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

Revisiting some old familiar places…but the real journey of this trip is exploring all of the new sites I have yet to see. I have been waiting a long time for this trip to come to fruition, and I am excited to finally make it happen. It means I’ll be leaving the dog with friends for a couple of weeks, which may be hard on both of us, since she and I have not been apart since Lisa passed away in August. But, I have to make this trip, so Sammie will adjust temporarily. I’ll be flying into Frankfurt, and renting a car for my stay. My first order of business is to revisit Wiesbaden, where my father was stationed while we lived in Germany. Then, onto Mannheim to visit a College friend who is studying and working in Germany for his Graduate program through PSU. After that, driving to Salzburg and Linz to spend a few short days in Austria with another close College friend. Following Linz, I will be driving to Nuremberg, then up to Berlin for two days, Potsdam to visit the “Einsteinturm” Einstein Tower (originally a Astrophysical Observatory) that helped Albert Einstein develop his theory of Relativity, but today is used as a Solar Observatory. It’s a very small pre-art-deco building built between 1919 and 1921…then over to ___to see a V2 Rocket museum, then back to Frankfurt for my flight home! So many things to see and do is such a short time frame. But, if all goes well…I will make another journey over sometime this coming Summer. So looking forward to this trip!! Bis später!

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.