August 2026

I like Manning Park - We did a day trip to Manning in June 2020 , but we drove up to the Alpine area in 2022.  I wanted to do a trip more like the 2020 trip, but a little later in the year so we could visit the Alpine area which generally opens after July 1st.  The drive out is about two and a half hours from Vancouver and our first stop is the lookout.

 
The lookout is a challenging spot.  There is a lots of wildlife here (mammals and birds) and they are all trained to expect hand outs despite the no feeding signs.  When you open your car door there is a small parade of ground squirrels that rush you to see your odds.  The birds are often watching from the surrounding trees - if they see food moving, they jump in closer.
 

On a Manning Camping trip in 2015 I woke up early and drove to the Alpine to see the birds.  It was nearly noon so I thought there was almost no chance of seeing birds, but as we drove around a corner I saw a large bird on a rock taking in the view.  We pulled over and it turned out it was a mother bird and a large sized family of juveniles.  Grouse are funny - they really believe in their camouflage so once we sat down the birds seamed to have no problem eating and walking around us.  Eventually they did cross the road an disappear in to the forest but it was a nice experience.

We drove up to the Alpine area and broke out our picnic.  After lunch we want for a short walk on the trails.
 

 
The flowers were short to the ground and many were in the seed stage.  We met some hikers who told us the flowers were better a few km down the trail, but Claira was already done with being in the bright sun.

 
We drove down to lightning lakes but the kids were already tired and didn't want to walk around the lake.  Sad, we turned back to the city.

Many years my Aunt hosts a family reunion on her family farm.  We try to arrive early on Friday night and meet everyone.  This year my Aunt and Uncle have setup their old car and a banner to make a photo spot.

 
 
The next day we got our party on. 

 

One larger project was getting the cookies out on tea stands.  Lots of impressive things - tin after tin of treats and at least 4 different tea stands.

The pink fluffy is a crowd favorite so it's a good place to hang out for portraits.

The younger people do put in more effort.

 


This trip we stayed at Oyster Bay Resorts which is just down the road from my Aunts place.  The kids were a little slow getting up so I walked across the street to the large beach where the tide was out.  The tide was quite far out so there was a lot of sand to walk on.

The Richmond Night Market has announced this is their last year.  We have been to the Richmond Night Market a few times as well as Night Markets in Asia so I wanted a visit.  We picked a Saturday night and went:

We don't get a lot of thunder storms with lightniing in Vancouver - the mountains seam to break up storms.  The deck in our appartment is covered so if it isn't too windy I can leave the camera out and take a time lapse.  Generally I shoot 27 to 30 second exposures but this storm was so active I probably should have shot every 15 seconds.

I combined the images into a time lapse to show just how active it was.