When I say I’m an adventure seeker, I truly mean it. I see adventure everywhere and I’m always looking for new and exciting things to try (though I can get excited by just about anything)! I have an extremely wide variety of interests and I am generally very passionate, to the point of being a “tad” overzealous at times. Because of my extreme range of interests, it’s best to break in down by zone, so read on to learn all about Adventure Seeker Sarah.
Photography has been a passion of mine for as long as I can remember. Even as a child, I had collages of my friends covering my walls and obsessively thumbed through our family photo albums.
As I came into my teen years, I started modelling, which put my on the other side of the camera more often than not. But as I continued modelling, I began coming up with shoot ideas that I wouldn’t be the right model for and decided it was time to start taking the photos! I began training with other photographers, obsessively reading, practicing every chance I got, and honing my post-processing skills. Fifteen years later and I have shot just about ever style under the sun! What started at mostly pin-up and boudoir has had years with primarily family photos, years of almost exclusively headshots and modelling portfolios, and an awful lot of fun. Heck, even my phones are full of photos (yes, I have multiple phones because they fill up with photos and video so quickly and have different camera capabilities)!
So, one thing you will always get when following my adventures is a photographic story that will make you feel like you were right there with me.
Well, maybe I should have lead with this, because I suppose this is the reason we’re all here, right? For the full story on how I got started in travel writing, I can go read my blog post on the subject, but the Cole’s Notes version is that I have always loved writing and travelling and am just crazy enough to chase any dream that pops into my head, no matter how far-fetched.
I’m proud to be an Adventure Seeker with Eh Canada travel, which has be documenting my travels throughout Canada through articles, photos, video, and audio. This Adventure Seekers are a stellar group of travelers with an amazing range of accomplishments and backstories. If you haven’t already, you should check out the Eh Canada Travel Talk Community.
I am also a regular contributor to Nova Scotia Buzz, a stellar viral news and tourism website based out of Nova Scotia. As a born-and-raised proud Nova Scotian, it makes me very happy to be regularly sharing stories from my home province.
Outside of those, you may find me writing about spooky adventures for Class-A Paranormal Investigation as well as freelancing for a number of travel sites.
The important things is that I’m always writing. And that makes me happy.
I have always been a little bit of a creepy lady, if I’m being honest. Aside from the fact that I am pretty darn up-front and that can come of creepy, I mean! Beyond that, I spent a lot of my childhood reading ghost stories and murder mysteries. My mother, grandmother, and older brother were horror fans, so I was watching Chucky and Freddie at two years old. I have fond memories of building coffins and dead bodies with my mother for Halloween. Virtually ever English assignment I even handed in was horror-related if I could help it (to the point that my grade ten teacher told me that if he didn’t know me so well, he’s be sending me to chat with the guidance counsellor).
Into adulthood, I kept the ‘magic of Halloween” alive by decorating with my own kids (and even running our own home haunt) and having month-long horror movie marathons. I spent October of 2021 hitting as many Halloween attractions as possible across Ontario and Nova Scotia (with a big wait list for 2022 already).
So, it stands to reason that the moment I saw an ad for an open position on a paranormal investigation team, I applied so fast it would make your head spin.
Homeschooling has been a HUGE part of our lives since the moment my eldest daughter was born. I remember taking her all around campus when we lived in China, showing her all of the colours of everything, strapping her into he bouncy seat to read to her for hours, or playing songs on my guitar and sing. We were always learning, and we basically haven’t stopped since. We’ve been all over Canada and the USA, schooling as we go. We’ve foraged in Central Park with the famous Steve Brill, met our favorite author and illustrator in Nova Scotia and toured her art studio, toured the Columbia Icefields and tasted glacier water. We’re always on the go somewhere, taking our learning to the road. Of course, we do bookwork and online learning as well, but the important thing is that the children are learning how to learn and the value that has.
I’ve spent time coaching new homeschoolers, run a homeschooling conference, and organized more classes/fieldtrips/workshops than I could possibly count. Homeschooling has been a way of life.
The big girls are planning to go to school in fall of 2022, and the little man is just coming into his learning journey, and we have many years of awesome hands-on, child-led learning ahead of us!
I like beer. A lot. Always have, always will. I have my favorites – strong, hoppy beers – but I’ve rarely met a beer I didn’t like. When we travel, I like to try flights at different breweries and my primary purchase on the rare occasion I get to the liquor store is local craft beers.
Recently, I’ve decided to take this to the next level by working on my Craft Beer Judge Certification and Prud’homme/Cicerone certification. I’m also co-authoring a beer blog with one of my best friends. Because, of course, in true Sarah fashion, I can’t just like something – I’m all in.
If you’ve ever been on a hike with me (or even glanced at my social media profiles) it would have become clear very quickly that I am a little obsessed with nature. If you look a bit closer, you’ll see that obsession is laser focused on lichens. They’re just so freaking cool. Trust me. Go get a hand lens and go exploring! Anyway, I won’t just talk about lichens non-stop (but absolutely will if you go into the forest with me), but you should know that they’re great.
Moving on, I also love nature in general. Life is about connections, and that also means connections with nature. A huge part of our homeschooling every year is focused on nature study, as I want my children to respect the world around them. My personal relaxation and reflection time is visits to the woods (this may go back to hiking in the woods with my mom as a small child). I have my Ontario Master Naturalist certification, countless nature education certificates, and am on the board of directors for a naturalist club, so expect lots of posts about the great outdoors!
Perhaps you have seen a photo of the inside of my dining room…I mean, gaming room. Yes, we have a dining room table, and we even occasionally eat at it! The rest of the time, it is absolutely surrounded by a collection of 1000+ boardgames that also spill into the rest of the house. We LOVE games.
In non-plague times, we host huge boardgame parties and attend the World Boardgame Championships as a family. through the covid days, we play online with friends and at home with family. We even use many of our games as complimentary homeschooling materials! Learning, afterall, is everywhere.
So, if you love games and want to chat, if you want another friend on Boardgame Arena, or if you’re looking for boardgame recommendations, I’m your gal!
This seems an odd thing to include, but it’s such a part of me that it would be silly not to. I really like learning (you may have started to notice that I really like a lot of things). I have always found ways to just continue learning non-stop and one might say that I collect certificates and diplomas. There’s a slight chance in might be some sort of rare disorder! But I love learning, and I’m weirdly fond of collecting certificates.
Over the past few years, I have completed certifications in herbalism, Ontario Master Naturalist, Coaching Beginner Archers, Teaching Elementary Piano, and a wide variety of other things. I’m always looking for new ways to support my children’s learning or expand my own knowledge.
Now, I’m even in university fulltime for fun and, although balancing all of the work with everything else is a huge challenge, I wouldn’t change a thing.
A bit more on that thing I like to say about life being all about connections – when I say that, I also mean connections to our past. And this is why I like history so much. I don’t mean just hearing people’s stories (though I absolutely love that too), but visiting historic sites…seeing reenactments…heck, I’m even taking archaeology courses in university. Suffice to say, history means a lot to me and I feel like it’s an important part of who we are and something we should always strive to keep in mind as we move forward.
Some of my favourite memories, both as a child myself and with my own children, were out at historic sites or history museums. I have fond memories of exploring Citadel Hill, sliding at for St. Anne, or traversing the Cabot Trail.
There’s so much to see, so much to do, and so much to learn when it comes to history. An I promise you, my children will verify that I never pass up the opportunity to read an interpretive panel!
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times – I will never, let me repeat, never be the magazine definition of “skinny”. Not gonna happen. Never. Aside from the fact that that’s not even in my realm of desire, even if it was, I like food and beer way too much. Honestly, one of my favourite things to do when I go to new places is find cool food. Local food, street food, exotic food. I’ll pretty much try anything once and I rarely come across something I wouldn’t eat a second time.
There was a span of several years where watching Iron Chef was a staple in my weeks and, although I have mostly moved on from cooking shows, I still live to cook. Although I will admit that cooking for children isn’t always the most rewarding, I haven’t quite lost my love for it yet and I certainly try to pass my cooking skills on to my children.
I have actually always said that if I could just do absolutely anything, I would go from place to place for a month at a time with the family and learn local art, dance, traditional medicine, and (of course) cooking. In the meantime, I’ll definitely do my best to eat local and try new an exciting cuisines wherever I go!
I am certainly not a scientist, but science is pretty important in our house. I have always loved the natural sciences and I try to pass that on to my kids as much as possible. We have been to science centers all over North America (with many more on the list), have taken part in countless science workshops, and have cultivated our own love of citizen science through apps like iNaturalist and volunteer initiatives like Water Rangers.
Taking a walk with me is either an incredibly rewarding experience, or a completely irritating experience, depending on your perspective. Approximately every 10 steps, I’m stopping to take photos of various flora and fauna, evaluating a cool rock, identifying an insect, or trying to find cool new lichens that I haven’t photographed before.
And of course, even outside of my own personal interests, I have a healthy respect for all branches of science and can regularly be found reading articles from science journals for fun or attending workshops and seminars for science teachers. There’s always room for new scientific knowledge!
This is a difficult one to define (and even more challenging to keep brief) but I have always been a lover of the arts. This, of course, includes visual art but also instrumental music, singing, dancing, acting, acting…if it’s an outlet to create and express, I’m there!
Music has always been a part of my life, with a mother who was always singing and a father who played several instruments, it came almost as naturally to me as breathing (though my mother who had to listen to me learn to play the violin may beg to differ). I made it ,my goal to learn every instrument in the concert band by the time I graduated grade 12, and that I did (and then some). I spent years and years in choir, been involved in dozens of theatre and film productions in a variety of departments, and have created visual art in many mediums.
When I travel, one of my favourite things to find is a cool art experiences. Immersive digital art? Cool! Art maze? Absolutely! Gallery or concert? Yes please! And the beautiful things is that art is everywhere! In every city or town, even the smallest, there will be people who love to create and show that passion to the world.
So there you have it – more than you ever needed to know about Sarah. Don’t worry though, there’s still so much more for you to find out!
Happy travels!