Various Vacations I Have Had by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

As you read this post I will be on a bus tour from Rome to London, the second bus tour of my sixty-six day long visit to Europe. How did this vacation come about? Well, it started three years ago when my dragon boat team, Angels Abreast from Nanaimo, B.C., found out that the next Breast Cancer Survivor International Dragon Boat Festival was going to be held in Florence, Italy. Although we voted to attend the festival, eventually it was decided not to go as a team. Since I had already begun planning my trip, I put out feelers to other breast cancer survivor teams who wanted to attend but didn’t have enough paddlers to fill a boat. I was picked up by Sunshine Dragons Abreast, a team from the Sunshine Coast.

     My husband originally planned on going with me and we discussed other countries we wanted to see, but he had to back out because of his health. By this time I had decided that since I was already in Europe, I might as well visit as many countries as I could. I didn’t want to travel alone so I asked the members of Sunshine Dragons if anyone was interested in travelling with me. One woman, Ev, agreed. I also spoke with a fellow employee, Heather, and she and her sister, Beverly, hopped on board but couldn’t join us until the beginning of the Rome to London tour on July 9.
     The festival was from July 5 to 9 so I began looking at tours and cruises before and after those dates. Ev and I picked a 16 day Spain, Portugal, and Morocco bus tour beginning June 15. Then we decided to spend three days in Milan before going to Florence. At the end of the festival there we headed to Rome.
     After this bus tour through Italy, Switzerland, and France, and ending in London, Ev is leaving to do a tour of Denmark, while Heather, Beverly and I plan on spending eighteen days backpacking and riding trains to Brussels, Luxembourg, Cologne, and Amsterdam, and then fly to Copenhagen. We will meet Ev in that city to take an eleven day cruise of the Baltic Sea. One of the highlights of that will be a two day visit to St. Petersburg, Russia.
     I wish the planning had gone as smoothly as it sounds, but that is how attending a five day international breast cancer survivor dragon boat festival in Florence morphed into a sixty-six day visit to Europe. And this isn’t the first time that has happened to me.
     In 2007, an international festival was held in Coloundra, Queensland, Australia. Angels Abreast attended the five days festival. Afterwards, the team split up, some going to New Zealand, some touring the interior and some, my group, spent three weeks sightseeing along the eastern coast ending in Sydney to see the Opera House, climb the Harbour Bridge, and go out to the Great Barrier Reef. Then we spend a week in Fiji.
     I missed the festival in Peterborough, Ontario, but in 2014, the festival was held in Sarasota, Florida. Rather than fly there with the team, do a little touring and fly home, I decided I wanted to see some of the country between the Pacific Ocean, where I live, and the Atlantic Ocean. So my husband and I bought a motorhome and spent four weeks sightseeing on our way to Sarasota and five weeks sightseeing on our way home.
     I could go on about all the other trips I have taken, like the nine week my husband and I took in our motorhome across Canada in 2017 to celebrate our country’s 150^th birthday, but that can wait for another post.
     My novel, Romancing the Klondike, is set in the Yukon, a place I have travelled to twice and hope to visit again in the next couple of years.
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A Summer Vacation Memory by A.M.Westerling

I love camping. If you’ve been reading my posts here at the Canadian Historical Brides Blogspot at all, you know I’ve mentioned camping from time to time. I have my parents to thank for that. They were avid campers as well and with our little trailer in tow, they took us on the most amazing adventures up and down the west coast of the US and Canada. Everywhere from the Redwoods in northern California, up through Oregon and Washington and even one year a ferry ride from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to Prince Rupert.

But my favorite family camping memories were the trips we took to Pacific Rim National Park, on the west coast of Vancouver Island. In those days, the only road access was over a restricted logging road from Port Alberni out to the coast. Restricted logging meant you had to complete the trip either before 8 am or after 5 pm. We’d leave spot on 5 pm and it was a harrowing 3 hour trip on a rugged (and I mean rugged) gravel (barely) road. Think potholes the size of moon craters and Texas pea gravel (which in oil field slang means large rocks the size of your fist).

The reward was at the other end. We’d hit the small patch of paved highway linking Ucluelet and Tofino, turn north and a few miles up the road we’d get our first glimpse of Long Beach. The unforgettable sight immediately erased the weariness of days of travel to get there.

We camped on the beach right up against the driftwood, tossed there by winter storms long passed. Coastal rain didn’t faze my Dutch mom and dad - my dad strung tarps and plastic sheeting everywhere. Not the prettiest but we were warm and dry, which is the main thing when out camping. 

My three siblings and I would paddle in the (cold!) waves and when the tide was low, explore the little island nudging the beach.(You can see it in the above picture.) We’d watch orcas in the bay, or find a sunny sheltered spot among the driftwood to read. 

On particularly miserable rainy days, the whole family would pile in the station wagon and head into Tofino where my mom bought fresh salmon and shrimps right off the docks, direct from the fishermen.

And we’d hike, either beach combing right out our door, or on rain forest trails in search of ship wrecks on remote beaches. 

There was always time to explore the tidal pools, fascinating mini worlds that only came to life when the tide was low. 

Wherever we hiked, we’d leave a trail of peanut shells – the snack of choice! 

I could go on and on as the memories keep cascading but I think you get the idea. After a few years, camping on the beach was banned so we moved on to other adventures but I’ll never forgot those trips.

The pictures I’ve shared are from a vacation with our boys – a lot has changed since those early years but the natural beauty still remains.

We also took our boys to Barkerville. The ghost town impressed me so much, I went back with my husband a second time and we plan to visit it again sometime soon. That’s why I chose it as the setting for my contribution to the Canadian Historical Brides Collection! I enjoyed writing it, I hope you enjoy it too. 😀

Find it at your favorite online retailer HERE. 

Ghosts and Haunted Houses by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

As far as I know, I have never seen a ghost. However, I did live in a haunted house, although without my knowledge. When my husband and I and my brother and sister-in-law first moved to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island we bought a house that had been converted into a duplex. My sister-in-law told me that she was continually seeing a man coming and going from their side. I saw no one on our side.

I returned to Alberta to visit family and friends and was describing where our place was to a friend. She began asking questions about it and said that a friend of hers had lived in that house years earlier. She also asked me if I had seen the ghost who occasionally wandered through the house there. I said no, but my sister-in-law had.

She said that a man had died in that house and her friend had seen his ghost often while living there.

I’m not sure if the reason I did not encountered that ghost nor any others in my life is because I don’t believe in them or because I’ve been lucky. However, if a ghost is reading this, this is not an invitation to come to me and prove you are real.