To celebrate all the June birthdays in our family, we spent a week on Quadra Island, one of the Northern Gulf Islands. The goal was to go kayaking, maybe see some whales, and relax. The kayaking was mostly thwarted by high winds, and we never saw any whales, but it was still a highly successful and relaxing trip.

Emily and I worked remotely for part of the week. It was an experiment to see how viable it is to travel while using less vacation days. The key to making this work was the grandparents who were willing to look after Astrid during the day. Emily got a fair bit of work done. I had some productive mornings, but took most of the afternoons off. It was a quiet week for my team with Canada Day and July 4th, which was good because I wasn’t able to connect my VPN, so I was limited in what work I could do.

The unexpected highlight of our stay was the cute farm stand next door. Astrid loved checking multiple times a day to see what new goodies were for sale, like fresh juices, muffins, or scones.

Although we never saw any whales, we did see wildlife all over the island.

Rebecca Spit is awesome. We spent multiple days here just relaxing on the beach, exploring the paths, and eating fresh cherries and huckleberries.

We also spent some afternoons at Mine Lake and Open Bay‘s beaches. Mine Lake was really easy to access but not that impressive (mostly just a sandy boat launch). Open Bay had an amazing beach but was a strenuous hike to get to – it really pushed the grandparents to their limits. We arrived at Open Bay at low tide with hundreds of meters of intertidal zone to explore and watched as the ocean slowly rose to cover it all in warm, shallow water.

Our attempt at a full-day, family kayaking adventure were aborted because of high winds and whitecaps. Mairy and I did manage to come back another day and got a few hours of paddling in, but weren’t able to leave the sheltered Drew Harbour and didn’t see anything you couldn’t see from the shore.

Other highlights:

• The Quadra Island Farmers Market (on Saturday) where we picked up some new art and homemade treats. A few vendors overheard it was Astrid’s birthday and started giving her free stuff – which she loved!
• Relaxing in the cabin – doing morning yoga, reading books, playing board games (like Doodle Mayhem), and solving puzzles.
• Building driftwood homes and sculptures on the beach. Astrid could have spent all day playing family (yes, we are already family, but we had to pretend we were siblings).
• Listening to the Ezra Klein and Hannah Ritchie podcast interview in the car. Opened up some great conversations and challenged all of our preconceptions.

More photos from our trip.