EcoMiles For A Cause

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EcoMiles For A Cause Susanne and I founded an active travel company in Cape Town, South Africa in 2007. They are on the forefront of a remarkable effort.

We wish to give back, grateful for all the wonderful opportunities we've received over the years, and the Ecomiles Program is one way to do so. To mark the one year anniversary of the killing of Cecil the lion on the 1st of July 2016, Ride For Big Life is a 4000miles+ cycle between Portland Oregon and Portland Maine (US) that aims to generate awareness and funding for Big Life Foundation. Big Life in Africa, through a collaborative effort on all levels, from local community to the international community, works toward the conservation and protection of endangered wildlife. We here at Bike & Saddle applaud them. And through The EcoMiles Program we now offer our guests and the public at large, the opportunity to support this great initiative.

Housesitting on Whidbey Island. New homes, new pet friends and new human friends! Whidbey Island, the largest island in ...
09/03/2026

Housesitting on Whidbey Island. New homes, new pet friends and new human friends!

Whidbey Island, the largest island in Washington State’s Puget Sound, stretches roughly sixty miles between the mainland and the Olympic Peninsula, reachable by ferry from Mukilteo or via the Deception Pass Bridge to the north. Its geology reflects the region’s glacial past — retreating ice sheets carved the sound and left behind the rolling drumlins, bluffs, and fertile prairie soils that define the island’s terrain, most visibly at Ebey’s Landing, where wind-sculpted bluffs meet cultivated farmland.

Ecologically, Whidbey sits at a crossroads of forest and shoreline. Douglas fir and madrone forests give way to eelgrass beds and rocky tidepools, supporting bald eagles, orcas passing through the strait, and migratory shorebirds that stop along its coastline each year.
The island’s human history runs deep: Coast Salish peoples, including the Lower Skagit and Swinomish, inhabited the area for millennia before Isaac Ebey and other settlers arrived in the 1850s, establishing one of the earliest American communities in Puget Sound. That legacy survives in blockhouses, pioneer farmhouses, and the Ebey’s Landing National Historical Reserve.

Culturally, Whidbey balances working agricultural roots with an artistic, small-town character — Coupeville’s historic waterfront, Langley’s galleries, and Oak Harbor’s naval-town practicality each give the island a different flavor. Economically, farming, tourism, and Naval Air Station Whidbey Island (a major regional employer) anchor daily life, alongside a growing community of artists, retirees, and remote workers drawn by the scenery.

Above all, Whidbey is defined by its natural beauty — mountain vistas, forested trails, and dramatic coastline woven into a landscape that rewards unhurried exploration.

08/30/2026

The Great Blue Heron is North America’s largest wading bird, standing nearly four feet tall with a wingspan approaching six feet, yet weighing only 5-6 pounds thanks to hollow bones. Along Whidbey Island’s shoreline near Possession Preserve, this bird is right in its element — herons thrive along the Salish Sea’s tidal flats, eelgrass beds, and rocky intertidal zones, hunting whatever the retreating tide exposes.

These are ambush predators. A heron will stand motionless or move with slow, deliberate steps, using its S-curved neck as a coiled spring. When prey — small fish, shrimp, crabs, even the occasional vole or garter snake — comes within range, the neck snaps forward and the dagger-like bill strikes with remarkable speed and precision. Great Blue Herons feed largely by sight, so low tide during daylight, like the barnacle-crusted flats visible here, offers prime hunting conditions.

Physically, they’re built for this life: long yellow-orange legs for wading, a blue-gray body with a white face and long black plume trailing from the eye, and specialized neck vertebrae (a modified sixth vertebra) that let the neck retract into that tight “S” and release explosively.

We traveled up to Cape Town for a couple of weeks, end of May, early June, visiting some of our favorite people, places ...
08/29/2026

We traveled up to Cape Town for a couple of weeks, end of May, early June, visiting some of our favorite people, places and activities, prior to a short visit to Sylt, north of Hamburg Germany and our longer US trip, covering most of the northern hemisphere summer. Here we share highlights of the Cape Town trip, including views of Hout Bay harbour from Lichtenstein Castle, a cliffside, neo-Gothic fairytale fortress perched on the Karbonkelberg Mountain overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. A visit to the The Artscape Theatre Centre, Cape Town's premier multifunctional performing arts institution, hosting world-class opera, ballet, and theatrical productions. Scenes from Seapoint and the beautiful promenade, during the Two Oceans Marathon, a couple of food clips, scenes from our apartment balcony overlooking historic downtown - and in general happy clips of a special moment in time! SCRL

08/27/2026

Here is a quick run through of our 2025 Mercedes Benz Sprinter - Winnebago build. With 17k miles on the clock, 4yrs of manufacturer warranty remaining. Everything about this build is designed to be reconfigurable — work van during the week, full off-grid camper on weekends or extended trips. The power system alone represents a significant investment (EcoFlow retail on the batteries and panels runs well over $10K new) and gives you true energy independence without a generator. 2025601181 for more information.

🚐 2025 Winnebago + Adventure Wagon 44M | Sprinter 2500 AWD17,000 miles. One owner. Fully off-grid ready.⚡ 800W solar + 1...
08/26/2026

🚐 2025 Winnebago + Adventure Wagon 44M | Sprinter 2500 AWD

17,000 miles. One owner. Fully off-grid ready.

⚡ 800W solar + 10.8kWh EcoFlow lithium battery bank
🛏️ Modular Adventure Wagon interior — elevator bed, L-track storage, removable galley
✅ Clean CARFAX, ~4 yrs drivetrain/emissions warranty remaining
🦟 VanEssential bug net kit included

Everything you need to disappear off-grid, indefinitely. Asking $128,000.00. Denver, CO — available Oct 2026. DM for details/photos 📩

vanlifeforsale campervan 4x4van

We recently took up housesitting, discovering it's a great way to take a break from time on the road and to truly experi...
08/18/2026

We recently took up housesitting, discovering it's a great way to take a break from time on the road and to truly experience life as a local for a few days. Lots of fun too! Up to now we looked after dogs, cats, chickens and ducks, guinea pigs, gold fish and Koi! Lots of animal love, walks and golden memories! TrustedHousesitters

This is the Nisqually Glacier seen from the Paradise/Skyline area, shot today, late summer, with the ice heavily exposed...
08/17/2026

This is the Nisqually Glacier seen from the Paradise/Skyline area, shot today, late summer, with the ice heavily exposed.

Glacier ice, generally:
Glacier ice forms when accumulated snow compresses over years, squeezing out air and recrystallizing into dense, blue-tinted ice — air bubbles scatter red wavelengths of light, leaving blue to dominate. Ice deforms plastically under its own weight, flowing slowly downhill (a few centimeters to meters per day) while the brittle surface layer fractures into crevasses where the flow accelerates over uneven bedrock. Glaciers are also powerful erosive agents, plucking and grinding rock into the fine “rock flour” that gives glacial meltwater its milky-turquoise color, and carrying debris on their surface (supraglacial moraine) and within the ice.

Nisqually Glacier, Rainier’s south-west flank:
What the footage shows is classic late-season ablation-zone ice — the lower glacier stripped of its winter snow cover, exposing gray, debris-streaked, heavily crevassed ice riddled with rockfall from the surrounding cliffs. Nisqually is one of Rainier’s more actively monitored glaciers (studied continuously since the 1930s) and, like most of the mountain’s 25 glaciers, has retreated substantially over the past century, its terminus climbing higher up the valley. The heavy rock cover you see insulates the ice below, so debris-covered sections often melt slower than clean ice nearby — part of why the surface looks so jumbled and uneven rather than smooth. The braided, sediment-choked meltwater emerging at its base is the same rock-flour process described above, feeding the Nisqually River

Mount Rainier National Park, camping and hiking for a few days.Established in 1899, Mount Rainier became the fifth natio...
08/17/2026

Mount Rainier National Park, camping and hiking for a few days.

Established in 1899, Mount Rainier became the fifth national park in the United States, created to protect the massive stratovolcano that dominates the Cascade Range in Washington State. Indigenous peoples, including the Puyallup, Nisqually, and Yakama, have long held the mountain as sacred, knowing it by names like “Tahoma” or “Tacoma,” meaning roughly “mother of waters.”

Geography: The park spans about 236,000 acres surrounding the 14,411-foot peak, the most topographically prominent mountain in the contiguous U.S. Its flanks hold the largest single-mountain glacier system in the lower 48 states — 25 major glaciers feeding rivers that carve deep valleys radiating outward from the summit.

Geology: Mount Rainier is an active stratovolcano, built up over roughly 500,000 years through repeated eruptions of andesite lava, ash, and pyroclastic flows. It’s considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the U.S. due to the risk of lahars — volcanic mudflows that could threaten populated valleys below, particularly toward Tacoma and Seattle.

08/10/2026

This is a Douglas squirrel (Tamiasciurus douglasii), also known as the chickaree — a small tree squirrel native to Pacific Northwest conifer forests and the most common tree squirrel in Olympic National Park’s rainforest valleys like the Queets.

The ID is clear from the coloring: dark grayish-brown back, a rich rusty-orange belly and underside, black-edged tail, and small tufted ears — classic markings for this species (distinct from the larger, paler Douglas’s cousin, the red squirrel, which doesn’t range this far west, and from the introduced Eastern gray squirrel, which lacks the orange belly).

In the clip, the squirrel is doing what Douglas squirrels do most of the day: actively foraging on a massive moss-draped conifer trunk, likely a Sitka spruce or western hemlock typical of the Queets rainforest. It moves in quick, jerky bursts — pausing to scan with wide, alert eyes, sniffing at clumps of hanging moss and bark crevices, then darting a short distance vertically. Douglas squirrels are primarily granivores, feeding heavily on conifer seeds pried from cones, but they’ll also eat fungi, buds, and (as it may be doing here) forage in mossy pockets for insects or cached food. Their vertical, almost fearless movement straight up and down tree trunks — rather than the ground-to-branch hopping typical of gray squirrels — is a signature behavior, aided by very sharp claws.

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