#153 Nomad Diary. 23-29 September 2023 Full Week in West Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. Church at White Rock. Visit with Cruise Friends. Rain. Squamish and North to Waterfalls. Nomad Notes: Living a Retired Nomad Life is Not a Vacation.
 |
| Darrell Making Pancakes in Our West Vancouver Airbnb |
 |
| A Dinner I Made: Wild Salmon with Lemon and Cheese, Asparagus, Sweet Potatoes Saturday. 23. We stayed in our airbnb all day! Yes! We have days like this! Yesterday was sunny and we hiked over 8 miles! It was amazing, and led to today as a recovery day. We spent considerable time on the computer and phones reading and typing. I did laundry. Darrell made pancakes for breakfast we had strawberries and dark coffee too. I spilled the maple syrup but could cover up the spill and delay full clean up until after our meal. For lunch we made salads and elaborated with bacon and boiled eggs. For dinner we baked wild salmon and had asparagus and sweet potatoes on the side. We enjoy our food. We ate well today. I stuck my head out the door a couple of times. It’s cold today in the 50’s. It has rained all day too. We played a classical music channel on the tv all day. It’s been a nice recovery day. We even had a phone call with Eric and Owen and some texts back and forth with our other kids! We looked online to find where and when we are going to church tomorrow. |
 |
| Winston's Family at Their House. Nida, Mica and Abby |
 |
| Unusual Architechture in Vancouver Sunday 24. Drove 1 hour to White Rock for church. Winston is the preacher there. He came here 14 years ago from the Philippines with his wife Nida (needa) and two daughters, Abby(21?) and Mica (meeka,15). Winston told us this group has been here for 40 years and always about 10 people, but the people change with moving in and out. There is another preacher who comes up from the US about 30 minutes away and helps some Sundays. On this day, we met another US couple who are about 10 years younger than us and live in Atlanta. Dave and Heather Hamlett. Dave has preached in Toronto for 4 years, but is not currently a full-time preacher. He was here preaching for this 3rd Sunday in a row. He and Heather enjoy traveling and encouraging churches on their journey. They are leaving the area on Tuesday and making a 4 day road trip back to Atlanta! That’s fast, but that’s how they travel. Dave is working remote and they are enjoying their travels! Also at this church we met a couple from Santiago, Chile who moved here in January. Also there were two sisters from India with a 3 year old. Fauna, the mother, has been here working on her masters in Electrical Engineering (I think). Her husband has been trying to get his visa sorted out for the past three years! Fauna has been back to India for visits a couple of times, and her parents came here for a few weeks too. Her sister Judy babysits while she is now working full time and trying to get her first job out of college (I think). We went to Winston’s house for lunch. It was a delicious meal of Philippino foods cooked by Nida and Abby and also some chicken and rice (Indian recipes) cooked by Fauna and Judy. Wow! Such a treat! On our way back home we stopped to shop at a big grocery store. |
 |
| Doug and Lucille from Saskatchewan. We met them in May 2022 on a Panama Canal Cruise. Monday 25. Today we went to a coffee shop in Vancouver to meet some friends from a Panama Cruise in April 2022! They live in Saskatchewan, Canada and are here leaving on a cruise for New Zealand tonight. We were originally booked on this cruise and then changed to our October 3rd itinerary. We sat and visited for about 2 hours. Doug and Lucille are having their 50th wedding anniversary this year while Darrell and I are having our 40th. We were able so share many details of our lives together and get to know them a bit more in this reconnecting time. They will be arriving Auckland a couple weeks ahead of us. It is their 4th trip to New Zealand and it is Doug’s favorite place outside of his home country. They gave us some travel tips too! They are to leave New Zealand on October 30th, the day that we arrive. We tentatively set up to meet there for coffee if possible on that day! I’m already looking forward to it! We drove back to our airbnb to enjoy our rainy day inside. Tuesday. 26. We drove an hour to the big outlet mall. We shopped and ate lunch at the food court. We had a shopping list that included snorkeling masks for our stops in Tahiti, medium sized packing cubes, flip-flops, and a few other items. It was a rainy day and we got our list knocked out. Once we got back to our house, we made chicken vegetable soup for dinner. |
 |
| Restaurant in Squamish with a View and Really Good Fusion Mex Food |
 |
| Food at Sunny Chibas. My Cauliflower Taco and Wild Mushroom Gravy That I Ate as Soup. Darrell's Taco's: Surf and Turf and Pork Belly with Kimchi. |
 |
| Darrell Sizing Up An Old Tree Trunk |
 |
| Me Sizing Up Two Old Tree Stumps |
 |
| A Highway 99 Pull Off Picture Stop North of Squamish Wednesday. 27. Darrell made pancakes today which he does often when we are in our own place and feel like having pancakes! Around ten we had an idea to drive north along the sea highway to Squamish for lunch at a mexican restaurant we found online and also to go see Shannon Falls near there. We got to the restaurant and discovered that it is not your typical Mexican restaurant. It had an interesting menu with combinations and fusions that I have never seen before. It intrigues me and I had fun reading the menu and deciding what to order. I got a cauliflower taco and a side of wild mushroom gravy that I ate as soup. It was delicious! We went to see Shannon Falls. It was gigantic and beautiful with nice walking paths through the woods. Darrell wanted to drive on towards Whistler and see another waterfall called Brandywine Falls. It’s a rainy day and riding in the mountains and walking through the woods is all very nice. The woods smell so nice. Brandywine Falls is also very nice and huge! From here we decided to drive back home. We stopped at some scenic overlooks at the way back and we got some local berries at a fruit stand too. We saw a Walmart and went there for a couple of items to last us until we leave on the 3rd. Darrell made soup for dinner again. |
 |
| A Salad Made at Home By Us. This is Darrell's with Tomato. We Eat Salads Like This for a Meal Often. |
 |
| West Vancouver Waterfront Near Our Airbnb |
 |
| Nice View of Vancouver from Our Airbnb on the Mountainside in British Properties in West Vancouver |
 |
| Phone Call with Owen. Oh My Heart! |
 |
| Owen's Little Sister Esther. A Month Old and A Smile That Melts My Heart! |
 |
| Quinn in a Pumpkin Patch. Picture Taken by His Mom. |
Thursday. 28. Today is laundry day. It’s foggy out our window. Our mountain is in a cloud for now. We had morning calls with Darrell’s mom and with Eric and Owen. In late afternoon we drive down the mountain and take a walk along the water. For dinner we went to Carmello’s Italian restaurant and had a wonderful meal of mushroom pizza and seafood linguini.
 |
| Picture of Capilano Lake from Grouse Mountain Skyride |
 |
| On the Ski Lift |
 |
| Ski Lift Ride Down Through a Cloud! |
Nomad Notes. This week I’ve been sleeping well with the elements of dark, quiet and cool. I’ve thought about how amazing our adventure of traveling is. I know that moving around and visiting many places is not how most people live. I’m learning to make meaningful connections with people as often as I can. I’m learning to live with less things. We are experiencing together our tempo of travel. When we worked, we took vacations with a time limit and need to return to work. Vacations during working years were a different tempo from our retired travel. While being retired now we decide on our own schedule and have no job to get back to. Since we have claimed being Nomads we also have no house to return to. Our home is where we live in the present and it is temporary as we are always on the move. We have family, mostly our grandchildren and Darrell’s parents who we have on our ‘return to visit’ points of interest. In the past nine months we have spent six or more weeks each with two of our sons families and with Darrell’s folks. We have both visited siblings and enjoyed helping out on home projects of different kinds. When we have spent 4 weeks or more in one spot, we have really enjoyed encouraging the churches in those places that we visit. We have made some friends along the way and learned about people’s lives in a variety of places. It has been a more concentrated kind of visiting that we are experiencing with our current travel schedule. Within every month, we have days that we are packing and moving, days that we are sitting still, days for planning our forward stays, and resting. There are days we are being tourists, and days that we are visiting family or friends. During our working years we lived in several different places as we followed Darrell’s work changes and moved our household and children several times. Our airbnb host seems to pose her confusion to me by not understanding why we are hanging out inside this apartment for a whole day. She doesn’t know that we are Nomads not on vacation every day. It’s not our vacation, but if it were I would not be sitting inside for a whole day. If this visit were a vacation and a break from work, then we would do as many tourist things as we could and we would eat out even more. It’s not a vacation but a way of life for us. We don’t have vacations like we used to. It’s totally different now. We now get to choose where we want to go, what we want to see and how much time we will spend doing it. For now we are living in what is called our “Go-Go Years”. We are healthy and enjoy moving about at our pace and in our unique ways.
Comments
Post a Comment