Category: Travel

Santa Barbara made the perfect California escape for coastal birding, whale watching, and sunshine. Join us as we spot a Hudsonian Whimbrel, Western Grebes, a first Allen’s Hummingbird, and gray whales, then visit the Santa Barbara Botanic Garden and Zoo for more wildlife—including the remarkable California Condor. The Santa Barbara Channel is especially rich for marine wildlife and seabirds, while the Botanic Garden offers diverse native habitats to explore.

We found a wonderful spot to land Birdie our travel trailer for a week. The Skyline Wilderness Park in Napa, California is a wonderful location to stay or visit if you are in the Napa Valley. We like wine but I certainly wouldn’t say are huge wine drinkers, and while we’ve visited some wonderful PNW wine areas like Walla Walla or the Columbia River Gorge we’d never visited the bay area wine country.

Yes another article not based in the PNW! But in our defense Alaska Airlines now flies direct to Nassau, and since we collect Alaska points it seemed like a wonderful spot for a winter vacation while the weather here in Washington was not so pleasant, and we could do some Bahamas Birding. Nassau is the capital of the Bahamas on the island of New Providence, not the largest of the Bahamas islands but the most accessible.

An old friend once told me San Luis Obispo was his favorite place in California. He would check for SLO jobs weekly in case there was something to apply to that would get him back to his favorite city. Because of this I’ve always wanted to visit, it is a bit of it’s own destination as it’s not too close to either the Bay Area or Los Angeles but located somewhere in between. With an Elephant Seal rookery just north in San Simeon, nearby Hearst Castle, and the Channel Islands an hour to the south there was a lot to see and do on this trip.

The Channel Islands just off the California coast near Ventura has been a bucket list destination for us for some time. Santa Cruz Island is home to the only endemic island bird in North America, the Island Scrub Jay. It is also home to another endemic species, the Island Fox.

Our end of summer trip took us up north of the border to Banff, Alberta. Yes it is a popular place, yes it is full of tourists, and yes you should still take the time to visit!

For our annual spring break trip we wanted to head some where warm with the Scamp, and being early April we knew we had to head pretty far south to find some sunshine. With only one week we could not visit all of the Mighty Five National Parks in Utah, so we chose Zion and Arches National Parks to split up the trip between the west and east side of Southern Utah.

Our final destination in Belize was of course the coast! While many travel to San Pedro to see the Caribbean in Belize we instead chose Placencia, a charming little town at the very tip of a peninsula in southern Belize. Not too far from Placencia, nestled in the jungle, lies the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary – an incredible spot for wildlife viewing.

Part two of our birding adventure in Belize takes place in and around San Ignacio. San Ignacio is inland Belize near the Guatemala border, here you can find rivers, jungles, caves and Mayan ruins to explore.