Category: Road Trip – Canada – December 2025

We’ll be leaving Portland on December 22nd, retracing some old family traditions by heading to Victoria for Christmas. We’ll take the Black Ball Ferry from Port Angeles, Washington, sailing directly into downtown Victoria—my first visit back after a 26-year break!

After four days in Victoria enjoying local ciders, food, and dog-friendly shops and trails, we’ll drive to Nanaimo to catch the ferry to Horseshoe Bay. From there, we’ll head to Squamish for a couple of days, and then continue on to Whistler.

I’ve never been to Squamish or Whistler. As a child, I was always fascinated and dazzled by the lodge and ski-lift lights I could see during the nighttime ferry crossings from Tsawwassen to Sidney.

After Whistler, we’ll spend a day in Vancouver enjoying walking trails and dog-friendly spots in the brisk winter weather before crossing the border and heading to Seattle to visit family.

We’ll keep you all posted as the adventure unfolds—Prost! 🍻

Wrapping Up with Key Insights

I haven’t touched anything resembling programing code in over 8 years, I worked in I.T. for nearly 25 years, and for the most part I loved it. There were some things that I did not love, shell scripting was one of them. I spent a lot of time taking classes and learning the first two generations of HTML, and for a time I was good at it! Then came JavaScript, and ultimately…Joomla. I lost the ability, and patience in keeping up with the changes in the code, the security updates, and the constant version updates. For many years, I struggled to keep up with the constant changes in the I.T. world, but my frustration and lack of adaptability forced to me to rethink my career goals. Thankfully…my wife Lisa was supportive and sympathetic to my returning to College to complete my BA. And so, I threw in the towel with IT and got two Associates Degree’s and I am now just one term away from Completing my BA in Community Development. I will go back in the near future to complete it, but first…I need to travel, and live a little. After spending the last 4 and a half years being her sole caregiver through her/our breast cancer journey. Doing things that were on our list of plans to accomplish…seem more important now, more than ever! I definitely won’t be learning the newest versions of HTML or JavaScript! So this is what I will use, and seemingly I have the most patience to use. It will be fine…when I learn how to use it properly.