I have taken many pictures. I am fortunate to have Google Home, which displays my pictures daily. I have decided to share my albums with everyone. Many of the pictures have the location where they were taken.
PICTURES FROM 2016 – 71 photos
I did have pictures before 2016, but I lost most of them due to a computer crash. I did not have a backup. When you look at this photo album, you will see pictures that could be better. I had a poor-quality phone.
PICTURES FROM 2017 – 468 photos
The picture quality dramatically improves, and I take more pictures than usual. We are now fully exploring the province of Ontario, but I did not have a way to display my photographs, so I rarely took any.
PICTURES FROM 2018 – 580 photos
2018 was a big year for us. We got married, and we travelled almost manically before my surgery. Unfortunately, I did not get Google Home until the end of the year, which limited my photo-taking.
PICTURES FROM 2019 – 4303 photos
The number of pictures I took in 2019 grew exponentially. Now that I appreciate all the photos being viewed on my Google Home, I wish I had taken more pictures over the past couple of years. With a newer phone capable of better quality images, I am taking too many pictures—two, three, four, and even five pictures of the same image—just to make sure it looks good, but that makes it much harder to sort through all the photos.
PICTURES FROM 2020 – 2365 photos
By the end of 2019, I was in full photo mode. My camera was still not the best, and I noticed my impatience with my photos. Many of them were out of focus, and if I had waited just a second or two longer, those fuzzy pictures would have been clearer. But we all remember December 2019 for the COVID-19 “pandemic.” Almost every government in the world imposed drastic and unnecessary rules. Where I live, in Ontario, the rules are considered the harshest in the world. Just as we started to enjoy travel, it came to a screaming (and masked) halt.
PICTURES FROM 2021 – 5900 photos
There could be another announcement about some new restrictions at any moment in 2021. Many of them made no sense. For instance, we could go to a store to buy a magazine (but not a book) but could not go to a museum but still be allowed to visit the gift shop of that museum. There was the constant threat of closures of everything. It was not fun to be forced to stay home, especially since people were jailed for walking in parks. So when there was an opportunity, we took it to get out and explore. And explore we did. We travelled significantly more in 2021 than in 2020. Ever mindful of rapidly changing rules, we enjoyed the freedom of being together and seeing the parts of the world that were still accessible, most of which were outdoor activities.
PICTURES FROM 2022 – 11767 photos
January of 2022 saw us all in lockdown once again. Anticipating that the world was quickly getting bored of this farce, we decided to expand our horizons and get passports. Fortunately for us, we made this decision before millions of other Canadians had the same thought. There was minimal delay in getting our passports to visit the USA. All we needed was the border crossing rules to ease. The USA was the first to do so, and Canada lagged far behind. Happily, by summer, COVID restrictions were gone. But we saw how so many places that had once flourished were now gone forever. A lot of volunteer-based locations were closing as well. I predicted then that we would not see things back to normal for at least two more years.
PICTURES FROM 2023 – In progress of being sorted.
COVID? What is COVID? The lockdowns, forced closures and all the restrictions have all disappeared and nobody questioned it. Life was back to normal. Now armed with passports, almost every major trip we do is in the States. The United States of America has ten times the population and a century and a half more history, and because of these, there is so much more to do. Like millions of others, we discovered the joy and freedom of travel. The only problem we had was finding the time to travel. And then we did. The summer of 2023 saw us take our most extensive trip as we ventured from one end of the continent to another. Our Alaska journey caused us to experience so much that it did spoil us for future trips – nothing will ever come close to what we did.
PICTURES FROM 2024 – In progress of being sorted.
Life can get interesting at times and can take you places that are unexpected. I became a school bus driver, and because of this, I have regularly scheduled days off. What shall we do when we have a long weekend because of PD Day, March Break, or Christmas holidays? We travel. And travel we did—and maybe a little too much travel. It can be exhausting discovering new places. By the time we finished our summer trip to the Maritimes, we needed a vacation from vacations.