Hike to Smuggler Cove

October 23, 2024October 24, 2024 / edebock / 4 Comments

While the actual distance from Vancouver to Powell River on BC’s Sunshine Coast is only about 125 km (78 miles), it’s a 4 to 5 hour trip by car because it involves two ferry crossings of 40 to 50 minutes each.

8803037511710

I was born in Powell River and spent the first ten years of my life there. We made the trip back and forth many times for everything from medical appointments to visiting family in the city. Later, after moving to Vancouver, we returned to Powell River to visit my grandparents who continued to live there. Never during all those years did we ever stop to explore the peninsula between the Langdale and Earls Cove ferry terminals. To me, the trip always seemed like a mad dash along the narrow, winding highway to get from one ferry to the next. More than once, we arrived just as the ferry pulled away and had to wait for the next one!

It’s been about 20 years since I last returned to PR and this time I decided to make it a more leisurely trip. Instead of rushing from one ferry to the next, we spent 24 hours exploring the peninsula and spent the night with a good friend at Sechelt. We also enjoyed a hike to Smuggler Cove.

After the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 ex-Royal Navy seaman, Larry Kelly, used the tranquil waters of Smuggler Cove to collect cargoes of unemployed Chinese labourers who each paid him $100 to smuggle them into the United States where they hoped to find work. Later, during Prohibition (1920-1933) rum-runners used Smuggler Cove as a safe haven.

The hike to Smuggler Cove is a fairly easy one. The first part is a well-maintained trail and includes sections of boardwalk that pass through a wetland area, largely the work of resident beavers.

Further on, the trail becomes slightly more challenging but it’s still not difficult. Hiking through the coastal rainforest, life beneath the canopy is lush with numerous kinds of ferns and fungi.

Without question, though, the highlight of the hike is the cove itself. So beautiful and so serene! Hubby was curious about the building in the second photo that would only be accessible by water.

At the end of the in and out hike, before beginning the trek back to our vehicle, we sat for awhile in this beautiful spot. After experiencing the destructive power of an “atmospheric river” that caused serious damage and claimed at least three lives just a few days earlier while we were staying in North Vancouver, these peaceful ocean waters were a boon to my soul!

Choosing 10 key wardrobe items for fall

October 18, 2024October 12, 2024 / edebock / 2 Comments

I was scrolling through Facebook recently when I came across this reel by wardrobe consultant and blogger, Sarah Kelly who calls herself The Haute Homemaker. In it, she shares the ten pieces that she would include if she were starting her wardrobe off from scratch this fall. With them, she says that she could create endless outfit possibilities.

At the time, I was about to begin my seasonal wardrobe switch from spring/summer to fall/winter and I was also thinking about what I would pack for the trip that we’re now on. That led me to ask myself which items I would choose from my fall wardrobe if I had to limit myself to just ten. As I packed away most of my warm weather clothes and brought out the cooler weather ones, I worked on my list. Socks, underwear, and pyjamas didn’t count and unlike Kelly, I decided not to include coats or footwear in my ten. Considering the climate and my lifestyle, I would probably need to include a couple of coats and at least two or three pairs of shoes. That wouldn’t leave me much else to wear!

I seriously thought about including my denim military jacket because it’s new and I love it. It was on the list and off again more than once, as were my dark brown corduroy pants, but neither of them made the final cut. I decided that if I had to I could get away with just two pairs of pants as long as one of them could be dressed up or down. In order to create a variety of outfits that would suit my lifestyle, I decided that the rest should be tops and layering pieces. Most, if not all of my choices, have appeared on the blog before. After much thought, here’s my list:

jeans
navy pinstriped pants
sleeveless top
3/4 sleeve top
long sleeve t-shirt
long sleeve shirt
pullover sweater
cardigan
lightweight hoodie
Uniqlo ultralight down vest

Depending on where you live and what stage of life you’re at, if you were to make a similar list, yours might look entirely different from mine. I’m retired, so mine didn’t have to include items that would be suitable for a work environment although some of them probably would be. On the other hand, until the snow flies, I want to be able to continue to enjoy outdoor pursuits like hiking, so I needed to take that into account.

Now, here are some of the outfits I created with the ten pieces. I’ve included both casual and dressier looks. As you can see, I could easily create more by mixing and matching. I could also vary these looks with different accessories and footwear.

I’m faking! Hubby was raking leaves when I interrupted him to take photos for the blog.

The key word in this exercise is if. I’m not actually going to limit myself to only these ten items and while I did pack most of them, I also have a few other pieces with me on this trip. I do, however, remember my self-imposed fashion fast during the fall of 2021 when I wore only six items from my closet for 30 days. I definitely learned to be more creative in coming up with different ways to combine the same pieces and I also put a lot of thought into how to use accessories to add variety.

Just doing this exercise, thinking about which pieces I wear most often and which are most essential to me, has had two definite benefits. It has reminded me that I, like most people, have way more clothes than I really need and it’s shown me a gap in this season’s wardrobe that I’d like to fill. Maybe more about that in a future post, but for now, I have miles to go and people to see!

‘Annibirthday’ week: what I wore

October 11, 2024October 6, 2024 / edebock / 2 Comments

We call the first week of October ‘annibirthday’ week as our wedding anniversary (48th this year) and my birthday both fall within that week. Today I thought I’d share a few of the things we did and some of the outfits I wore during the week.

Although our anniversary is actually October 2nd, we celebrated a day early this year because hubby had an appointment in Camrose, a small city about an hour from home, that morning. Yes, at our age appointments sometimes happen even during annibirthday week, but thankfully this was a routine and uncomplicated one. Since there are many more restaurants in Camrose to choose from for a nice celebratory meal than there are in our tiny town of less than 1000 people, I went along with him and after his appointment we enjoyed a fabulous anniversary lunch at Marrow, a lovely restaurant housed in a historic feed mill. The bison burgers were delicious, the service excellent, and we loved the vintage decor.

461882364_10161552605720915_2029796687439930519_n

Since I was shopping while hubby was at his appointment and we had some outdoor pursuits planned for after lunch, I dressed for comfort. I wore dark wash jeans and the cozy Checkmate Jacket from cabi that hubby gave me for my birthday in 2019. It has become a fall favourite. Under the jacket I wore a dark green top with three-quarter length sleeves that was thrifted a couple of years ago.

You would have to zoom in very close to see the tiny pearl drop necklace that I also wore. It was a gift from hubby 43 years ago on our 5th wedding anniversary! Interestingly, we celebrated that anniversary with dinner in that very same historic feed mill. The restaurant was under different management back then and looks entirely different inside now, but as I recall, the food was just as good.

After lingering over lunch, we went for a 2.3 km walk around beautiful Mirror Lake in the middle of town and then played a round of disc golf, a sport that we’ve recently taken up and that I’m quite bad at! We finished the afternoon with lattes at GOAT Coffee, a favourite stop of ours when we’re in town. A sugar-free caramel latte with whipped cream from GOAT is the only time coffee crosses my lips.

The following day, our actual anniversary, was a quiet stay-at-home day. I spent quite awhile doing some travel planning, but more about that in future posts.

This is where I can often be found when I’m at home; on the end of the couch reading or using my laptop. In fact, this is where the blog usually happens. In the photo I’m wearing what could be called my style uniform at this time of year. Simply put, a style uniform is an outfit formula that you wear on repeat; a combination of clothing that make you feel most like yourself. Mine consists of blue jeans and a shirt or top that’s a step above a simple t-shirt or sweatshirt. This shirt, from Gap, was thrifted last year. It has a thin gold metallic thread running through the darker horizontal stripes elevating the look a little bit and the plaid pattern matches at the side seams, always a sign of good quality.

For my birthday, on October 5th, we drove about an hour from home to the tiny village of Donalda where we started with a lovely lunch at the Coulee Tea House, another favourite of ours.

IMG_20241005_124818062_BURST000_COVER 2

I wore a variation of my style uniform; a pair of charcoal jeans with a very lightweight striped boatneck sweater that was thrifted in 2022. I chose the sweater as a base layer for the hike that we planned to do after lunch, but I dressed it up for lunch by adding a scarf.

For the hike, I left the scarf in the vehicle and added several layers for warmth. When we started out, it was only 12ºC (53.6F) and there was a stiff wind blowing. I may have looked a bit like the Michelin Man, but I didn’t want to be cold!

As it turned out, the temperature climbed and the wind began to die down. Before long, I was stripping off layers and stuffing them in our backpack. Soon, the sweater and my light hoodie were all I needed.

Just an old gal and an old car!

The 5.15 km hike brought my 150 day walking/hiking challenge to an end with a total of exactly 330 km, 30 km beyond my goal! When we were done, we returned to the Tea House for a birthday cupcake and another pot of tea. They have 34 varieties to choose from!

For church on annibirthday week Sunday, I wanted to style my recently purchased denim military jacket in a new way. I had a skirt in mind that I’d had for about 20 years and hadn’t worn for quite awhile, but apparently I’m thicker in the middle than I was back then. When I put it on, I couldn’t zip it up so it was set aside to donate and I wore this dress instead. I finished the look with a pair of blue suede ballet flats.

Now that annibirthday week is over, we’re looking forward to celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving on Monday with one of our daughters-in-law’s family. I do love October! So many things to celebrate!

Stirrup pants: a fashion flashback

October 4, 2024October 3, 2024 / edebock / 7 Comments

We all know that fashion repeats itself. If we wait long enough a style comes around again, although in some cases I really wonder why. After all, isn’t once sometimes enough? A perfect example of this is stirrup pants! Yes, that strange trend from the 1980s and early 90s is back again!

Stirrup pants 1980s

Stirrup pants weren’t a new creation of the 80s. They actually originated as equestrian gear in the 1920s. When women started to move away from riding sidesaddle and began wearing riding breeches similar to men’s, the straps were designed to keep their pants firmly in place inside their boots. Later, the style was adopted by skiers who first wore stirrup pants during the winter Olympics in Germany in the 1930s. Then came the fitness craze of the 1980s and stirrup pants made a comeback, but not just in the gym where they make a certain amount of sense. No, this time they became mainstream fashion.

There’s almost always something a wee bit different about a style when it comes around again. This time, the stirrups are being made longer so that they can be worn outside the shoe instead of inside! As if stirrup pants weren’t already weird enough!

Also, keep in mind that many of the most recent iteration of stirrup pants are actually stirrup leggings and ladies, leggings are not pants! Unless you’re wearing them in the gym, please keep those butts covered.

I suspect that you’ve probably already guessed that I’m not adding stirrup pants to my fashion wish list. I wore them in the 80s, but this time around, I’ll pass. They weren’t comfortable or flattering then and I doubt that they’d be any more so now.

What about you? Would you consider wearing them?

Images: Pinterest

Book of the month – September 2024

October 1, 2024September 9, 2024 / edebock / Leave a comment

Hope for the Best, Plan for the Rest

Dr. Sammy Winemaker and Dr. Hsien Seow

Screenshot 2024-09-09 at 11.49.03 AM Being diagnosed with a life-changing illness can be completely overwhelming. In Hope for the Best, Plan for the Rest, Drs. Sammy Winemaker and Hsien Seow offer a valuable guide to help patients and families deal with their new reality. Combining their decades of palliative care research and experience caring for seriously ill patients and harnessing the advice of thousands of patients, they offer 7 keys for navigating a life-changing diagnosis. With real-life stories, tips, and exercises, these compassionate experts empower patients with practical tools to help them successfully navigate the health care system with knowledge and confidence.

The 7 Keys:

Walk Two Roads. Hope for the best, and plan for the rest. Toggle between being realistic and being hopeful.
Zoom Out. Understand the big picture of your illness and what might lie ahead.
Know Your Style. Review your past patterns for insights into how you will journey through your illness. Identify your coping strategies and your ways of processing information.
Customize Your Order. Communicate your wishes, values, and beliefs to help tailor your care plan to your preferences.
Anticipate Ripple Effects. Recognize that those caring for you will also need to be supported.
Connect the Dots. Play a central role in coordinating your care (or identify someone who can).
Invite Yourself. Speak up. Initiate conversations about what to expect and advocate for yourself.

These 7 keys are not steps or stages to be followed in a particular order, but are meant to be blended together and used as needed. After devoting one chapter to each of the keys, the writers wrap up with a chapter entitled Putting It All Together and then two final chapters that deal in more detail with the late and end stages of disease and the actual process of dying. They caution their readers to read those two chapters only if they feel comfortable doing so. The book would be a complete and helpful tool without them, but personally I found both chapters informative and reassuring.

This book, published in 2023, wasn’t available ten years earlier when I received my first cancer diagnosis. Looking back, I think that over time I implemented most of the keys either intuitively or through bits and pieces of advice that I received along the way, but how much better it would have been to have a book like this one to guide my way. It’s a book about hope (my one word for 2024) in the face of uncertainty. It’s about living well, being fully informed, and getting the best care available. It’s about being a whole person and not just a patient. It’s a call for patient-led, patient-centred health care.

Crossing the finish line

September 28, 2024September 27, 2024 / edebock / 8 Comments

On Wednesday, while hiking the Holdsworth Trail in Miquelon Lake Provincial Park, I crossed the finish line of my self-imposed 300 km in 150 days walking challenge 10 days before the deadline!

I recently read a quote by French philosopher and author, Albert Camus that resonated with me. It describes perfectly why we love to camp and hike at Miquelon in the fall.

“Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.”

In fact, after completing the Holdsworth Trail on Wednesday, we hiked another 8.9 km on the park’s beautiful and very colourful backcountry trails the following day.

Although I’ve now accomplished my walking/hiking goal for this season, I’ll continue keeping track of my distance at least until my 72nd birthday on the 5th of October which was the deadline that I’d set for myself and then I’ll keep on walking and hiking until the snow flies, hopefully sometime in the distant future!

Styling a denim military jacket

September 27, 2024September 24, 2024 / edebock / 4 Comments

The last thing that the very helpful saleswoman at Cleo said to me as she packaged up my latest purchase was that she hoped I’d have fun styling it with different items from my closet and that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. As soon as I saw the Denim Military Jacket, I knew that it would be a fun and versatile addition to my wardrobe; one that I could combine with old favourites to create many new looks, both dressy and casual.

Here’s how I wore it to celebrate hubby’s 50 year grad reunion at the University of Alberta last week. I’ve had the dress for many years and it’s appeared on the blog before, but the jacket seemed to give it new life.

The denim is soft and not too heavy with lots of stretch which makes the jacket very comfortable. Here I’m wearing it with another dress that I’ve had for a long time. In fact, I haven’t worn this one in so long that I was delighted to find that it still fit!

While the jacket looks great over dresses, it can also be worn more casually. Since we’ve been enjoying lots of lovely warm weather lately, I haven’t done my seasonal closet switch yet, but I dug into storage to try the jacket with my button front skinny cords. I think this combination might look better with tall winter boots, but I’m not bringing those out yet. I try to put winter off for as long as possible!

Then, of course, there’s this season’s denim on denim trend. For the next photo, I changed out the cords for my favourite jeans. The key to looking good in double denim is to wear a top in a bright contrasting colour. I don’t have many of those in my closet, but I think this one works.

These are just a few of the ways that I’ll be styling my new Denim Military Jacket this season, so don’t be surprised if it shows up on the blog again!

What elegance is not

September 20, 2024September 12, 2024 / edebock / Leave a comment

For the past year and probably longer, my most read blog post has been one that I wrote in September 2020 entitled 50 characteristics of an elegant woman. Every time I look at my stats and see it at the top of the list, I can’t help wondering why. I know that if you google “characteristics of an elegant woman” it’s one of the first items that pops up, but why are so many people looking for information about elegance? Is it something that’s lacking in our world today?

The dictionary defines elegance as the “quality of being graceful and attractive in appearance or manner”. Elegance is so much more than what we look like or how we dress. It’s the whole package, inside and out.

Since this is a topic that is obviously of interest, I thought I’d dive into it a bit deeper today and look at what elegance is not. I love the quote above, but it was also Yves Saint Laurent who said, “We must never confuse elegance with snobbery.” Elegance can’t be bought. A mean-spirited woman in expensive clothes and impeccable makeup isn’t elegant. She’s simply a well-dressed nasty person.

While elegance might sound like an old-fashioned concept, it isn’t only for the elderly or a practice from a bygone era. It’s something that every woman of any age can aspire to.

Perhaps you were brought up with the myth that elegance means conforming and keeping quiet. Not so! As I said in my previous post, an elegant woman isn’t loud or obnoxious, but she graciously and calmly stands up for what she believes in. She isn’t contentious, but at the same time, she isn’t a doormat. Elegance is not weakness!

While I was writing this, 1 Corinthians, the “love chapter” from the Bible that’s often read at weddings, kept coming to mind, particularly verses 4 and 5.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Everything that is said about love could also be said about elegance! Elegance is patient, it doesn’t envy, it doesn’t boast, it isn’t proud, it doesn’t dishonour others, it’s not self-seeking, it’s not easily angered, and it doesn’t keep a record of wrongs.

One of the areas where I see a distinct absence of elegance in today’s world is social media. An elegant woman puts her cell phone aside and gives her full attention to the people she’s with. When she’s alone, she doesn’t spend endless hours scrolling on Facebook and getting caught up in pointless debates. She’s careful about what she posts online and doesn’t use social media for self-promotion.

Elegance isn’t about perfection. It’s about being comfortable with who you are, knowing your limitations, growing from past experiences, and not worrying about the things you can’t control.

Exploring the University of Alberta Botanic Garden

September 19, 2024September 19, 2024 / edebock / 2 Comments

As part of his 50th year university grad celebration, hubby received complementary tickets to the University of Alberta Botanic Garden (formerly called the Devonian Gardens) just outside Edmonton. It was a beautiful fall day; perfect for a peaceful stroll through the 80 acres of themed gardens and winding nature trails.

While the garden wasn’t the riot of colour that it might have been earlier in the season, there were still many beautiful flowers to be seen.

With its geometric granite and limestone terraces, still reflective pools, and the soothing sound of moving water, the expansive Aga Khan Garden, a contemporary interpretation of Islamic landscape architecture, was a very peaceful place to stroll. The central focus is a waterfall tumbling over textured stone.

Recently renovated, Connie’s Secret Garden at the north end of the Alpine Garden is home to a more natural looking waterfall.

Indoor showhouses feature plants from three very diverse climatic zones… tropical, temperate, and arid. Everywhere we went, we were surrounded by an abundance of plants of every description. Some of the most unique ones were the cacti in the Arid Showhouse. Just look at that amazing flower.

During the year that we lived in Japan, I fell in love with the beautiful strolling gardens, so we purposely saved the Kurimoto Japanese Garden for last today knowing that it would be my favourite part. With it’s lanterns, arched bridge, and pagoda, the design is authentically Japanese, but the garden utilizes plants that are hardy enough to survive our northern climate.

This is really just a sampling of what the Botanic Garden has to offer. We walked every pathway, some of them twice, covering a total of 6.21 km (3.86 miles) leaving me less than 10 km to go to complete my 300 km in 150 days goal!

The right hiking shoe

September 13, 2024September 11, 2024 / edebock / 2 Comments

screenshot-2024-05-09-at-7.40.11-pm While out on the trails earlier this summer, I began to notice that my hiking shoes, now several years old, weren’t as comfortable as they used to be. The shoes themselves were still in good shape, but the insoles no longer provided the cushioning that they once did.

One of the great features of Merrell hiking shoes is that the insoles are removable and can be replaced. Unfortunately, the insoles that I wanted were out of stock in Canada and I couldn’t find any information about if or when they might be available again. I could have ordered them out of the US, but by the time I figured out the exchange on our dollar and the cost of shipping, I decided that the total was more than I wanted to pay for a simple pair of insoles. Instead, I decided to order brand new hiking shoes and I knew exactly what I wanted!

MRLW-J036328-021621-S21-001 2

The Merrell Moab 3 was rated the #1 Best Overall Hiking Shoe for 2024 by Good Housekeeping and I’ve known for a long time that I wanted my next pair to be the boot style to provide extra ankle support. I wouldn’t normally order shoes online, but because these are my third pair of Merrells, I was quite confident that they would fit well.

The Moab 3 comes in a variety of colours. You might think that I chose blue to coordinate with the Tensor knee wrap that I’ve been wearing on my arthritic left knee while hiking this summer, but I actually chose it because it was on sale for $50 less than the earth tone ones I might otherwise have chosen!

I firmly believe that good quality shoes that fit properly shouldn’t need to be broken in and this pair was definitely proof of that! Straight out of the box, I gave them an excellent test run hiking three days in a row over a variety of terrain in Big Knife Provincial Park. The first two trails were easy ones, but the third one involved some very uneven ground and a couple of tricky climbs that required stability and surefootedness.

This turkey vulture and his buddies were hanging around, perhaps hoping that I wouldn’t make it up that very steep slope. The shoes didn’t let me down though and they were comfortable from the moment I put them on until I took them off again.