Awesome eagles, spawning salmon, and lazy sea lions

This past weekend was a somewhat significant birthday for my husband, who decided that since he'd never done anything really interesting for his November birthday, he wanted to go somewhere warmer. Because we practice Voluntary Simplicity, tropical vacations are not something we consider much. It's bad enough adding to greenhouse gas emissions just to drive from one place to another.

So our trip was a one-and-a-half hour flight (bad enough when 11,000 scientists are telling us we're in a climate emergency!) to Vancouver Island to visit my husband's brother and his wife (who moved out there over the summer). The bonus was that I also got to see my best friend (for the third time this year). It was a really wonderful birthday weekend, complete with decadent birthday carrot cake, great conversation, and good hikes. We climbed Mount Tzouhalem, and a bald eagle even flew up to our height to wish Lee a happy birthday.

https://youtu.be/GVSACuRVWC8

Our other encounters with nature were also serendipitous. Our trip happened to fall within the ten days that salmon spawn in Goldstream River, so we went to witness the perpetuation and ending of the life cycle of the creatures as they made their way upriver to deposit their eggs and ultimately, die, leaving their bodies to feed eagles, seagulls, and other sea life...

https://youtu.be/8BiGk-RryGk

And we were just as lucky to witness some of that other sea life when we headed to Cowichan Bay for supper. There, on the outer marina docks were hundreds of California sea lions, well-fed thanks to the salmon, snoozing in the late afternoon sun, breaking out in frequent cacophonous choruses of sea lion song. But what happens below made us dock-watchers chuckle almost as much as their singing did...

https://youtu.be/FkZyHNVrR2o

Clearly, as hikers and nature-lovers, we couldn't have asked for a better birthday weekend.