This, too, is a beautiful place.

After writing about trips to the United States, Mexico, England, France, and Spain, I figure it's time to pay a little attention to my home base. That's Nanaimo, B.C., on Vancouver Island, which attracts tourists from, well, all over Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, Europe - and Asia, too. Sometimes I wonder why we bother to leave (generally, I think that way when it's warm and sunny).

This morning, Robin and I went for a walk along the Queen Elizabeth II walkway, which hugs the shore from downtown to the Nanaimo Shipyard. It wasn't warm and sunny today, but it was comfortably cool, and the tide was low, so the air smelled of the sea. Gulls flew overhead, dropping mussels on the walkway. Crows argued from fenceposts. The sky was full of rather scary-looking clouds, but none of them rained on us. We walked from Maffeo Sutton

Park, which is a huge construction site at the moment, to the shipyard, where this boat , the Columbia III was up on the hoist, getting a scrub.

The Columbia III is a beautiful, classic boat. We had to stop for a few minutes to admire her lines and speculate about her history. Thank goodness for Google. The link above has lots of answers.

On our way out, we grumbled about all the construction work, because we thought that the dreaded condo development we had heard about had gotten underway, and from the looks of things, there wouldn't be much left of the park, once it was in. But as we returned to the park, we were delighted to see a sign describing what is really happening down there. It seems we don't ever hang around long enough to get our stories straight. I'm not sure where the dreaded condo development is going, but it's not going to take our park. What's being built now is something called Spirit Square. It will be public space -"a venue for events and a community gathering place", according to the article. That's a good thing. The Civic Arena used to be there. That was ripped out a couple of years ago. The City built a new hockey rink, west of downtown, but there's more to life than hockey, I say, and I'm very pleased to see that we'll have a community centre again.

So that's today's news - but wait! There's more! Last night, I finally signed up for Twitter - against some sage advice - because my curiosity got the better of me. I went looking for the few people I know there, and clicked to follow them (Hi, Kat!). I also elected to follow Barack Obama and Al Gore, because Why Not? - and of course, I'm following Rachel Maddow. She must have been wondering when I'd finally join up.

Much to my surprise, I discovered this morning that I was in turn being followed by several people who, to the best of my knowledge, are complete strangers. Why? So far, in answer to Twitter's one question, "What are you doing?" I've posted such brilliant responses as "Checking out Twitter". Now, That's a Follower Magnet.

Now, I see that John has posted about Arthur Godfrey over at Robert Frost's Banjo, and I didn't have time this morning to properly enjoy reading it - so off I go.