Week 31

Hello and greetings from Canada while traveling for work.

Here are the pictures from week 31:

Day 209- Monday, 7/28/25

 Greetings from Victoria, BC, Canada!  I'm here for the Wildlife Disease Association conference and the weather is amazingly perfect. After I arrived and checked into my hotel for a quick refresh, headed out  on my short and scenic walk to the conference center.  There I picked up my badge at registration, found my fellow UC Davis peeps and then boarded a bus to a nearby castle where we had a wonderful picnic dinner on the beautiful grounds which were fun to explore.

Day 210- Tuesday, 7/29/25

I'm starting conference day 2 with coffee and a scone on my room balcony with the most amazing view of the harbor. After as I walked to the center I took a little detour to see more of the harbor discovering this wonderful "Welcome to Victoria" greeting spelled out in flowers.  This is city is full of wonderful flowers and landscaping.  The conference center is pretty cool too and I sat in on many good talks and viewed some great posters.  Later we all had dinner at a local pub with a silent auction.  I was till walking distance to the hotel so it was great to do the walk at night and see how cool the Capitol building and harbor are lit up in the dark.

Day 211- Wednesday, 7/30/25

 

 Day 3 was only a 1/2 day of meetings and then everyone got to pick an excursion to go on.  Most chose the whale watching boat tour but since I had done that before here in Victoria on a trip with John I wanted to try something new which lead me to this SkyWalk.  It was pretty amazing with a nice gentle walk through the woods and an easy ramp up to some amazing views plus a slide down!  The slide was made for all ages so I went for it and it was a blast.  Dinner was on our own tonight so I had room service and ate looking out at my amazing view.

Day 212- Thursday, 7/31/25

 

Today is the last full day of the conference and I woke up to the best sunrise.  It was a busy day with a lot of talks in different rooms so I really had to plan out what I wanted to see and be sure I was in the right place at the right time.  I also had to present our group's poster in an afternoon session which went really well. Later, while walking back to the hotel, I made sure to swing by a cool whale sculpture made of live flowers I saw from the bus to my excursion yesterday so I could grab a photo. Later we had a semi-formal awards dinner to attend so I refreshed and headed back out for cocktail hour and a nice fancy dinner with all my amazing colleagues.  The walk again back to the hotel was so nice at night especially near the water.  One more thing!  Today is Brandon's 21st birthday and so happy we were able to celebrate in person with him and extended family last week.

Day 213- Friday, 8/1/25

The closing ceremony was this morning and now it's time to head back home.  I'm going to miss all the lovely views of the harbor.  I had 2 flight today with a large layover in between so during that downtime I recharged my electronics and grabbed some dinner at a really nice artisan pizza and wine place in the airport.  That was perfect and just what I needed to get me through the next flight and eventual back home. Oh, by the way, happy August!

Day 214- Saturday, 8/2/25

It's great to be home but no rest for the wary.  My parents are finally cleared to fly back home.  John was kind enough to take them this past week to the post-op appointment and my mom is healing well so stitches were removed and flights were booked.  I dropped them at the airport near the crack of dawn and heard that they made it back to Texas without incident later today.  Otherwise at home the pets were very happy to see me and had been well taken care of.  I wish I had more time to chill with them and John but we're packing Justin up so I can help move him back to Humboldt Monday.

Day 215- Sunday, 7/3/25

Thrown into the mix of my crazy scheduled life is another musical with my retired boss.  We had a nice lunch first at Paesano's and then very much enjoyed the show after. It was fun to compare and contrast the two similar shows we saw together.  Now back to packing and loading up my car and Justin's car for our road trip tomorrow.

Moving on to week 32 next.