If we had a Marriage, These Would be its Thoughts

Day 8 (7/18) – Breakfast provided by the hotel today! It just so happened that the previous weekend they held a sand sculpture competition in town and, though the competition was complete, the sculptures were available for public viewing and voting. None of us had ever seen professional sand sculptures in person. They were pretty neat. The amount of detail is pretty incredible.

Heather and Corinne both voted for the girl with the dragon. Jess voted for the owl. I voted for the big, furry guy offering free hugs.

Our next stop was the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre. Which is a larger facility than it seems. You turn a corner and realize it just keeps going, again. Lots of injured birds. Jess enjoyed watching one of the ravens messing with the objects in its enclosure. A different raven, this one leucistic, named Opal, was working on digging a hole under the wall of its enclosure. And we saw a real life axolotl. So the girls were agog.

By the time we finished up with the animals it was past lunch time, but our next stop was the old country market known for the goats on its roof. Which…I give them credit. There’s no reason for anyone to be out at this place. Certainly if they just had a little shop selling sundries they’d be struggling. But, put up a sod roof and throw some goats up there and now you’ve got endless customers. They also have a cafe inside which is where we ate lunch. We saw one of the goats when we first arrived and it’s a good thing I snapped a picture, because we couldn’t see them anymore by the time we left.

The trip plans had an option at this point to head deeper into the island to Horne Lake Caves, but timing dictated we skip it in favor of catching the ferry and getting to our hotel before dark. Driving in cities is stressful enough, driving in a foreign city after dark sounds even less fun.

So we headed back to Nanaimo and lined up for the ferry. This ferry was substantially larger than the one we took to Victoria. I think it had 4 decks for vehicles. This was a 2-hour ferry ride and then we needed to drive into Vancouver proper–which we managed to do during peek rush hour. That was not so much fun, but we did it. We parked the van at the Blue Horizon Hotel and didn’t get back in for 3 days.

After getting the van unloaded through the maze of passageways at the hotel we headed out on foot to look around and find something for dinner. I had read that for the World Cup (and then extended through the end of summer) the city had closed a nearby street to vehicle traffic and created an extended pedestrian mall space. We walked down there, but discovered it seemed to mostly be bars. Wandering around some more we eventually ended up at an Italian restaurant, Pacifico pizzeria & ristorante. It was pretty good. I don’t recall why I’m making the face that I am in the picture. The girls had cookies from the restaurant for dessert. Jess and I got a slice of red-velvet cake and an eclair from a bakery across the street from the hotel. The hotel key cards were wood, which was a fun extravagance.

Day 7 (7/17) – Breakfast across the street at Belleville’s; crepes, blintzes, and French toast. Jess tried a London Fog, she liked it.

Back in the van and north to the Butterfly Gardens. Lots of creatures beyond butterflies hanging about in the space. The leafcutter ants in the lobby are rather fun to watch. An endless line of creatures cutting off bits of leaf and carrying them to their farms on the other side. The exhibit has a long piece of (fake?) vine that winds back and forth a few times from plants to farms so the ants have quite the distance to travel.

In the main exhibit hall there are butterflies, a flamingo, parrots, reptiles, birds, frogs, and probably more. It was hot and humid by design. We thought this would be an issue for Heather, but she spent more time in there than the rest of us taking pictures and videos–particularly the parrots.

After cooling down from the butterfly sauna our trip continued down the road to the Butchart Gardens. A large area filled with carefully cultivated gardens of various types. We had some pastries in the cafe to call lunch before beginning our meanderings.

From the local-artist gallery I decided I really liked this metal maple leaf, it’s about 12 inches across and 14 inches tall:

My original plan was to, next, take a ferry across the Saanich Inlet on our way to the northern part of the island. But there was a rather lengthy-looking line for the ferry and it wasn’t clear how long it was going to take to catch a ride (this is a much smaller ferry than one we took to Victoria). So instead we drove around the inlet to Malahat Skywalk. A tourist trap if there ever was one. It’s a large, tall cylindrical structure with a walking ramp to the top. At the top are views of the inlet, a “web walk”, a glass ledge to stand on, and a very long slide swirling you back to the bottom. I took the slide first and Corinne followed, but then Heather froze up. So she and Jess walked back down. You can take the slide as many times as you want, but you have to walk all the way back up. Corinne and I rode it a second time before heading out.

From there it was just driving up to Hotel Feng in Parksville. Dinner was A&W eaten at the hotel. Canadian A&W (a separate corporation from American A&W) sadly does not sell fried cheese curds as its American cousin does.

Day 6 (7/16) – Another breakfast from the bin. Good thing we packed that or every morning would have been spent trying to figure out where and what to eat with no easy answers.

The day’s first stop was the Hoh Rain Forest. An appropriately rainy drive on our way in and a ~30-minute wait at the entrance station. But by the time we parked at the visitor center the rain had let up. We listened to the tail end of a ranger talk, looked around the visitor center, and then walked the 1.2 mile Spruce Nature Trail which takes you out to the bank of the Hoh River.

Next to the river there was a deer and fawn wandering about. We spent 30 minutes or so hanging out by the river, skipping rocks, and watching the clouds drift among the hillside trees.

Lunch was from the bin plus gas-station snacks as we made our way to Port Angeles to catch the ferry to Victoria. Once situated in the standby line we killed time by walking through the shops on the wharf and had some New Zealand style ice cream which is kind of made-to-order soft serve featuring fresh fruit. It was cool and rainy so I found a cafe to get some hot chocolate to drink while waiting for the ferry–which was late. But we managed to get on. Two more cars after us and they closed the doors. Packed in very tight (though, since they didn’t end up squeezing in anyone behind us, we didn’t need to be packed so tight). Once parked you have to leave the vehicle deck for the 90-minute trip across the Salish Sea, so getting out was a bit of a squeeze. Jess had to climb in back to get out using the sliding doors (sliding doors are practically the perfect door design for a ferry-carried vehicle).

Off the ferry on the other side we waited in line for customs for a while before proceeding to our hotel, the Royal Scot Hotel. Settled at the hotel we took a walk through the primary tourist strip in Victoria headed towards the Irish Times Pub for dinner (recommended to us by friends). Sadly, by the time we arrived it was a quarter to 9 and the pub kicks out all minors at 9 so we couldn’t eat there. Instead we found a by-the-slice pizza place, Pizza Garden, and Corinne had chicken nuggets and fries from a Burger King across the street. For dessert we looked in about 6 different ice-cream shops (I’m pretty sure there was one on every block on each side of the street) before settling on gelato and cheesecake-on-a-stick. Then, finally, back to the hotel to crash for the night.