. We were driving along and  then within what seemed only a few kilometres we came into this snowed area, which only lasted maybe 20km or so, but there must have been at least 2-3 inches of fresh snow on the ground. As much as I get tired of winters, Alberta still has its moments!

There's no shortage of wildlife on this trip, in fact there has never been a time driving this route when there hasn't been something to see. This little guy was enjoying some delicious fresh green grass, something he probably hadn't eaten in some time. We saw over a dozen of these guys. Along with them were mountain sheep, a beautiful huge black bear, and other little friends.

We saw this gorgeous Great Blue Heron in Victoria on Monday. We went for a walk down by the breakwater. It was an overcast day with some occasional light showers. Dana and her sister Maya brought their cameras to see what they could capture, and of course, there was plenty to see. 

At first I thought this was an octopus. We heard stories earlier that day of a woman who got photos of an octopus attacking and eating a seagull, so I think I had octopus on the brain. It turns out this is a Sunflower Seastar, the largest starfish in the world. This was one of about 4-5 that we could see, this being the brightest in color.