A couple new paintings

From my latest art class:

Christ Church Cathedral Victoria BC:

Study of a facade in NYC:

"Portrait of a geek with a beer":

"Just Takin' a Gander"

 "What're ya at, b'y?"

"Just takin' a gander."

My new favourite saying, Sonya is actually getting a bit sick of hearing it, but I have to practice just in case I get the chance to use it in real life.

We spent a few fun-filled days in Bonavista!  We did all the local hikes, visited the puffin colony, and tried most of the local restaurants.

One day we went for a boat ride (a.k.a. a whale watching tour, but no whales unfortunately).  This is the famous Bonavista Lighthouse, as viewed from the boat:

This is (maybe) the boat we were on (or something similar) which e saw from a hike later in the week:

A hike along the coast, to visit the local puffin colony:

Where's Waldo?  Spot Sonya in the photo below:

... aaaaaand one of the stars of the day:

One day we did a road trip to Trinity, which is about a 40 minute drive from Bonavista.  We saw a life pageant in the afternoon, which included lots of interesting local history:

And we had dinner at the local fine dining spot, probably the best meal of the vacation so far (except for Chris's burgers of course):

View from the restaurant:

Another hike ...  we spotted a whale briefly (someone on a bicycle shouted "Whale!!!" so we sat and watched for awhile and eventually spotted one before they swam behind the island in the background:

Visit to "The Dungeon":

We both wanted to see an iceberg!  However the icebergs are long gone, so our host gave us some real iceberg ice (a thousand years old!) and we made our own icebergs:

Today we drove to our new haunts un Duntara, a bit more remote than Bonavista (we've loaded up on provisions for the next few days) - on our way we visited the "Devil's Footprints" (the round holes in the rock in the background):

... and here is Sonya relaxing on our deck at our Duntara Airbnb:

We're here for a few days to relax and maybe do a few hikes (and for sure a drive to Port Ruxton for some local beer and grilled cheese sandwiches) and then on to St John's for Canada Day!

Newfoundland First Impressions

 We spent our first day in Newfoundland exploring our home base in Glovertown.

Glovertown is a city of giants!

We wandered through the bog on the Ken Diamond Memorial Trail ...

... and then visited an old mill (called "The Mill") built in the 1920's but never went into production due to financial issues at the time.

We also visited the visitor center at the Tera Nova National Park, but no pics sadly :-(  We wandered down one of the trails until we got tired and turned around and came home.

Next day (today Tues June 21!!!) we decided to visit Salvage Nfld and wander its trails.  (We've been calling it "Savage" by mistake, but after walking the trails the town is pretty savage.

Continuing this vacation's theme of "Sonya sitting on benches looking at things", this trail had very well positioned benches and picnic tables.  The coastline was amazing!

More coastline, I had a hard time curating a small number of pics for this blog.

In between vistas, some amazing forest trails.  We saw a few very fresh bear scats, so we wandered along singing "Welcome to the rock!" (that's the only line we know from that song, it got pretty monotonous but it kept the bears away).

When society finishes breaking down (should be any day now, 2024 by the latest) I'm going to move to Salvage.  There's a waterfront house currently listed for $120K and I figure remote enough to attract any attention.

Greetings from Glovertown Newfoundland

We flew to Newfoundland yesterday (Sunday) and did the long drive (3 hrs) to our Bnb in Glovertown, it was worth the drive!

We're here for a few days, then on to Bonavista and then St John's, gradually travelling east until we fall into the ocean.

We had a lovely couple of weeks in Nova Scotia visiting friends and family.

We stayed with Chris for a few days in New Germany (about as far from the ocean as you can get in Nova Scotia), I helped with a roofing project while Sonya did some landscaping around the house.

We went on a few hikes, if you squint you can see Chris and Sonya saving in the distance.

Unfortunately Chris tested for Covid so we moved on to Sonya's sister's place in Antigonish, this is our first day there notice any theme?

We went on a crazy hike at Cape George Point, we found a bench that was setup with an excellent view of a tree ...

... and then a beautiful vista with NO bench ...

... so we sat on the ground and enjoyed the vista and ate our lunch.  Upon our return from the hike we discovered that NS is having its worst year ever for ticks, and we picked about 25 or 30 off each other in the parking lot, before we got back in our car.  (I also got a tick bite on one of our hikes with Chris.)

We babysat for Larissa's dog for a few days, here he is copiloting a drive to the beach ...

..., explored the area with Larissa ...

... and we took the kayaks out for a spin ...

One day we drove down to the docks and Larissa haggled with the fishermen to buy a few lobster, which we cooked up a nice dinner:

We returned to Chris's place, now Covid-free, for a final visit before we flew on to Newfoundland.  Chris let me ride he new mower ...

Turns out he'd just re-wired the engine and needed a test pilot to make sure the engine wasn't going to blow up!

We explored Halifax for a couple of days before we flew on - a couple of nice relaxing days in the North End, which we haven't visited before - but no pics sadly.

There is a lot of rain forecast in the next few days but we're going to try to get out on a few hikes and explore the local park - Tera Nova National Park - before we head east to Bonavista.

Recent Paintings

 Just finished up a class at the Vancouver Island School of Art.

Still Life:

"Late to the Party":

Tin can studies:

Kids V1:

Kids V2:

"Gnarly Tree" in Todd Inlet:

Cowichan Bay Kayak Adventure V1:

Cowichan Bay Kayak Adventure V2:

Don't Try to make Sourdough until you Master this ONE TRICK!

Like everyone else in the world, I've been self isolated for the last couple of months and am starting to go out of my tree.  A quick scan of the news reveals two different coping strategies - I can storm my local congress with a small cache of assault weapons and demand my right to a haircut, or I can learn to make sourdough bread.

Since I don't have a cache of assault weapons (and I'm taking advantage of the lockdown to let my hair go wild anyways) I decided to try home baking.

There are a lot of conflicting sourdough starter instructions online - and if you decide to go the potato yeast option it gets eve worse - so I'm going to trial-and-error it and provide some science-based information in a set of up-coming blog posts.

Stay tuned!!!

To start I'll cover one OVERLOOKED SECRET OF SOURDOUGH STARTERS that is never mentioned in any of the instructions I've read.

What are you going to NAME your starter?

I mean strictly speaking you don't need to give it a name, but eventually you'll get tired of calling it "my starter".  Just like I eventually got tired of calling my cats "the black one" and "the tabby one", and I got tired of calling my kids "the son" and "the daughter" ...  and everyone else was naming theirs so I started to feel a bit awkward.  And then what do you do if you have two?

I don't actually have any tricks or recommendations on how to name your starter, I expect eventually there will be books and webs sites available just like for kids, but you should find a name that works for you.

It's like how when you learn to ride a motorbike they never explain the "wave" protocol, and then when you start riding all the other bikers drive by waving at you and it catches you off-guard.  In the same way you may panic if you're not prepared, when you tell your friends about your new starter and they say, "Oh what's it called?" and all you can come back with is "My starter".

Lame.

Winner of the sourdough starter naming contest, "the daughter" named hers "Sour Doug" after her iPhone kept auto-correcting "sourdough".  Of course mine then became "Doug Jr".  And then when I started a potato yeast I naturally named it "potato head", but more about that in a later post.

Potato Head is just about ready to become bread, so I'll post about Mr. Head's adventures next.  Doug Jr is still aways away from bread, but I've already made pancakes and crackers from his discards, so I'll post about that too!

Happy baking!

Final Visit to Lisbon

We spent the last 5 nights of our vacation visiting sights in Lisbon.

View from the Castle de Jorge.

Drawbridge of the Castle de Jorge.  We found out later that this is actually the SIDE door.

View from the tower of the keep, the highest point in Lisbon.

Day trip to Belem, along with most of the tourists and at least one full cruise ship.  The lineups were too long so we didn't actually see any of the sights.

Monument to the discoverers.

Lighthouse in Belem, stripped like a cork tree!

This sign attracted our attention, but then when we got closer we just felt cheated.

View from the main plaza in Lisbon.

Day trip to Sintra to visit the Pena Palace.

Crowds at the Pena Palace.  It is a converted monestary, the older (monestary) sections are red and the "new" palace sections are yellow.

Guardian at the Pena Palace.

Getting cold and windy!

View from Sintra - if you quint you can make out the Moorish Castle up on the hill.

Market in Lisbon.

Pastel de Nata!!!

Putting the "fun" in "funicular".

Day trip to Cacilhas.

Tons of abandoned building porn in Cacilhas!  The whole shorefront was abandoned.

Car park (?) in Cacilhas.

More abandoned buildings and graffiti in Cacilhas.

Last night in Lisbon, "chin-chin"!