TRAVEL | YEAR-END RECAP | CANADA

2023 — A Year of Family and Friends

12 months portrayed in 12 photos

Well, 2023 wasn’t a particularly good year, though it wasn’t that bad either. The biggest news of the year was that we returned to Canada in March. We had only planned to spend a few months here, but there have been some factors that are going on in the background that have kept us here for a longer length of time. In retrospect, looking back at being here for almost a year now, I can see that it was needed.

After 5.5 years of full-time travel, we were both exhausted and burnt out. We needed a place to land where we didn’t have to worry about visas expiring or where we were going to go next. We needed a place with a loving embrace and the comfort of feeling at home.

Though we don’t have a home in Canada, and no particular place that we can even call a home base, we have numerous friends and family members that have opened their doors for us and we have spent most of the last year bouncing around Western Canada visiting and reconnecting with loved ones.

January

2023 was brought in atop the cliffs of Antalya, Turkey. If you look closely at the lead photo, you will see the spot where we partied just above the building on the right of the marina with the red roof. Locals gathered around a bonfire, and many people played music and danced — the revelry was in full force. I couldn’t resist asking this man if we could take a selfie. He was just too adorable.

Because Antalya is considered the ‘Moscow of the Med’, we were surrounded by Russians and I will never forget what happened when the song Rasputin (ra-ra-rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen) started playing that night. Suddenly the place erupted in song and dance as they all belted out the lyrics. We found it interesting because most Russians we met spoke very little English, but they sure knew the words to that song!

February

After Turkey, we were supposed to return to Bulgaria where we were going to continue working on a mural project that we had started at a hostel in Varna. However, we were turned away at the border because we had already spent the maximum allowed time in the country within 6 months. It’s another long story, but if you are interested in reading more about it, you can click here and here.

Because our visas in Turkey were also expiring in the next 48 hours, we had to make fast moves to somewhere — so we chose Greece. Someway, somehow, we made our way to Thessaloniki where we took up residence in a hostel and painted murals in one of the rooms for pretty much the whole month.

For most of our stay, we were given our own private room that had a view of the Aegean Sea and the city below. It also faced west and we witnessed the most stunning sunsets from our private balcony each night. We could even see Mount Olympus in the distance! It was breathtaking.

March

While in Greece, we finally decided that it was time to return to Canada. My parents were not in good health, our finances were in shambles, and we were feeling defeated with life. We knew that we needed a rest.

Our flight to Canada was out of Amsterdam which meant that we had to travel there from Thessaloniki first. We had just a day and a half in Amsterdam before we flew out, and we were excited to revisit this beloved city as we had only had a short layover at it once before back in 2015.

I couldn’t help but snap this picture along one of the canals. Though it was early March, and the canals weren’t bustling yet, you still got a real taste for the life there. From bikes to the boats — tiny little cars and the adorable buildings — we do love every part of that city.

April

After spending a few weeks in my hometown of Canmore, Alberta, we headed off to visit Chris’ mom and stepdad in Daysland, Alberta, then made our way to Rocky Mountain House in the western part of the province to see his sister and her boyfriend.

Being that they are outdoor adventure enthusiasts, we got bundled up and headed out for a hike in the snow. This incredible lookout sits high above a river valley below and a frozen waterfall. Despite it looking quite cold, it wasn’t too bad.

May

At the tail end of April and beginning of May, we found ourselves in Canada’s most western province, British Columbia and the city of Kelowna, to visit a friend and some of my family. As you can see, the weather was quite different in this desert region of the country.

My dad’s cousin is in her 70s and is fit as a fiddle. We could hardly keep up with her as she whisked us around on various hikes in the region. On this particular hike, she insisted that we smell the bark of this tree. I couldn’t help but snap a photo to remember this moment. It did smell glorious!

June

In June we found ourselves back in Canmore, my hometown, where we were hired by the local legion to paint a mural on the side of their building. It was a pretty huge project that took us about 100 hours to complete.

At this point, we had secured a house-sitting gig for friends of my parents that took us from June until August. It was at this time, when we finally sat still for a while, that I started suffering from anxiety and panic attacks.

Because of this, we spent most of our time either immersed in our mural projects (we did two separate ones in the town) or out hiking in nature. It felt great to sit in one place for a while which is where we finally started to rest and recouperate after our long length of travels.

July

As we mostly spent June painting our mural, we didn’t really leave the town to do any exploring around Banff and Lake Louise. Initially, we had wanted to go to Lake Louise, but by the time we got around to making plans, we had already heard that it was crawling with tourists. Instead, we chose to go to one of my old stomping grounds for a day trip.

Sunshine Village is the ski hill that I grew up on and in the summer months, they open it up for people to go hiking. The last time I had been up there without snow was when I was about seven years old — so it was great to revisit it and see it in a different light.

This area is famous for its wildflowers in the summer and our day did not disappoint. I wrote a whole article about our adventure if you are interested in checking it out.

This day was just what the doctor ordered and we relished in the splendor of our surroundings.

August

Our housesit was located about a 15-minute walk from this location. Surprisingly, it is an area of Canmore that I was not familiar with, despite thinking that I had scoured every inch of that town in my youth.

We found ourselves down along this tributary of the Bow River on a few different days, exploring the trails and taking in the beauty of nature. This was one of the good days when there wasn’t a lot of wildfire smoke that choked the valley.

Mid-August we left Canmore to pet-sit for one of my childhood best friends who also lives in Western Alberta near a town called Caroline. She owns a 4-acre piece of land and we loved sitting and watching the deer, birds, skunks and squirrels move in and out of her property each day.

The tranquility of her property was just what the doctor ordered and I feel like we got there just in the nick of time before I had a full-fledged nervous breakdown.

September

Did I mention wildfire smoke? By September it had infiltrated itself into most crevices of our country.

By now we were staying with an old friend of Chris’ on her family’s farm in Hughenden, Eastern Alberta. We spent the whole month staying in their extra house on the property, and we volunteered to help them harvest their incredible garden and do some different handyman-type jobs around the property. We truly relished our life on the farm and finally felt like we had some peace and quiet to truly turn inwards and heal from our crazy few years of travel.

Our only regret is that we didn’t stay there longer, BUT — spoiler alert, we are headed back there on Sunday!

While there, we witnessed this view many days as the smoke blew its way across the flat lands of the prairies. It was an ominous and unsettling time.

October

After begrudgingly leaving the farm, we made our way further north to ultimately visit my oldest friend whom I went to school with when I was 5 years old. She lives near Dawson Creek, British Columbia which is just a few kilometers from the Alberta border.

To get there, we had to pass through Alberta’s capital city of Edmonton. While there, we visited one of Chris’ old buddies that he lived with in Lake Louise about 20 years ago. We also had a nice evening visiting another of my childhood friends that I hadn’t seen in many years — plus we stayed with Chris’ Aunt and Uncle for a couple of nights.

During this time we had a few things that we needed to purchase, so we decided, for nostalgia's sake, to visit West Edmonton Mall — a place we both went to on occasion as children.

Inside the mall is a huge water park with a wave pool and waterslides, a skating ice rink, an amusement park complete with a roller coaster, glow-in-the-dark mini golf, an aquarium complete with sea lions, and yep, even a pirate ship. Not to mention 800 stores! Even though neither of us are fans of malls — it was a fun jaunt down memory lane

November

At the end of October, we made our way to Chris’ Aunt’s farm outside of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where we have been ever since. Although it snowed just a little bit at the end of October, it melted pretty much straight away and didn’t snow again until a few days ago.

Many mornings we were met with frost and a foggy landscape. It was beautiful and captivating in its own right and we relished in the quiet and stillness of it all.

Chris’ Aunt had a construction project that she and her business partner were working on and they needed some help. So we found ourselves making some good money assisting in framing a new vet clinic that is being built nearby.

December

Chris’ Aunt is a bit of a cat lady. Okay, maybe that is an understatement. I haven’t mentioned this in any of my articles yet, but, according to her, she has 35 cats!

Thankfully, not all of them come in the house — we definitely would not be staying here if they did! Instead, she has three outbuildings that are equipped to house them and only about 7 are allowed in our side of the house.

Harlow is one of the ones she has had the longest and she is one of our favorites. She is a gentle and beautiful cat and meows at the door to be let out, then sits at the living room window and stares at us when she wants to come back in.

And, I just couldn’t let you go without another photo of a stunning sunset. This is the last sunset of 2023 and it was a real stunner!

While this gives you a broad overview of our year, we also visited various friends in a few different other spots as well. For those interested in the places that we have stayed since being back in Canada, see the red-circled places below. We have still covered a fair amount of ground and we are certainly still nomadic.

Thanks for joining me on this quick year-in-review. While it has been nice to be back in the warm embrace of our own country, we truly can not wait until the day we fly out of here again. It is coming soon — I promise!

Thank you to JoAnn Ryan for the prompt in her publication In Living Color.