My wife and I recently celebrated twenty years of marriage with a wee trip to Victoria. đź’Ť
I was still reeling a bit from covid, and overwhelmed with work (as always these days), so it was not an ambitious trip — just a few days of parks, some rock hounding, and good meals.
But twenty years ago we went on a big trip to Haida Gwaii to get married in a lovely mosquito-infested spot in the forest. Because we’re a bit eccentric, I guess!
Wife prefers to be scarce online, so she's mostly missing from these photos except for some distance shots (and they don’t exactly scream "anniversary"). Not being able to share pictures of her is a bit painful for me, but… boundaries! Didn't get to 20 years without respecting those!
But I will fudge a bit and include some ancient pics of her from our 2003 wedding trip. 🙂 So long ago that we were basically different people, so it’s okay? Right? Shhhh…
Wife is interested in rocks this year. We spent a bunch of time looking for purty rocks on the pebbly beaches along Dallas Road — particularly looking for "dallasite" (not shown here, though we did find some).
Can't go to Victoria without a walk on the James Bay breakwater. I know it from LONG before it had railings.
View from the breakwater.
Art on the breakwater.
Layers of paint on the lighthouse.
Yacht-toting boat.
Another Air B&B.
Great view of the bridge from that room.
The Parliamentary Dining room is in the basement of the BC Legislature… open to the public, but a bit hard to find, and you have to go through security, and then a bunch of looooong hallways.
One of the long basement halls on the way to the dining room. We also — I am not kidding — had to pass through a loading dock.
The hallways got nicer, but not shorter.
This one perfectly captures the feeling of the place.
A huge double-clap of thunder moments after this picture, coming from far over the water I guess — because it was calm and lovely in that spot.
The Dining Room itself was, of course, extremely Victorian.
The glacier-scraped shapes of the Gulf Islands, as seen from a float plane on our way home. These extremely longitudinal islands always fascinate me.
Now rewind 20 years. This is Haida Gwaii, where we got married. There are hundreds of photos. This is just a tiny selection of highlights.
Following Kim to one of the places we stayed. Rapid Ritchie's Rustic Rentals Reasonable Rates! (My friend Kira says this video gave her Blair Witch Project vibes, and now I can't un-see that.)
Way out on the wild west coast.
Lookin' cool amongst the trees of Haida Gwaii. Can you see the little bird on my shoulder, chirping in my ear: "You're getting married tomorrow, bucko. Right here. This is your last day as an unmarried man. Whoaaaa, dude."
From across a creek, the glade we picked out for the wedding ceremony.
Almost-wife emerging from a nearby building where she changed into her amazing wedding dress.
Rubber boots were a critical part of our wedding gear.
Wedding vows in the forest.
And … mosquitoes in the forest. We included this photograph to show off the uninvited wedding guests — swams of mosquitoes and black flies! Here we are rather frantically swatting at them. The bugs were actually quite an alarming problem, and we worried until we got the photos that the bugs would be visible. Turns out they were invisible on film. But really, some insect repellent would have been a gooooood idea. 🙂
I love, love, love this photo.
That’s a red blanket. Which we used for many years.
Kim all fancy in her dress, with her "cloak" (blanket), strolling through the forest.
It’s possible that I have never seen a homier and more exotic cabin in the woods near the beach in the mist. As you can see, the building was most noteworthy for it’s prominent bedroom tower. A porch as wide as the building had a railing of whalebones, and not just a few measly whalebones: seemingly a full set of enormous ribs and vertebrae, laid out with care and festooned with smaller beachcombing treasures. Behind the large glass windows we caught glimpses of colourful coats, instruments and painted rubber boots.
