STUNNING VICTORIA, BC

If you ever get the chance to travel to the west coast of Canada, Vancouver Island in particular, do it. It's beautiful, plain and simple. The island is 460 kms/290 miles in length and is 80 kms/50 miles wide at its widest point; has a population of about 760,000 with 345,000 living in Victoria. Victoria, incidentally, is the capital of the Province of British Columbia. The climate on the island is mild enough in a few areas to grow subtropical crops such as olives and lemons and the odd palm tree has been sighted.

From Port Angeles in Washington State the ferry that we took takes you right downtown to Victoria harbour; from there we immediately drove to our RV Resort in Metchosin, about a 30 km/18 mile ride out into the country. Metchosin is right on the coast and is home to about 5,000 people, many of whom run small farms while the majority are retired. Metchosin is a haven for folks who like the outdoor lifestyle with tons of walking and hiking trails that offer some amazing scenic views. Don't look for places to buy your souvenirs along these walks as you won't find anything of that sort anywhere in Metchosin. You will, however, find a pretty high end restaurant and a general store that truly is a general store and sells some of the best home made meat pies, in the English tradition, and fresh, local sausages.

Weir's Beach RV Resort, was gorgeous. A stone's throw from the ocean and with magnificent views of the mountains to the west and a glimpse of Victoria to the east it was pretty much perfect. We spent hours each day walking up and down the beach while Kaede and Freddy ran and played to their hearts content.

As it was in San Diego, our social life in Victoria was pretty much guaranteed. Erik's son, Adam, lives in Victoria and having lived there for about 15 years Erik has friends with whom he had stayed in touch over the years.

Adam and Erik having lunch at a bistro on the Inner Harbour in Victoria.

The weather in Victoria was pretty stupendous for pretty much all of our time there. Stupendous weather in Victoria means no rain which, in turn, means eating alfresco.

Lunch at our RV site, Weir's Beach, Metchosin

I watched a Dad and his daughter build something in the drizzle.

Victoria is the home to The University of Victoria, a world-class university, but also Royal Roads University, a former military college that now is a learning facility for working professionals who want to further their education while continuing in the work force. The grounds of this university reminded us of a beautiful estate with magnificent lawns and a quiet peacefulness. 

The buildings are in a little gully hidden behind tees and massive lawns and are quite impressive.

Some of the jewels of Victoria, that most people are already aware of, would be The Fairmont Empress Hotel, Victoria'a Inner Harbour, The Legislature Building, Butchart Gardens and the many, many, many pubs.

The Fairmont Empress Hotel:
http://www.fairmont.com/empress-victoria/ is one of the oldest and most famous hotels around. It is on Government Street in Victoria and faces the inner harbour and has been designated a National Historic Site of Canada. Afternoon tea at the Empress is an indulgence that you owe yourself at least once in your life. If that doesn't appeal to you then a martini in the Bengal Lounge accompanied by some of their tasty curries certainly will.

The Harbour:
Victoria harbour is a seaport and seaplane airport as well as a cruise ship and ferry destination for tourists and visitors to Victoria and Vancouver Island in general. Along the harbour you will see the Empress Hotel, the Legislature Buildings, seaplanes landing and taking off, people dining at various outdoor restaurants and pubs. Here are some pictures of life on the harbour.

This is a water taxi that takes you around. Kind of cool.

Legislature Buildings.
The BC Parliament Buildings, home to the The Legislative Assembly, face the inner harbour and are diagonally across from the Empress Hotel. You will find a statue of Queen Victoria on the front lawn and a statue of a soldier to commemorate WWI, WWII and Korean War casualties from the Province of BC. The legislature offers free guided tours throughout the year if you would like to see how Provincial government works.

Stock photo of the Legislature taken from the harbour.

Butchart Gardens.
www.butchartgardens.com There is nothing that I can say here that would do justice to the Butchart Gardens. The gardens receive more than a million visitors annually, are a National Historic Site of Canada and offer 55 acres of absolute beauty.

One of many professionally done stock photos taken at Butchart Gardens.

Many, many pubs. Victoria is a city that is oozing with pubs. You find them almost on every corner downtown and scattered about the many Victoria neighbourhoods. They range from tiny and cozy to large and decadent but most offer darned good food and an assortment of excellent beers.

17 Mile House.

We had our lunch in this quaint little room.

It was a crazy sunny day in Victoria and the sun kept shining through windows.

The 17 Mile House.
www.17milehouse.com is a pub that is ...... yup, 17 miles or 27 kilometers outside of Victoria. It has an interesting history - was once an inn for travelers going west from Victoria and even had a reputation of being a place where married gentlemen could bring their lady friends who were not their wives with insured privacy. We enjoyed a couple of hours here when we stopped for lunch.

Just north of Victoria is the charming seaside town of Sidney. www.sidney.ca When Erik and I married in 2007 we lived in this area for nearly two years before returning to Brockville, ON and retirement. Sidney has a meager population of 11,500 people but has an infrastructure of a much more populated town, is minutes from Victoria International Airport and the BC Ferries to Vancouver at Land's End and is accessible by ferry from Anacortes in Washington State.

 

Interesting sculpture of a diver on the extensive boardwalk in Sidney-by-the-Sea.

A fish market and to the right a restaurant that serves excellent sea food.

Me (in red), the dogs and one of the sculptures along the boardwalk.

Sidney spit, taken from the end of the wharf.

Looking back at Sidney from the end of the wharf.

We spent a day in Mill Bay, Cowichan Bay area; it's a beautiful drive north on the TransCanada highway that takes you north out of Victoria and up and over the Malahat, 356 m/1,156 ft at its summit. The drive takes you along the Goldstream Provincial Park where you can see salmon spawning in the fall months as they make the long arduous journey homeward.

Mill Bay (about 3,200 population) and Cowichan Bay (about 2,400 population) are both small towns in the Cowichan Valley and are characterized by their beautiful scenery, proximity to the ocean and their attraction in the summer as tourist destinations. 

Mill Bay

Mill Bay

Float Homes in Mill Bay

Float Homes in Mill Bay

Incredibly beautiful Mill Bay

Speaking of pubs, this is the Six Mile Pub which, strangely, is located about 6 miles/10 kms from downtown Victoria. There is also a pub called The Four Mile Bar and Grill which we passed several times on our travels but I didn't get a picture. You will probably have to take my word on that one.




If you are wondering how many pubs there are in greater Victoria try a google search. However, when googling pubs in Victoria you get a variety of answers and, of course, not all of them are on the various sites that show the pubs but my guess would be there are LOTS.

From Victoria to Nanaimo (yes it's the birthplace of the Nanaimo bar) is about 110 kms/66 miles and only 58 kms/36 miles north of our last stop, Mill Bay and Cowichan Bay where we saw the lovely float homes.  Nanaimo, population about 84,000 is known as The Harbour City due to its location on a wonderfully scenic harbour. Nanaimo is only 96kms/55 miles west of the city of Vancouver on mainland BC and is serviced by a ferry terminal and float planes that link to many of the Gulf Island and Vancouver ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay.

Erik, Kaede and Freddy at the little seafood restaurant on the harbour.

Boats in Nanaimo Harbour

Harbour at Nanaimo.

From Nanaimo Harbour we took a ferry across to Gabriola Island, to spend the afternoon and to have lunch with one of Erik's ex-colleagues who lives there. Gabriola is one of the Gulf Islands, is only about 5 km east of Nanaimo and a short 20 minute ferry ride. This video is of the ferry that we will be taking as it enters the harbour.

I also wanted to show you this video I took on the ferry of the scenery going to Gabriola Island and a very special guest sighting.

Gabriola Island is small, only 57 sq km/22 sq mi with a population of just more than 4,000 and, as our hostess for the afternoon put it, living here is a lifestyle and not for everyone. If you love solitude and don't mind taking a 20 minute ferry ride in order to do shopping then your lifestyle would fit in here. 

More dining alfresco on Erik's friends' gorgeous property.

Kaede and Freddy love roaming the two fenced acres.

The view from their property. Tranquility at its best.

Our island  hopping is not done. Next we go to Saltspring Island, the most populated of the Gulf Islands ,and a stay in beautiful Parksville, halfway up Vancouver Island. Then, off we go to the glorious city of Vancouver and home again, home again, jiggedy jig. See you next time.

GOOD-BYE CALIFORNIA SUNSHINE, HELLO RAINY NORTHWEST

After maneuvering quite successfully around Los Angeles, a necessary evil when going north to our final destination of Victoria, BC, from San Diego, CA, our first stop was Morro Bay, CA.

Famous spots in LA

Didn't see any movie stars!!

Heading north from LA you enter the San Joaquin Valley where much of  the nation's produce is  grown It's quite an amazing sight.

We took a little detour to Solvang, a tiny town with a Danish influence, and a popular tourist destination. Solvang happens to be featured in the 2004 movie, Sideways, it is in the middle of wine country, and I'm happy to report the restaurant in that movie, The Hitching Post, actually exists.

Wine tasting in Sideways.

With over 80 wineries in close proximity and more than a dozen wine tasting rooms, Solvang is a great place for a wine get-away. It also offers hiking, museums, golf, excellent food, shopping, theatre and art.

Short cut through Los Padres National Forest to get to Solvang. There was construction that day, hence the backlog of  cars.

Oh, yes. Our destination. Morro Bay, is a town of about 11,000 or so people that sits right on the Pacific. The main feature of this town is the Morro Rock, dubbed The Gibraltar of the Pacific, and is the last in a chain of long-extinct volcanoes known as The Morros. This rock is absolutely jam packed with peregrine falcons. The weather is much different from the hot, dry, sunny days of San Diego; year round average high is only about 65f/18c and the average low is about 48f/9c with damp, foggy mornings. Our shorts and sandals were, sadly, packed away until next summer. Morro Bay is a cute little town that enjoys a beautiful setting and is worth a day or two to have a walk around the Embarcadero (Spanish for wharf) where you will find quality shops, restaurants, art galleries and antique stores. The beaches are wide with packed sand and lots of vegetation that is being protected and a great place to run the dogs or to have a long, leisurely walk.

The rock.

The rock up close and personal and the wide beaches. The rock sits in the ocean and is off limits to people. Apparently a few dare-devils try on a regular basis to climb this rock.

Morro Bay and the view from the restaurant where we had lunch.

Side entrance of a tourist shop.

If there's a fish market, we will find it.

At Anchor Memorial Park; a memorial to local commercial fisherman who perished at sea.

We had lunch on the deck of Rose's Bar and Grill watching the seals play below us.

Other attractions in the area would include plenty of wineries, boat tours, whale watching, specialty shops, golf courses and, of course, magnificent beaches. San Simeon, the home of Hearst Castle, www.hearstcastle.org is only about 30 minutes away. Hearst Castle was the home of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst who, at his height, owned thirty of the most influential newspapers in the U.S. The castle is open to tourists and really is something to see.

Leaving Morro Bay and driving northward.

From Morro Bay we headed north to Manteca, CA for a one-night stop-over. Once again the topography changed drastically.

Rolling hills and no more signs of cactus and deserts.

We passed thousands of acres of vineyards all throughout this area.

A water reservoir.

Manteca is a small town conveniently located on the I5 between Modesto and Stockton and qualified for our usual driving distance of about 250 miles/400 kms. After leaving Morro Bay Gladys took us along an incredibly pretty but very twisting, narrow road to connect us back again with the I5 Freeway. I took a video of this road. I didn't think to take the video along the more treacherous spots (probably hanging on for dear life) so you aren't going to get the entire effect. It was pretty though, if somewhat deserted. We saw very little traffic in either direction and at times it was quite eerie.

No pictures or videos were taken in Manteca as we never entered the town itself however two interesting facts came to light. One: A local brewery called The Fossil Fuels Brewing Company uses in their beer recipe ancient yeast that is extracted from amber and revived after 25 to 45 million years of dormancy. If you ever saw the movie Jurassic Park you may remember that dinosaur blood was drawn from mosquitoes that had been trapped in amber using a similar method.  Two: The town of Manteca was originally named Cowell after the man, Joshua Cowell, who founded it. When the railroad came to town the citizens wanted to name their spiffy new train station Cowell Station but there was already a Cowell Station in close proximity so it was agreed to change the name of the town to Monteca. The railway company produced a sign that read Manteca (which means lard/butter in Spanish) instead of Monteca and this erroneous spelling was eventually adopted. Although he lost having a namesake town, when it became incorporated in 1918 as Manteca (lard), Joshua Cowell was its first mayor. Don't know if it was enough of a consolation prize but it was all he got.

Next stop,  Redding, a town in northern California that sits at the entrance to Shasta National Park, has a population of about 90,000 and is surrounded on three sides by mountains and farmland to the south. Our stay in Redding was somewhat marred by a mechanical problem with the fifth-wheel that was fixed but took nearly all day to do so. It meant we didn't leave Redding until nearly 5:00 p.m. instead of our usual 9:00 a.m. and was our first experience of driving at night (no big deal) and also with setting up the fifth-wheel in the dark. When we realized the RV would be in the 'shop' all day long we went, on the recommendation of an employee of Camper World, to Sundial Bridge for lunch. We thought we were having a simple lunch next to a bridge but were pleasantly surprised. Sundial Bridge is not just a bridge, it's an actual working sundial within a park called Turtle Bay Exploration Park. Turtle Bay Exploration Park is 300 acres of parkland where people can go to see exhibits, admire the bridge which spans the Sacramento River, walk the paths and get away from it all. Minutes from the I5 you won't believe you are in the middle of Redding as you enjoy the peace and quiet. We had lunch outside on the patio and then walked around the park; a great way to kill a few unexpected hours. Also a very dog friendly place, always a bonus.

Sundial Bridge

Glimpse of the Sacramento River at Turtle Bay

Erik and the pups at the outdoor cafe where we  had lunch

Plaque at Turtle Bay

The turtles of Turtle Bay

Sacramento River

Fly fishermen in the Sacramento River. Taken from the bridge

Little fishing boat.

Going north on I5 from Redding you enter Shasta-Trinity National Forest where Mount Shasta is located. Mount Shasta is a potentially active volcano and looms 10,000 ft/3,000 m above the surrounding land and is visible 230 kms/140 miles away from the south. It is pretty spectacular.

Shasta Lake is a reservoir within the forest and is a summer-time boating destination. The water level was pretty low this year as California is in the middle of a four - five year drought.

First glimpse of Mount Shasta.

There it is again.

We are getting closer.

The drive is quite spectacular with amazing vistas and twists and turns in the I5 giving a different view with each turn. Northern California and southern Oregon are extremely mountainous. Near Weed, CA, a small community, you will find yourself 3,800 feet/1,158 meters above sea level and 4,310 feet/1,313 meters just across the Oregon border.That's pretty darned high.

It was dark when we drove across the border between the two states so a picture saying Welcome to Oregon wasn't in the cards but I can fake one, right?

Not quite sure at which crossing you would find this. Found it on the internet.

We arrived at our destination, Canyonville, OR after dark but setting up at night was really not a big deal. The RV Resort we had chosen to stay in was very well lit and just minutes from the freeway. Of course, it was raining; it's Oregon after all. I did read on the internet though that Oregon is pronounced Or-a-gun and it is the 33rd of the 50 States for annual rainfall. A guy has a blog all about Oregon but I decided to check up on his rain information from another source just to be sure. I went to a website called Current Results weather and science facts, that puts Or-a-gun at number 36 (even lower than the Oregon blogger) with number 1 (Hawaii) being the wettest state. I took my video of the rain before I was aware of this fact.

The next morning we woke up to a beautiful, sunny day that allowed me the opportunity to walk around and take this video and a few pictures. It was pretty fantabulous. Canyonville, OR is a tiny little town with about 1,800 inhabitants with not a whole lot to attract visitors other than the Seven Feathers Casino Resort where we stayed. Erik and I have seen our share of RV Parks/Resorts and this truly is the most amazing one ever. For us it was not a destination, rather a place to stay one night, but I can imagine that many people make it a destination and set up camp for weeks at a time.

Our spot at Seven Feathers.

One of several shuttles to take you to and from the casino.

Above the main building.

Tulatin, OR, a pretty suburb of Portland, is where we stayed after leaving Canyonville. The RV Park was next to a little creek, was small but very pretty. It rained. Crossing the Interstate Bridge at Portland the border between the two states is somewhere in the Columbia River. I did manage to get a couple of pictures even though it was pretty wet out and kind of cold and we were traveling at 55 mph/95 kmh.

Leaving Portland, OR and entering Washington State.

You can just see the sign welcoming us to Washington.

To get to Port Angeles, WA you leave the I5 Freeway just south of Tacoma, WA and take US101, an exceedingly twisty and windy road with some pretty treacherous turns and wonderful scenery. You drive through small villages and towns that rely mainly on tourists and fishing for their livelihood, along the ocean and through wooded areas, up and down and around. It's not a road that you want to take if you are in a great rush but it's the only route there so go when you're relaxed and stress free. It's not a road to speed on but there are warnings informing you that five or more cars behind you is illegal and you must use a turn-out to let other pass.

We spent a sunny, dry day in Port Angeles as we waited for our ferry to Victoria. It's a nice town with a population of about 20,000, has an international airport, a community college and claims to have less rain than other western Washington cities. Tourism is a major industry with the area around the ferry terminal the site of restaurants, pubs and specialty shops. We had lunch in a great little Thai restaurant. There is also a growing wine industry in the area with many of the restaurants featuring local wines.

In the very far distance you can see Victoria, especially on a very clear day.

Taken from the internet, the harbour on a sunny day.

The ferry terminal from Port Angeles, WA to Victoria, BC

The dogs are allowed upstairs in the sitting area in this ferry.

The four of us on the ferry.

Crossing over to Victoria

The boy stood on the burning deck :)

The Pacific Northwest is attractive for so many reasons. It is green, very green indeed, it is mountainous and forested, has some pretty little towns with pleasing sounding names like Cottage Grove, Sweet Home, Happy Camp, OR and Enumclaw, Wishkaw, Rockaway Beach, WA and is the home of Starbucks. Erik and I both like the look of an ocean that gives way to tall pine trees and so many of the citizens of this area are earthy and wear clogs proudly.

Next stop, Oh! Canada. Back on home soil.