Our tiny Air B&B gave us a much needed night of sleep. C picked up breakfast while I packed a piece of luggage to be shipped to our end point, Santiago de Compostela.  He was amazed to spend 3e in total on a loaf of bread a whole melon, a huge nectarine and a banana.   …

A day of three flights. Four hours to Toronto, six to Barcelona, under two to Madrid. Saw our first “Camino” arrow in Barcelona. I’ve experienced a wee déjà vu, feeling like I did the third time I was in labour. Whose idea was this anyway? To travel over many flights to walk 250 miles? Ok…

In my last post I mentioned leaving for our third pilgrimage on the Camino. However, we’ve been thinking about it for months, weighing our options, lest you think it a totally impulsive move. On the contrary, we agonized over making a decision. At the ten day mark we jumped in head first, making travel arrangements.…

Many people believe that they are called to do a pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. That might have been true with our first routes, but this time the “call” was very clear, and the timing was right as there are people staying behind who will take care of our house, so off we go.…

Meet an ancient wall, located in Tarragona, Spain, a product of the Roman Empire during the 3rd century.  Now mix it up with modern techniques. My specialty is watercolour painting on traditional cotton rag paper. Now it’s possible to apply watercolour to canvas, first covering it with a coat or two of “ground”, which dries…

That’s the question asked particularly on the anniversaries of historically significant events. The following are at least fifty years in the past! I’m dating myself to include the day Kennedy was assassinated. I had been sent into the hall for talking in class, no surprise, when a big 5th grader told me the president was…

I remember these feelings of the initial stages of grief from when my dad died when I was 16. It was a monumental event, but the world around us didn’t stop.  Our family was consumed in a vacuum of grief while the rest of the world continued on. Noises seemed louder, traffic quicker. Loss takes a…

Though few of us old time bloggers are left, absences in posting leads remaining followers to imagine possibilities, tragic to amazing. In this case it is the former.  Lightening has struck our family again, with the loss of daughter M and KC’s son, baby Everett, in July on his mother’s birthday. The circumstances were identical…

Camping, 12 nights in a row, it’s my new record. You can teach this old dog new tricks. I’m enjoying it. There are a few things I didn’t like, as in one day of rain so heavy, we watched a mouse running from underneath one car to the next in WalMart parking lot, so as…

It’s been great hiking weather in the Pacific Northwest, warm and sunny after some drenching rain, the perfect recipe for mushrooming. Two Sunday’s worth of walks in the woods produced fresh springtime Oyster Mushrooms. These entwined trunks called for a painting. Might do this one larger. It’s a Sitka Spruce and a Cedar. The biggest…