When his friends invited Nico to go for a hike up Devil’s Staircase with their dogs, he decided he would bring Nala with him even though she hates riding in cars. If not for the fact that he can lift her with one arm, there would be no other way to get her into the car. I was so surprised that he actually got her to sit in the front seat that I quickly grabbed my camera to document this rare occurrence. In the evening we belatedly celebrated Kyle’s 21st birthday (August 5th). His cake featured 4 tiny shot glasses filled with liquor acknowledging his right to legally consume alcohol now, not that legal concerns have ever stood in his way.

Maya asked for and received permission to sample one of the shots. Rarely does a photograph tell the entire story but the one below comes pretty close.

Maya attended the Slocum Soccer Camp all week with several of her friends to get tuned up for the fall season as a high school freshman. This year her 4v4 and 11v11 teams both won their respective all-camp tournaments, the latter of which Jeanine and I were able to witness this afternoon. Her play is looking very strong. She shut down the offense while playing sweeper and contributed a beautiful assist after being moved up to a wing midfielder position. The soccer-themed cake she prepared with fellow campers Fiona and Sarinnagh did not fare so well in the baking competition but she was nonetheless pleased with her two awards for athletic competition.

Normally teenagers do not respond well to 6:30am wake up calls. My niece Rachel, however, was up and at’em in anticipation of our early morning kayak outing on the Sudbury River. We covered a good four miles and saw as many herons and dozens of swallows during our one hour paddle which started with a light fog hovering over the water. I taught Rachel to paddle the last time she visited and she needed no additional instruction this time looking like an old pro. We were quiet on the water but I had a nice chance to check in with her on the car ride to and from the put in.

It is not often when my iRobot duties include taking small children out for ice cream but this evening that is exactly what I did. As a result of the decision to consolidate our California offices in Pasadena we have two families visiting Bedford to explore the area and look at potential housing options should they elect to relocate here. I decided that plying their children with ice cream and bumper boats at Kimball Farm could only enhance the chances that they look favorably on a move to the Boston area. I enjoyed meeting both spouses and hope I will be seeing them again.

My nephew John is a frequent visitor and has spent part of the summer living with us. Far more rare is a visit from his sister Rachel who is two years older than Maya and her closest cousin in age. Needless to say, we are thrilled to have her with us and it was very nice to have all our kids plus two cousins around the table for dinner this evening.

Our vacation has come to an end and it is time to return to Boston. The return flight offered an opportunity to review all my photographs and to reflect on our time spent together. The quality of any couples vacation can be maximized by correctly solving for SHE (the Spousal Happiness Equation). This multi-variable measure of contentment is difficult to express quantitatively but easy to measure photographically. I think I can safely say that this vacation yielded an extremely high SHE index and I submit the following photos as evidence. The entirely different but highly correlated HE index is directly proportional to the SHE index although photographic corroboration would not be suitable for this blog.

The entire reason for our Northwest vacation was so that we could attend the wedding of my friend Nora Micheva. I was her Gordon Engineering Leadership mentor while she attended MIT and I have enjoyed watching her grow academically, professionally, and personally. When she moved to Seattle with Simon, her fiance, to take a job with Microsoft, I introduced them to Cindy and Rob (who launched his career at Microsoft). I was able to spend a few minutes with Nora to wish her well and am happy to have this photo of us together which Cindy took with my camera. The intimate wedding was held on the grounds of the DeLille Cellars winery in Woodinville.

Our pace today is decidedly more relaxed than yesterday as we make our way from Lake Wenatchee to Seattle where we will be staying at the home of Jeanine’s close friend Tess Robins and her boyfriend. Along the way we stopped for numerous landscape photo opportunities and to pick up lunch in the small town of Leavenworth, population ~2000. The city struggled until 1962, when business owners cooperated to form a mock Bavarian village, inspired by the California town of Solvang which I visited several times while working out of Sonos’ Santa Barbara office.

Jeanine and Tess have been friends for half their lives. They met while working together at a restaurant in Indianapolis shortly before Jeanine and I were introduced and have remained close since.

After dinner Jeanine left with Tess while I lingered for a few tourist shots of Pike Place Market at sunset.

The timing of our visit to Lake Wenatchee could not have been more ideal. The weather has been spectacular and the lake was opened to Sockeye Salmon fishing last week because the natural spawning escapement goal of 23,000 fish had been exceeded by 7,000. Jeanine has long wanted to fish for salmon and she was up bright and early with a twinkle in her eye. Rob, an expert fisherman, positioned our boat and set the depth of the lure (~80 feet) perfectly. In less than two minutes we had a strike and Jeanine was on the pole to reel in what turned out to be the biggest fish of the day and dinner for this evening.

Less than thirty minutes after starting, we reached our four fish limit and returned to shore where Rob cleaned and filleted our catch before we were treated to a gourmet breakfast.

Next on the agenda was a hike to Minotaur Lake (5,550 feet) and Labyrinth Mountain (6,376 feet). Short and steep, the trail to Minotaur Lake ascends through hemlock forests into a sub-alpine region of heather and huckleberries before reaching this emerald lake filling a cirque below Labyrinth Mountain.

Another 100 feet further and a great view of Theseus Lake opens up. Jeanine and Cindy opt to pause for lunch at Minotaur Lake while Rob, Ann and I continue on to Labyrinth Mountain for an exceptional 360 degree view of the Cascades.

Customs inspection started at 9am for a 10:30am ferry departure from Victoria bound for Port Angeles. We were 10th in the standby line and among the last six cars to make it on board. Our journey today to the eastern slopes of the Cascades Mountain Range took us across Puget Sound on our fifth ferry ride in as many days. From the water we could see the Seattle skyline in front of the distant but enormous Mount Rainier.

We arrived late in the afternoon at Lake Wenatchee where we will spend the next two nights with great friends Cindy and Rob Shurtleff and their friend Ann. Cindy and I first met while I was attending Stanford and we have stayed in touch over the years. Rob is a venture capitalist in the high tech sector with whom I share a great many interests.

A delicious meal was followed by what Jeanine described as a sunset champagne cruise around the lake. Lake Wenatchee is glacier and snowmelt fed with the North Shore and South Shore state parks, separated by the Wenatchee River. The lake covers 2,480 acres and reaches a depth of 244 feet. The Shurtleff lake house has many attributes that Jeanine and I can see in our post-empty nest home and we thoroughly enjoyed the ambiance during our stay.

Jeanine and I are up at the crack of dawn to ensure we catch the 7:30am ferry from Vancouver to Vancouver Island where Victoria, the provincial capital of British Columbia, is located. The ferry is an essential mode of transportation in this neck of the woods where all things interesting seem to be separated by large bodies of water. I enjoy spending time on the deck while Jeanine reads a novel comfortably ensconced in the passenger lounge.

Our initial destination this morning is Butchart Gardens. Created by Jennie Butchart, wife of a Portland cement magnate who transformed an exhausted limestone quarry into a magnificent sunken garden which was completed in 1921. They named their home “Benvenuto” (“welcome” in Italian), and began to receive visitors to their gardens. In 1926, they replaced their tennis courts with an Italian garden and in 1929 they replaced their kitchen vegetable garden with a large rose garden. The gardens now attract more than a million visitors each year and it is easy to understand why. My favorite section was the Japanese style garden which was authentic in every way albeit difficult to photograph.

We lunched at the gardens before completing our journey to Victoria where we walked around a bit before taking a Hippo tour (very similar to Boston’s amphibious Duck Boat tours).

Victoria is ideally suited to an amphibious tour with the most prominent architecture facing the bay including the British Columbia Legislature Building and the Empress Hotel. The Edwardian, château-style hotel was designed by Francis Rattenbury for Canadian Pacific Hotels as a terminus hotel for Canadian Pacific’s steamship line, whose main terminal was just a block away. The hotel was to serve business people and visitors to Victoria, but later as Canadian Pacific ceased its passenger services to the city, the hotel was successfully remarketed as a resort to tourists in the mid-to-late 1920s.

Quite hungry by the end of our tour we enjoyed dinner at the famous Bard and Banker Scottish pub. Opened in 1862 as the Bank of British Columbia, the building remained a bank until 1988 under an array of different banking establishments’ control. Of all the bank employees to work at this location in the 126 years it was a bank, the most notable was the bard of the Yukon, Robert Service. These two elements of history led to the moniker for the pub. After parking our car in the standby line for tomorrow morning’s ferry, we made a final walking tour of the city as the sun set. Pictured here is one extremely relaxed and happy wife.

We venturing further north towards Pemberton this morning stopping at Nairn Falls Provincial Park. The falls were far less impressive than those we encountered yesterday and the long hike in would have been a bust if not for the opportunity to climb down to the Green River and dip our toes in the crystal clear water.

Our next stop was the trailhead for the Jofree Lakes (Lower, Middle, and Upper). Time did not permit a 5-hour excursion all the way to the Upper Jofree Lake so we had to limit our visit to the Lower Lake which is easily one of the most beautiful bodies of water I have ever laid eyes on. The picture here does not do justice to the turquoise water color or pale green grasses emerging from it. The position of the sun precluded shooting across the lake which would have included snow capped mountains in the background. We hiked around to the backside of the lake, Jeanine for the exercise, and I for a chance at a well lit photograph. My goal was largely thwarted by dense under growth which effectively made access to the shore impossible.

After returning to the car we decided to venture deeper into the mountains and shortly thereafter arrived at Duffey Lake, a long dark blue lake with a well established log jamb on one end. I teetered across the logs in search of the perfect foreground while Jeanine rested by the water’s edge just soaking in the serenity and beauty before us.

We returned to Whistler just in time to catch one of the last gondolas up the mountain where we switched to the glass bottomed Peak-to-Peak gondola from Whistler to Blackcomb Mountain. It is the first lift to join the two side-by-side mountains and holds world records for the longest free span between ropeway towers (1.88 miles) and highest point above the ground (1,430 feet).

The view from the top was spectacular as was the open air ride down the Blackcomb side on a chair lift. We treated ourselves to a fine Italian meal in the Whistler Village before driving back to Vancouver. En route we paused for a nice sunset.

An unconventional and eclectic community, Robert’s Creek is home to quiet beaches, rambling gardens, superb hiking and biking trails, and many talented artisans. After a very nice breakfast at the locally famous Gumboot Cafe, Sarah and Kerith took as on a walking tour which included the Robert’s Creek Pier where local artists create a unique Mandala style painting each year. We then drove to SideStix headquarters for a tour of the facility where Nicolai will be working during his internship this fall. The small shop is very well organized around material flow and Nico’s experience here should leave him thoroughly skilled in crutch building and repair. Before returning us to the ferry we were treated to what is easily the best sorbet Jeanine or I have ever sampled. Unfortunately, Nico will arrive too late in the season to enjoy this treat.

Acclaimed as one of the top three scenic drives in Canada, the Sea to Sky Highway, a 100 mile portion of Highway 99 North that connects Horseshoe Bay in Vancouver to just past Whistler, B.C. lived up to its reputation. Stunning views of lakes, mountains, fjords, inlets, and waterfalls are incomparable. We stopped frequently for photos and to take short hikes to both Shannon Falls (1000 feet) and Brandywine Falls (210 feet).

Our destination for the evening was the resort town of Whistler where most of the alpine, Nordic, luge, skeleton, bobsled, freestyle skiing and all snowboarding events were hosted during the 2010 Winter Olympics. It has a permanent population of approximately 10,000, plus a larger but rotating “transient” population of workers. Over two million people visit Whistler annually, primarily for alpine skiing and snowboarding and, in summer, mountain biking.

With the aid of our smart phones we selected a border crossing into Canada with the least wait time as we drove from Seattle to Vancouver. The start of a Gay Pride Parade in the vicinity of Stanley Park, our destination for the afternoon, made parking a hassle but we were soon on our rented tandem bicycle for a riding tour of the park.

I thought the tandem would allow me to shoot photographs from the rear position while Jeanine navigated from the front. For various reasons we soon switched positions and decided a subsequent tandem rental would not be good for our marriage. During our circumnavigation of the park we came across a game of cricket which we paused to observe. I am still not clear on the scoring of runs but I finally understand the basic tenants of the game now. When the teams paused for tea we continued on our tour.

Our final destination for the day was Robert’s Creek on the Sunshine Coast where we stayed with SideStix founders Sarah and Kerith who own a beautiful home overlooking Georgia Bay. We left our rental car in Horseshoe Bay and took the ferry to Langdale where we were met by our hosts. Kerith, the mechanical engineer and head of operations for the company proved that he was equally skilled as a chef, preparing an exquisite meal which we thoroughly enjoyed.

Nicolai will be doing an internship with SideStix this fall and we were shown the small cabin that Sarah and Kerith are renovating for Nico to live in while he is here.