DanOCan

Not too much to write about tonight.  We spent the bulk of the day in East Sooke Regional Park, checking out a couple of different trails.  The highlight was the hike out to the viewpoint overlooking Secretary Island in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. 

After exploring the park we stopped at Royal Bay Bakery and picked up a load of products — an apple fritter, a load of garlic cheese bread, a load of rye sourdough, and a pack of cinnamon buns.  The garlic cheese bread was a nice compliment to the seafood pasta I made with the shrimp we picked up yesterday.  The sourdough will make great toast tomorrow morning and the cinnamon buns?  Well, let’s say they disappeared quickly.

Tomorrow is a travel day.  We’re going to miss this area as we have really become attached to it in our short time here.  I have a feeling we’ll be back again one day…

OK, fine, I’ll admit it — I’m hurting!  I had no idea a simple hike up a 500m hill could result in me feeling so sore, but today I am stiff and not moving as well as I should be.  I think it’s a combination of being out of practice with hiking after a long winter plus being so much closer to sea level.  I have found when hiking at this level I am able to breath much more efficiently.  At home, where hikes typically start over 1500m and often go well over 2000m I often am stopping to catch my breath whereas here I don’t need those breaks.  I think that means I was able to push myself harder yesterday than I normally could at home — hence the sore muscles.

I certainly wasn’t going to let Mount Manuel Quimper stop me from experiencing my vacation though.

After another breakfast in the trailer (we’re soon going to be out of our good eggs from home) we set out to explore the National Historic Sites of Fort Rodd Hill and Fisgard Lighthouse.  The lighthouse is the oldest lighthouse on Canada’s west coast, making it something worth seeing.

I made a couple of rookie mistakes with my photography today.  First, I left the GPSr in the car so I won’t be able to properly geotag my photos.  Second, and more importantly, I messed up the settings on the D90 partway through the tour.  I was attempting to change the ISO when I changed from indoors to outdoors, but instead I adjusted the white balance, leaving all the photos from that point forward with a blue tinge.  The good thing is I was shooting everything in RAW, so when I get home and get back to my desktop computer I’ll be able to fix that with some post-processing work.  For now, you get a black-and-white photo as a sample.

We spent a few hours touring the grounds and checking out the exhibits before heading into the city for another late lunch / early dinner.  I actually decided to leverage the power of social media to pick our destination.  Using the foursquare app on my iPhone I checked local destinations to get some ideas for places to eat.  I rejected a few places because they appeared to be right in downtown Victoria and that isn’t the sort of place I care to drive a long-box crewcab pickup.

I was originally aiming for a pub called “The Beagle“.  We found it easily enough but parking was a challenge, leading to one of those classic “couples moments”.  At almost the exact same moment I was thinking “I guess I’ll just park a few blocks away and we’ll walk” Shirley decides to speak up with “I sure don’t feel like walking 800 blocks from wherever you decide to park.”

OK, so I changed plans.  I managed to find a one hour parking spot that was very close.  Excellent!  As we were walking to the pub we spotted Pizzeria Prima Strada across the road.  This place had been on a list sent to us by friends of ours who are moving to Victoria this summer as one of their “must do” places.  Well, we changed plans and crossed over and ended up having one of the best thin-crust pizzas I’ve ever experienced. 

As we rushed back to move our truck before the one-hour parking expired, I couldn’t resist a stop in at Island Meat and Seafood.  I had been lamenting my failure to locate a seafood counter on this trip thus far and this place fit the bill perfectly.  We picked up some fresh shrimp which will go into a seafood fettuccine I am planning to make tomorrow night (hey, we need to save a few dollars and eat in the trailer at some point, right?) along with some sun-dried tomato turkey sausages which I plan on grilling at our next stop this weekend.

Tomorrow is our last day in the Victoria area before we move on.  It’s been a great tour of the area.  I haven’t been out here in more than 20 years when I did a road trip with my cousins and I can honestly say I love it.  It’s been quite windy today but the other than that the weather has been fantastic.  The Summer of Awesomeness is living up to its name.

My plans for an early morning hike up Mount Manuel Quimper changed somewhat — I did not get started as early as expected.  Shirley opted to come along with Tucker and I as well, so the three of us set out up the old logging road towards the summit.

Naturally I didn’t pay as much attention to some of the trail reports as I should have so I ended up leading us up the longer route — instead of being a little more than 4km each way I managed to turn it into a trip of nearly 6km.  The elevation gain wasn’t anything too serious, about 400m.  The trail we followed was well marked, even after it turned off the old road and started up the mountain itself.

I did the last couple of kilometres without Shirley, as she reached “the Mrs. DanOCan Point” shortly after leaving the old road.  The Mrs. DanOCan Point is that point in any hike where the fun goes out of it for her.  You can usually tell when she has reached the Mrs. DanOCan Point because any comments you make about how wonderful the scenery is are met with silence.

The highlight of the hike is the old fire lookout at the top.  Built in 1951, the lookout has been abandonded for a long time, but remains open as a shelter for hikers.  It was great fun reading all the markings people have left inside over the years.  The views from the top of the mountain are quite nice too, of course.

After the hike we went into Victoria for a late lunch.  We ended up at Spinnakers Brewpub, based on the recommendation of a friend.  It was worth the journey.  I enjoyed a Scottish ale and an order of fish (salmon) and chips while Shirley had a shrimp melt.  The food was great and we greatly enjoyed sitting on the patio watching the float planes take off and land in the harbour.

All in all it was a great day, a perfect combination of exercise and relaxation.  Two more full days in this area and more exploration to take place.  We feel we’ve been experiencing a good balance of activities and relaxation.  All too often on vacation we feel the pressure to “go go go” all time time and miss the whole point of leaving the schedules behind.

Today was our first day of vacation that didn’t involve a lot of driving.  We figured today would be a pretty casual day with few plans.  We took our time getting out of bed and also took some time to make a pancake breakfast and a quick walk along Weir’s Beach before heading out.

We started out at Whiffen Spit Park, a long narrow strip of land protecting the Sooke harbour from the waters of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.  The dog had a great time, greeting all the other dogs and their walkers who were out enjoying the morning. 

Whiffen Spit Park in Sooke, BC

After driving around the countryside for awhile we finally decided it was time for lunch.  We spent a lot of time trying to find the sort of place we were looking for.  Keeping in mind that I had been poking around piles of driftwood and climbing under bushes in my constant quest for the elusive Geocaches, we couldn’t exactly eat anywhere high class.  We also knew that we wanted some form of seafood — we are on the coast, after all.  We wanted someplace that would be casual and cheap — the hunt for the quintessential “dive”.

After failing to find anything that met our low standards, we finally decided to search the Points of Intertest in the GPSr and see where it would lead us.  The result was “London Fish and Chips” in nearby Langford.  It was about 18km away and by the time we got there we were starving.  The parking lot was tiny and the restaurant itself was attached to a Co-op Gas Station — well, we certainly found our dive.

With “fish and chips” on our brain, we ordered — a two-piece halibut for me and a one-piece meal for Shirley.  The food looked promising — the fries were thick homecut style and the fish was large.  My first bite of coleslaw was great too.  I was digging this place.  Fries and coleslaw were going down easy.  Then I decided to try the fish.  Unfortunately, the pieces of fish appeared to be so large because they were covered in really thick batter.  Really thick batter.  The batter wasn’t great either.  If you managed to get through all the batter and to the halibut itself it tasted pretty good.  I don’t mind batter so I was OK with it, but poor Shirley was less than impressed.

The Catch of the Day?

It wasn’t the greatest start to our coastal culinary experience, but we know we’ll rebound.  It’s wasn’t the worst restaurant attached to a gas station I’ve ever eaten in.

After a few more caches we returned to the RV Park for a lazy afternoon.  After doing some reading outside in the sun we pretty much crashed and watched TV for the evening.  I think we both needed to be out of the vehicle for awhile as the last two days featured a lot of driving. 

We departed Kamloops and continued our westward trip.  We had a bit of a schedule today, as we needed to be at the ferry terminal around 13:00 to catch our 14:00 ferry departure to the island.  I spent a lot more time plotting and planning this stage of the trip than the rest of the vacation combined.  I did not want to miss that boat!

In the end we need not to have worried.  After a quick lunch in the trailer in Hope while parked at what appeared to be the oldest Husky gas station I’ve ever seen, we arrived at the terminal just minutes ahead of my planned 13:00 time.  The lady at the booth said there was a lot of room left on the boat if we wanted to take this one.  Well, how could we refuse?  We were the last vehicle on and I swear the ship was moving before I even had the park brake set.

Our home away from home for the next five nights is Weir Beach RV Resort in Metchosin.  So far it has been a great place.  It is clean and the owners are very friendly.  Our site backs onto a lagoon so we have been able to sit in our comfortable chairs and watch a duck swim around with her two babies.  We’re just steps away from the beach and the wireless internet has a really strong signal.  Check out this view.

My View While Registering at the Office

We took the dog for a walk in Devonian Regional Park, which is just down the road from here.  We managed to find six caches and got down to the beach.  It’s been another busy day, but we’re nicely settled now for the next four days — no major traveling, just checking out the area.  We’ve both fallen in love with Vancouver Island.  How soon can we move here?