Sittin' on the Blustery Bay

We are parked & set up (again!) in a new locale --- the new address for Shaggy (for the next week or so) is... West Bay Marina, which is in Esquimalt - just across the bay from downtown Victoria.

And, oh, what a location it is! Other than the record gales that we've had the past few nights (winds just rip & tear through this place!), we are set up beautifully; right on the ocean and we walk out Shaggy's door and down to a boardwalk and can easily walk along the ocean bay all the way to downtown.


At right is a mapquest map of the bike route we took last night from our campsite (marked with the green "start"), over to the Conference Centre in downtown Victoria.

The reason for the trip was the Victoria Spring Wine Festival --- which we attended enthusiastically (as evidenced by my well-practiced wine-guzzling stance below....) It was an international fest with wine reps from all over the world and we really found that our local Okanagan wines stood up beautifully against anything from California, Chile or Australia. However, the wines from here on the Island are, frankly, awful! But oh (!) the cheese and breads and meats and sweets --- there were about 50 tasting booths for wines and about 10 booths for local cheesemakers and bakeries and delis and... the food was sublime.



Further to our "eat, drink and be merry" philosophy of life, we also visited the local brewpub today --- Spinnaker's.

We'd taken a blustery walk along the blustery bay (but -- no rain!) and let the wind blow us right into the warm foyer of this awesome, two storey brewpub/guesthouse that overlooks the bay and city.

Our latest afternoon indulgence, in place of the former "cocktail hour" (at 4pm) is our "beer and fries" hour. So.... today we had Spinnaker's Indian Pale Ale and a large plate of Fish & Chips made from wild BC salmon.


Below is a very small portion of the map for the Galloping Goose Trail --- a large bike trail that we REALLY need to start travelling so that we can keep up this indulgent lifestyle. Honestly, we're biking and walking everywhere and we certainly haven't lost any weight..... but Damn! The cheese and wine and beer and bread and everything around here is just so good. Eat, drink and be merry.... must remember that. Actually the only stress in our lives comes from the fact that --- we have cable TV now! So every second commercial is about botox and diet food and "active lifestyles" and... I'm starting to remember why we didn't have television before.

Of course there are about 80 channels available to us here and all Tim ever does is flip through the channels grumbling about the crap that's on TV.

The picture at left was taken on the boardwalk trail that runs from our campground to downtown (called the Westsong Walkway) -- what looks like a row of small houses behind us is actually our RV campground. We pretty much walk this route everyday, past blooming hyacinths and trailing ivys and huge, inspiring arbutus trees (which we love!). Also, runs past some great brewpubs and wineshops and.... oh well....

We figure we'll stay here through the weekend and then maybe move out to Sooke and do some real hardcore hiking and biking (and wining and dining of course, too!)

Ohm Sweet Ohm

We're thinkin' that we've mellowed quite nicely into the ol' 'island-way-of-life' in the past few days, (yah mon),.... So much so that we've even taken on some catchy phrases from the local vernacular, such as ....
"travelling at the Speed Of Salt" !!

which --- surprisingly --- does NOT imply travelling at anywhere CLOSE to a leisurely, nonfrantic pace.

In fact, we've never seen such speeding maniacs in our lives. I mean, LA traffic pales in comparison to this stuff. Like --- I'd rather bike the interstates of Southern California than ever risk my life on these roads again ... (said with a large & sarcastic-but-depressed smile....) Which begs the question: where the h*$% are these people Speeding to all the time?? This whole Island is only like 200 square kilometres!... sigh....

By our estimates --- given that there are approximately 10,000 people on this small island, and judging by the unending volume of (rushing) traffic that we are seeing --- we calculate that, at any given time, at least one of every five residents here is frickin' zooming along some roadway.

Simply put: these people are speed demons. And I don't mean scooters or horses or bicycles or anything other than diesel-guzzling, big-motored mass machines.

People have actually stopped us (while we were biking) and asked whether we know that we are taking our lives into our own hands. And, frankly, we have started to realize that we are risking life-and-limb everytime that we step anywhere close to a roadway in this town. Even a cross-walk is questionable. Strange.... but true.....

Be that as it may... we're taking those risks daily (along with the risks of passing those d*&$% Alpacas---man, they scare us.....) --- and today we happened upon a passle of snakes on a sunny stretch of death-road. (herd of snakes? posse?)

The snakes were really just a fill-in to prove that, by-and-large, we're communing with nature and not just, say, hanging around town buying stuff.

Well... we did go into town one day (yesterday), but only briefly because Tim was feeling particularly misanthropic and didn't last more than fifteen minutes among humans....

At left is Tim packing our saddle-bags with some "booty" that we bought in downtown Salt Spring.

We bought some amazing "Body Gelatto" at Salt Spring Soap Works, and some lovely, delectable chocolates at Harlen's chocolates, and some terrible-truly-awful wine from Saturna Island (seriously... yuk!!).

The day before, we did the most insane four hour bike ride all around the northern tip of the island -- called the "north end bike loop". We passed sheep farms & even stopped & talked to a farmer who had just delivered a set of black sheep twins (!) The ride was actually quite gruelling BUT we ended it with a visit to one of the best local bistros --- called the Raven Street Market & Cafe (which always has at least fifty actual Ravens hanging around outside!). We rested our tired muscles & ate "Burnt Oyster Stew" and drank nectar-of-the-gawds from Gulf Islands Brewery --- the lovely, the delectable Gulf Golden Ale (makes up for buying that awful Saturna Island Wine... ug!!)

Above is a photo of me basking in the beauty of the bounty of my purchases (much to husband's chagrin....) --- holding Gulf Brew & Salt Spring Soap & Bear Claws, Ultimate Peanut Butter cups, etc on the table from Harlan's Chocolates --- yum!!!




It's 7:15 at night now which is "fire time" for the husband AND if I don't rush to the stove & start making some vegetables, you can bet that he'll get a big bonfire roaring & make himself a heap-o-smokies for dinner (again). I can actually hear him cutting up the kindling for his "smokie fire" outside my computer window.

Below is a picture of Kiya, flaked out in front of our picnic table, at the end of one of our lllloooooonnnnnngggggg daily walks. Sometimes I forget that the ol' girl is almost 80 years old in human years. She's an "island dog" now!!

I'm going to go repose in Shaggy's library now & peruse the many tomes that I purchased at the little used-book store here on the island (fabulous place!).... Off to commune with James Harriot .......Ciao all!!

We are Shag-a-Laggin'

So... two days ago, we hit that crazy Crow's Nest Highway and got ourselves (and our doggies) moving on the road toward the coast. Our first official stop was Keremeos ---a serious Canadian cow-town & a place of many youthful rodeo & camping memories for me.

We nestled ourselves in at the Ashnola Campground (run by the Lower Similkameen Indian Band) --- unbelievably gorgeous & simple campground, right on the Ashnola river with big sites & the sweetest caretaker ever! We both wanna head back, maybe in late May or early Sept, and check out one of their public Pow Wows. It cost us $10 to spend the night and there wasn't a soul around for miles (except Mary, the caretaker).



This old, red covered-bridge (at left) is one of only two rickety structures that span the Ashnola River. The covered bridge was under construction (as it has been since I was ten years old) and we had to drive down river a ways & take Shaggy over a narrow agriculture plank that seemed to be made of balsa wood. We survived (Tim kept his eyes shut).

Anyway --- we survived the bridges of Ashnola County AND the Crows Nest Pass and even stopped briefly at Hedley and Harrison Hot Springs (since we were in an "H" mood....AND a lot of my childhood "hippy" memories come from those towns....)


By Tuesday, those dependable BC Ferries had dropped us on Salt Spring Island, as promised, and we set up our "Shaggy home" at the Cedar Beach Resort on Saint Mary's Lake. (The picture at left is of Tim, checking out the "fishing possibilities" from the campground's dock.....) The Resort really IS surrounded by cedars (many) and we're one of only two vehicles camped here --- the other guy works for the Ferries so he's hardly ever around. Basically, we have the whole campground to ourselves. Which means that the *&$ing caretaker watches us like a hawk. She's already nailed Tim for having his fire "too early" in the evening (huh?) and for having Baileys off leash for a millisecond. I'm thinking we'll be the top of "Salt Spring Island's Most Wanted" list by the end of the week.


We've clocked about eight hours of hiking so far in the last two days (thanks to my intensely pushy husband). Everyday we walk past rolling hills of farmland, grazed over by fat, woolly sheep and threatening-looking alpacas (we're kinda scared of alpacas now....) We've done some beach combing (in the rain) and a bit of culinary touring (in the rain) -- apparently the sun will be showing itself momentarily this coming weekend. We look forward to that. The photo at right is from a hike we took today in this most gorgeous rainforesty gulley -- on a path that was lined with ferny tree trunks & moss-covered everything. I stood against a tree for a minute and moss started growing down my arms! So I had to move....







Everything is so lush & green & overgrown here --- and it's only March. We're enamored with the papery, peeling bark of the Arbutus trees and, altho it certainly has been damp since we arrived, we purchased really good raingear before we left so Tim is having an absolute BLAST "testing" the effectiveness of his anti-rain suit. In fact, Tim says that tomorrow we're spraying our clothes with some fancy aerosol plasticy stuff to further strengthen their water-repelling abilities. I'm quite happy to do it because, according to Murphy's Law, if we spend THAT much time on our raingear, it will definitely stop raining.

We stopped in at a Seafood Specialty company called Sea Change Foods today and bought, among other things, some Lobster Pate & Maple Smoked Salmon. They had Ice Wine-soaked salmon & the ice wine came from Quail's Gate ( a little "culinary coincidence" for us since we live right below that winery....)

Anyway, we hobbled home (after our four hour walk today), cracked open our afternoon bottle of Chardonnay and shared it with some Lobster Pate which we spread on this crazy awesome loaf that I bought here called "West Coast Trail Bread" -- full of nuts & raisins & goodness. We sat by the lake at our campground, heard a crazy screech & looked up to see the eagle (photographed above) perched high in the tree right above us. We think it was sent to spy on us by the "Campground Warden".

There's a gorgeous, handcarved wood gazebo at the lakeside here and we drank our wine & watched the sunset over the mountains while the eagle kept his eye on us.

It's supposed to be drier here over the next few days so --- we're hoping to pull the tarps off our bicyles & ride to the south end of the island for some wine & cheese touring. Then we'll hit the outdoor market on Saturday (if weather permits). Meantime, it's still lots of hiking (with raingear) & wine & seafood. Rough life, but we're surviving... island-style!