I’m on vacation this week!  We’re on Vancouver Island, and I’m enjoying both the change of scenery and the change of pace.  My senses seem sharpened by the glorious sea air that smells so good I could make a meal of it.

Sometimes the enhanced sensory experience is wonderful; sometimes, erm… not so much.  Here are my observations to date:

My paranoid writer’s mind never quits. Doesn’t this look like a concealed camera to you?

It’s in the ceiling of our hotel room and the rest of the knots are solid, but not this one.  And you guessed it, it’s right above the bed.  There’s even a shiny thing that looks like a lens inside the knothole.

Suspicious as always, I stood on the bed and poked my finger into the hole.  All I could feel was plastic vapour barrier, so I’m hoping that’s the source of the gleam.  But if you happen to discover amateur porn videos featuring Arlene Cherry on the internet, please don’t tell me.  I’d really rather not know.

Pacific loons are the Fonzies of the ocean. Clad in sleek black, they kick back casually on the waves, far too cool for the rest of the seabirds.  When they dive, it’s with a laid-back ease that makes the mergansers look like skinny little punks who are trying too hard.

I love good oysters, but there’s nothing worse than a bad oyster. And once it’s breaded and fried it’s impossible to tell the difference until after you’ve eaten it.  You don’t want to know how I discovered this.  But, as the saying goes, “This, too, shall pass”.  And it did, quickly.

‘Moving’ right along…

I can’t decide whether I like the ocean better…

…in the sunshine when it’s blue and beautiful:

Or under cloudy skies when it looks like molten silver:

I love it when it’s stormy, too, but we’ve had beautiful weather the whole time we’ve been here so I didn’t get to photograph any big waves.  Maybe next time.

I don’t know this for certain, but I suspect that the designer of the Hyundai Elantra’s seats sneaked into my house while I was sleeping, measured every inch of my body, and designed the seat contours specifically to torture me. (Fortunately the car rental company exchanged it for us, or I’d be in serious pain right now.)

No matter how devastating the damage, nature will eventually recover if it gets the chance. I was lucky to have visited Cathedral Grove before the big storm of 1997.  It was still majestic after the storm, but the mossy grotto beneath the towering trees had become a brighter place criss-crossed with the massive trunks of the fallen giants.  Now, nearly twenty years later, I’m happy to see that it’s slowly returning to its green and shade-dappled glory.

And best of all, the trilliums and daffodils and camellias are in full bloom, along with cherry trees, magnolias, tulips, hyacinths, forsythia, and just about everything else.  I could keep snapping photos all day long, and the scented air is divine!

What’s blooming in your neck of the woods this week?

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P.S. We’ll be on the road today, so I won’t have a chance to respond to comments until we’re back this evening.  “Talk” to you then!

P.P.S. If you haven’t had your say on the format for the Virtual Book Club yet, please click here to offer your comments.  The Book Club will start next week!