Category: Pacific Northwest 2024

Let’s get one thing out of the way up front.  Vancouver is a damn fine city.  We didn’t see all of it, of course, but what we did encounter was pretty cool.  And amazingly, Vancouver doesn’t ban drones.  Tumbleweed is right down there on the left at Pelican Bay Marina on Granville Island.

Vancouver takes its name from English naval officer George Vancouver, who explored the area while seeking new lands to replace those lost just a few years earlier when plucky revolutionary Americans threw off the shackles of British imperialism back east.  The city probably was easy to spot, what with all the buildings and pretty lights.

Vancouver is known for its beaches, which seems funny.  In fact, beaches in Canada always seem funny.  It’s been bloody hot for the past few days, however, so we’re glad people without air conditioning have a place to go.  Even the full-body-tattooed woman.

Liz and Eddie arrived from Austin—Liz being Dana’s sister—to help us check out the area.  Starting with Granville Island.  Granville Island is one of those silly places like Coronado that people call islands but really are peninsulas.  This is proven by the fact that the bridge is over land, not water.

Awesome little place, is Granville Island.

Dating to 1917, Ocean Concrete is the oldest business on Granville.  Ocean Concrete is noteworthy, of course, only because the company famously paints its silos and trucks.

The Granville Public Market also is famous, and fabulous, and we patronized its vendors several times yet failed to take a single photo until we passed by on our way out.

Vancouver may be the most bicycle-friendly place we’ve been, although our bicycle ride around town would’ve been much more pleasant without all the bicyclists clogging our route.

Along the way we stopped to photo-document a few of the things we normally don’t encounter.  Like BC Place.  BC Place is home to the BC Lions, which is significant primarily because CFL Hall-of-Famer/VFL Legend Condredge Holloway finished his decorated career as a Lion.

The trip around Stanley Park took us past the Girl in a Wetsuit, who “represents Vancouver’s dependence on the sea.”  She’s probably more picturesque at high tide but we didn’t go back.

This is “storied Siwash Rock.”  The story is that the rock was sacred to the Squamish people who inhabited the area before Captain Vancouver and the British Navy stopped by.  During the First World War Canada placed artillery on the overlook in case Kaiser Wilhelm came calling.  The original fir atop the rock lived for perhaps hundreds of years before succumbing to the drought of 1965.  Despite long odds a sapling took root a few years later, which is kind of cool.

Now these are real totem poles, which as previously noted means crafted by indigenous people out of a single tree, preferably red cedar.  They serve as tribal “coats of arms,” celebrating significant milestones in each tribe’s history.

Back on Granville Island we found a dude working on a new one, using ancient tools and techniques handed down from generation to generation.

Sunday we’d intended to take Liz and Eddie on a day trip over to Snug Cove.  Big plans for lunch and a nice hike through the forest.  Except when we arrived there wasn’t space to dock, so we just went around Bowen Island instead.  Brilliant day for a nice five-hour cruise.  Flybridge weather.

Like most of Canada Vancouver is quite clean, so seeing an abandoned sailboat in a park is a bit jarring.  If this was Maple Bay they’d surround it with logs and call it art.  Seems to us someone should remove it, but whatever floats their boat.

Here’s one of those “find the hidden object” games.  Can you spot seven dogs and a sailboat using a sunken boat as a mooring ball?

Despite the traffic clogging up False Creek we made it back to Pelican Bay, which was a good thing because we wanted to visit the Vancouver Aquarium.

The aquarium at Stanley Park isn’t huge, but it’s pretty well put together.  Lots of jellyfish and frogs and fish and other stuff.

As always, fun times with Liz and Eddie.  But they have things to do and blazing heat to enjoy so on Tuesday they headed back to Texas.

And we headed over to Gibsons.

Gibsons originally was called Gibsons Landing because George Gibson and his son George Gibson landed here in 1886.

When viewed in the context of the aforementioned George Vancouver, the logical conclusion is that Canada required all explorers in these parts to be named George.  Most importantly, they put us in a spot without shore power but then let us move, so we had air conditioning after all.

Gibsons is famous as the setting of the second-longest running  Canadian television program.  As self-absorbed Americans we’d never heard of The Beachcombers—and frankly weren’t aware that Canada produced anything of TV significance other than Schitt’s Creek and Great White North—but apparently it ran from 1972 through 1990.  Molly’s Reach was an integral part of the show and supposedly is the most photographed building in British Columbia that isn’t the Victoria Parliament Building.  Fans of the show flock to Gibsons from around the world.  We ran into a wistful Canadian taking pictures of Molly’s on our way to a delicious dinner at Lunitas.  When our Winnipeg friends arrive next week we’ll get their thoughts on it all, but for now the place needs a new owner.

Lunitas.  Yum.

One of The Beachcombers main characters captained Persephone, a now-iconic steel-hulled tug he used to locate and collect stray logs floating around Howe Sound.  They retired the boat when the show ended, which may be why on the way here Dana kept yelling “Look out for the log!” so as to divert Doug’s attention from his iPad game long enough to avoid hitting them.  Persephone now is a national treasure, laid up for refurbishment before permanent relocation to a place of honor just down the street from Molly’s.  So we couldn’t get a photo.

What we could do, however, is hike up the 21% grade to Persephone Brewing Company.  At least some of the miles were flat and shaded and green.

Persephone’s is an amazing place, because it has a downstairs brewery where Doug could buy a pint and a t-shirt and an upstairs non-profit bookstore where Dana could buy the book Liz recommended.  Win-win, baby.

This morning we’re headed back to Snug Cove.  Yes, we have a reservation.

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* We know.  This is a pseudo-recycled theme from another bunch of Georges.  But it fits here and the blog is free, so get over it.

Several significant events occurred in 1889:  Van Gogh painted The Starry Night, France completed the Eiffel Tower, the WSJ published its first issue, Confederate President Jeff Davis died, and Adolph Hitler emerged from the loins of hell.  Also, the Union Steamship Company started hauling goods and passengers up and down British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast between Vancouver and Pender Island.  The nine hour round trip cost $1.50.  Canadian.

The point is, we spent two nights at Union Steamship Company Marina in Snug Cove on Bowen Island.  As far as we can tell the marina has zero connection to the Union Steamship Company—which went out of business in 1959—or any of the other events referenced above, but still.

Before arriving in Snug Cove, of course, we had to get past the dangerous logs and the awesome scenery, all of which we succeeded in doing.

Very cool little town, and very cool little marina, except for the ferry wake at 10:30 pm that kept Sammy from sleeping which in turn kept us from sleeping.

Remember the cool stuff we’d intended to do with Liz and Eddie?  Turns out we were right.  Very cool stuff.  Like the hike up past Tumbleweed to the lookout spot.

Right now, this lagoon looks sleepy and calm.  Come October, however, it teems with salmon heading up the creek with a little help from the fish ladders we didn’t walk up to see.

The Bowen Island Whale Trail supposedly offers opportunities to see dolphins and otters and seals and sea lions AND THREE KINDS OF WHALES.  We rented a golf cart to take us out there, schlepping the camera and big lens so we could get photos of amazing ocean wildlife.  Meh.  Here’s a photo of the place where we got no photos of amazing ocean wildlife because there wasn’t any.

We did score some Riley’s cider from the family cidery, however, which boasts of “almost 1000 different apple varieties making it one of the largest apple collections in a North America.”

We were dubious, so looked it up.  Depending on what source you use, there are either around 30,000 or 7,500 apple varieties worldwide.  To us, at least, this made Riley’s claim plausible.  All we know for sure is that the cider is delicious.

Then back to Vancouver to await Trevor and Brenda.  This time we found a spot at Quayside Marina, which is farther from the Granville Island Market but closer to BC Place.

Turns out we pulled in on game day.  We could tell it was a big CFL game because an hour before kickoff tens of fans in BC Lions hats or shirts were walking around in a completely flaccid state of excitement.  As we can’t stress enough, we love Canada and Canadians.  In many ways, Canada and Canadians are better than America and Americans.  Football, however, is not a summer sport.  Playing football in July is like making your national dish out of mushy french fries and gravy; both are unacceptable and together make it difficult to take Canada seriously.  But BC beat the Roughriders from Saskatchewan so all those handfuls of fans left happy.

A few more Vancouver tidbits we failed to mention last post.  We might not have heard of The Beachcombers before, but we’re well aware that the Second Narrows Bridge collapsed on the eighteenth day of June back in nineteen fifty plus eight, killing eighteen workers who were shaken off like a hound dog shakes off flies.  Even our daughters know this, the same way we all know that Big Bad John just drifted into town and stayed all alone.  RIP Jimmy Dean.  Here’s the best photo we could get of the bridge—now called the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge at Second Narrows—as it exists today.

Lots of famous people are from Vancouver.   Ryan Reynolds, whose VanCity twitter moniker now makes sense.  Michael J. Fox.  Steve Nash.  Pamela Anderson.  Scotty from Star Trek.  And of course Robert Pickton—the notorious serial-killing farmer who used his victims as pig feed and died in prison just a few weeks ago—called Vancouver home, although the city probably wishes he hadn’t.

Anyway, although Vancouver is nice enough, we figured we should rent a car and drive around more of British Columbia while waiting for our next set of guests.  So off we went to Whistler.  We could’ve stopped for photos a zillion times along the Sea to Sky Highway, but managed to limit ourselves.

Whistler’s Olympic ski mountain reminds us of Mont Ripley on the Keweenaw Peninsula.*

Last summer, our friend Mike Gordon was one of about 300 crazies to do the 29029 Everest Challenge in Whistler.  You hike up 4,000 feet to the top, take the gondola down, then hike back up, and do all that over and over until you’ve gained 29,029 feet of elevation.  In thirty-six hours.  Mike either will live to be a hundred or will die young.  We probably would’ve gone up once or twice ourselves, but Sammy gets tired after thirty minutes on level ground, so instead we walked around town and ate Thai noodles and then went back to the hotel at night like normal people.**

We’ll definitely get back to Whistler, but we needed to keep moving.  More great scenery on the way around through Kamloops and down to Kelowna.  Lots of lakes and mountains.

Most of the trip we spent whizzing along at the American equivalent of 110 kilometers per hour, so we had only a short time in Kelowna.  The highlight was seeing our snowbird pickleball friend Sharon, who snuck us into a fabulous dinner at the Kelowna Yacht Club.

Trevor and Brenda arrive from Winnipeg tomorrow.  There’s a possibility not all of us will survive.

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* Just kidding.

** Disappointingly, we did not get to see Whistler’s Mother.

So Trevor and Brenda arrived from Winnipeg and we ate and we drank and we carried on until the wee hours the first night but didn’t really take a single blog-worthy photo.  Meh.  Plenty of time to make up for it, right?

We may or may not have been a bit bleary-eyed when we pulled out and headed for Secret Cove the next morning.  As has been the case for the past two months, of course, we constantly scanned the horizon for the whales everyone up here promised us.  Nada.  Again.  The Merry Island Lighthouse is scenic and all, but hardly a satisfactory substitute.

First stop with our guests?  Secret Cove.  The secret seems to be that the only restaurant for miles requires either a reservation or a prompt arrival at 5:00, neither of which worked for us.  It’s a fully functional marina halfway between Vancouver and Brenda’s sister in Powell River, however, which mostly is what we needed.

Aww.  Ain’t they cute?

Cute yes, but not as cute as the basking seal Dana bagged as we headed out.

Remember those photos—like the one on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV—of old people in Slovakia or Slovenia or some such place all stooped over carrying heavy loads of sticks?  If those old people were smart, they’d get a tugboat and a barge.

Then on in to Powell River.

We had low expectations, mostly because whenever we told someone we were heading to Powell River they invariably responded: “Why are you going to Powell River?  That place sucks.  Go to Lund.”  And we invariably defended our decision by blaming Brenda.

As we neared Beach Gardens Marina, we watched the marina webcam with increasing concern as the one space that might be big enough for Tumbleweed filled with other boats.  The one dockhand couldn’t be bothered to answer either his phone or the radio.  When a hotel maintenance guy finally called back, all he could do was assure us that they’d had sixty foot boats at the marina before, and he seemed confused when we suggested the obvious possibility that there had been fewer small boats clogging things up on those occasions.  But we scrounged up some courage and wedged ourselves in, which both the dockhand and the maintenance guy probably watched with smug satisfaction.

Later—after a bunch of boats left—we looked like cowards.

The other thing is that we couldn’t get shore power at Beach Gardens, even though the dockhand plugged in his 30A incandescent light bulb and assured us the problem was with our equipment.  Trevor worked some Canadian magic, however, and minutes later Brad showed up and re-wired the marina service panel.  Seriously.  He opened the panel and reconfigured some breakers, all without so much as, you know, asking someone at the marina for permission.  But as the sun set on the Malaspina Strait we had power, which is all that matters.

Turns out, all those people were wrong.  Powell River is kind of cool after all.  Powell River has a pirate statue.

Powell River has the Patricia Theatre, which either is the oldest continuously-running movie house in Canada, or is just the oldest in BC.  The Patricia was showing Inside Out 2, which we plan to see sometime when we’re not in Powell River.  We greatly enjoyed Inside Out.

Powell River has “The Hulks.”  The Hulks are a string of retired ships that—according to the sign—make up “what many believe to be the largest floating breakwater in the world.”  Not to be cynical, but most of those “many” believers possibly live right there in the town that offers The Hulks up as a tourist attraction.  Still cool though.  The first hulk was the USS Charleston, launched in Virginia in 1904, commissioned as a navy ship in 1905, then used for various tasks around the world until being sold to the Powell River Company in 1930.  The now-shuttered Powell River Company planted the breakwater to create a harbor it could use while churning out paper products on a massive scale.

Powell River has a pickleball court, surfaced with those plastic interlocking tiles that you see on sport courts that aren’t intended for pickleball.  It’s always great fun to play with Trevor and Brenda though, and the goofy bounces off the tiles provided a convenient excuse for Doug’s incompetence.  We took no photos.

Back at Beach Gardens, however, we took photos.

The familial lines that connect Brenda to Dan and Bonnie are too convoluted for us to understand, but things still worked out well.   Dan and Bonnie are awesome.  They invited us all over for an amazing meal and silly banter about the difference between an American gallon and a Canadian gallon and a sunset walk down to look for whales.

About that.  Bonnie said she saw and heard whales off their beach just the evening before.  Dan promised that we’d see whales the next day when we crossed back over the Strait of Georgia.  Dan also assured us that “There aren’t any mosquitoes here,” however, so while we were watching things that looked exactly like mosquitoes struggling to fly away while carrying litres of our blood we figured he was fibbing about the whales as well.*

While back on the boat after that amazing meal, we ran out with everyone else who was watching the moonrise.

Our guests needed to fly back to Winnipeg out of Comox and we needed to get back to Vancouver Island if we are to see The Butchart Gardens in a few days, so off we went on an unexpectedly gloomy day.

“Look!  There’s a blowhole spout,” shouted Brenda.  Sure enough, our first whale.  Unfortunately it was as far from the boat as the Canadian equivalent of a mile—and we were bouncing around at the Canadian equivalent of eight knots—but we managed to get a really crappy blurry photo just to prove it wasn’t our imagination.  Dan was right about the whales despite his fibs about the mosquitoes.

The skies cleared just as we rounded into Comox.

Comox is a town but also was an indigenous group in the area, although they spelled it K’ómoks.  Apparently the K’ómoks weren’t fazed by the increased difficulty of finding the “ó” on an iPad keyboard.

Sailors in Comox aren’t fazed by the big tide swing.  Just sit on the bottom until the water comes in.  The bonus is that twice a day you can walk into town for groceries and hammer your anchor down if you’re worried about it slipping.

Comox is a decent enough town, but we didn’t want to waste precious game-playing time so we popped into the brewpub for a quick lunch and missed most of whatever Comox has to offer.

Most importantly, Dana and Brenda and Trevor paid dearly for making Doug look foolish on the plastic pickleball court.

We remembered one last photo before our friends returned to Winnipegging** or whatever else they do in Manitoba.  Great fun while they were here.  Fortunately we have Cholla pickleball and a trip to Tennessee with them in our future.  Trevor even says he’ll get a number 16 jersey for the game against Kentucky.

Not much of interest on the run down to Nanoose Bay.  We did see a whale, but mostly it hid underwater.  And a derelict boat.

And the Chrome Island Lighthouse.

Typically, we start googling restaurants about three hours before arriving in a new place.  You’d think that after hundreds of disappointments we’d learn to look at hours of operation before deciding what we plan to order from the awesome menu.  Nope.  Fell for it again in Nanoose Bay.  One restaurant.  Closes at 1 pm on Mondays.  But Dan and Bonnie sent us off with a bag of huge local prawns that went quite well with garlic butter and Old Bay, so it all worked out for the good guys.  That’s about all there was to our short stay.

Today took us back through Dodd Narrows, which we hit at slack only because we wisely factored in our inability to understand the tidal currents and left Nanoose Bay early.  Dozens of other boats decided to ignore etiquette and crowd through all willy-nilly from both sides, making it less fun than if, say, they’d all stayed home.

In our last post, we listed Pamela Anderson—famous for her roles as a Playboy Playmate, a lifeguard, and Tommy Lee’s sex tape partner—as a famous Vancouverite.  Our friend Mary on Feisty Lady follows the blog and is much smarter than us, however, and correctly clarified that although Anderson may have lived in Vancouver, she was born in Ladysmith, on Vancouver Island.  In 2019 she (meaning Pamela Anderson, not Mary on Feisty Lady) moved back to the property in Ladysmith she bought from her grandparents, all of that being handy information when you’re heading to Ladysmith.  The point is, her remodeled house is hidden behind trees, but here’s her new dock, the permit for which was approved over many objections.

Although we arrived to more power pedestal funny business at the marina, this time there was space for us to pull forward.  The Greenline 48 that rolled in after us and had to take the spot we vacated may have been screwed, but we had power, which is all that matters.

Ladysmith originally was a coal town, and by “originally” we mean after the coal company ran off the indigenous tribes who had lived here for centuries.  The mine owner supposedly was so overjoyed when the 1899 siege at South Africa’s Ladysmith ended that he stole the name.  (On a tangentially-related note, Breaker Morant is a grossly-underappreciated movie.)

In one of our posts when we were in Quebec, we noted the province’s ubiquitous motto “je me souviens,” meaning “I remember.”  As in “I remember what those English bastards did to us.”  Ladysmith also remembers.  As in “We remember what we did to those natives when they had coal we wanted.”  So basically the opposite.

Anyway—as often seems to happen with mining towns—the mines closed, the trains stopped coming, and destitution plagued the place until a big revitalization effort.  At least we assume the trains stopped coming.

While Ladysmith indeed seems to have turned the corner and now counts a C-list actress among its residents, we can’t give it five stars until the best restaurants start operating on Mondays and Tuesdays.  Grrrr.  But we ended up at a quirky pizza joint in one of those 1903 coal-mine era houses, so we didn’t starve.

Tomorrow off to Montague Harbour on Galiano Island.

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* Canadian mosquitoes carry blood by the litres.  American mosquitoes carry blood by the quarts.  Canadian mosquitoes who come across the border use liters, “liters” being the correct spelling and all.

** Which reminds us of a joke . . .

Although we’ve been bouncing around southwestern British Columbia for a fair bit now, Galiano Island was our first of the Gulf Islands.  The Gulf Islands are to Canada as the San Juan Islands are to the United States, except Galiano Island has Tommy Transit, which none of the San Juans can match.

The only note of interest from the trip over from Ladysmith relates to radio chatter from what sounded like an even more chaotic day at Dodd Narrows.  Stuff like “You moron, you don’t have the right of way.”  We figure that boat was American—because Canadians are Canadian—but not from Miami—because in Miami the moron would’ve been sexually active with a capital F.  Dodd Narrows is behind us and the water we plowed was protected by bunches of those same Gulf Islands, however, so none of the angst bothered us.

Doug flew the drone.  In a surprise twist, he wasn’t asked by the Canadian Women’s National Soccer Team to video upcoming opponents.

Montague Harbour Marina has just the correct mix of activity and seclusion.  And a cool store with delicious ice cream.  The dude who owns the marina, cool store with ice cream, restaurant, and related stuff, has the entire thing listed for $3 million.  Even without the favorable exchange rate, that’s cheaper than the marina we contemplated buying in Marathon but more than the one with the Victorian B&B in Reedville.

Now about Tommy Transit.  Tommy is a legend in these parts.  A self-described cross between “a Zen master, a stand-up comedian, and Mary Poppins,” he’s a city bus driver who for years summered on Galiano Island, entertaining people on the shuttle up to the Hummingbird Pub.  Everyone said we must ride the bus with Tommy.

Wait what?  They fired Tommy Transit?  $#@&!  The new shuttle driver doesn’t pass out instruments and tell jokes?  Well then screw the Hummingbird Pub, which everyone says sucks anyway.  We’ll just take a photo of what might have been and move on.

Move on by way of scooters, that is.  Dana fashionably grabbed the one that matched her shirt.

Our hop around the island took us to what TripAdvisor says is a top attraction:  the famous Kunamokst Mural, created for the 2010 Olympics.  One hundred and ninety Canadian artists were given squares and a general guideline of shapes and color palettes and then left to paint an independent scene depicting British Columbia.  Then someone put them all together.  It’s quite stunning, but one of us couldn’t get over the fact that those squares are 12” by 12”.  Apparently the metric system is voluntary.

Then up to The Bluffs, where the hike led through an old growth cedar forest—one of a very few that survived the heavy logging that stripped much of the island—and out to an awesome view.

On the way back we stopped at the pottery place.  Based on the little sign, we assume it mostly caters to customers with poor hearing: “Ring the bell for service loudly,” it says.

Speaking of trees, Galiano Island is loaded with the only broad-leaf evergreen native to Canada.  The Arbutus—called Madrone or Madrona in the US—are a protected species in the Gulf Islands because migratory Rufous hummingbirds rely on their nectar.  This isn’t necessarily the prettiest example of an Arbutus tree we saw, but we didn’t discover the above-noted factoids until our only option was to get a photo from the boat.

Remember all the people in Powell River who ran out for the epic moonrise?  We think they followed us to Montague Harbour, which is a good thing because we were wrapped up in an episode of Lessons in Chemistry when they all zipped by with their cameras.  So we grabbed ours and the big lens.  Crazy sunset it was.  This isn’t photoshopped.  It was just that awesome.

Next stop, Ganges.  We’re not Hindu, but figured we’d take a quick dip in the holy river just in case.  Nope.  Turns out the Ganges River is in India, not in Ganges, British Columbia.  Disappointed, we made do with a late lunch at Moby’s Pub, hosed off some salt, briefly checked out the town, and retired to the marina.

It seems odd to us, but the first non-native settlers on Salt Spring Island arrived in 1859.  The natives called them Hwunitum, meaning “people who came from nowhere.”  Also in 1859, perhaps as a nod to those soon-to-be-displaced tribes, Canada’s Parliament declared lacrosse to be the national sport.  Not hockey.

A couple of interesting boats near us.  Longtime followers know that our affinity for “Pearl” names even predates Misty Pearl.  We’ve documented a bunch of them.  Salish Pearl, however, is a first.  We like it.

Second, we found one of Tumbleweed’s sister NPY49s.  Dave and Meredith are taking Sea Harmony up to Alaska next year, so maybe we’ll see them again.

The famous Saturday Salt Spring Farmers Market was the major draw.  Dana loves a good market, so we timed it perfectly.

Meh.  We judge the quality of markets by the number of booths Dana patronizes.  Three was the number this morning.  Three does not speak well of the Salt Spring market.  The best we can say is that if we needed to see a fortune teller there were several from which to choose, and we passed pretty flowers on our way back to the boat.

Because of a dumb CDC rule about dogs that came out when it was too late for us to comply and then was rescinded after we’d already locked in stuff back in the U.S., we’re leaving Canada on July 31.  The Butchart Gardens might deserve a separate post, so we’re teeing this short one up now.

No offense to our sailor friends Jeff and Ann, and Brent and Karen, but as a general proposition sailboats suck.  Sailboats under sail generally have the right-of-way, which they enjoy by tacking slowly back and forth in our path whenever possible.  Begrudgingly, however, we admit that some of them are quite pretty.  Like this one we passed on our way to Brentwood Bay.

Brentwood Bay basically is North Victoria, but when we were in Victoria for the Canada Day Drone and Fireworks Fizzle we didn’t have time to come up by bus.

The reason to go to Brentwood Bay at all, of course, is The Butchart Gardens.  World famous.  Everyone who knew we were going to Victoria said the same thing: “Don’t miss The Butchart Gardens.”  There’s a separate entrance at a dinghy dock in Butchart Cove, so we popped ours down and cruised on in.

In 1904, Bob and Jennie Butchart started digging limestone out of Vancouver Island at Tod Inlet, for use by their cement company.  After exhausting the deposit, Jennie was left with an ugly quarry in her back yard.  Over the years she turned it into what now is a National Historic Site of Canada.

While we highly recommend a visit, don’t go at noon.  Noon is when hundreds of tour buses from Victoria arrive.  Those buses each carry roughly a million slow-moving people who don’t mind stopping wherever they please, even if it’s at the precise spot where we want to stop.  No fun at all, particularly with a small black dog who was at constant risk of a trampling death.  So we punted our first effort and went back at 4.  Much better.

A dogless dinner at The Dining Room after the buses are gone is a great way to cap off a visit to the gardens.

Yesterday was sad and gloomy and rainy, which sucked for the trip around the top of the Saanich Peninsula but was good for extinguishing the wildfire that’s been raging just west of us.

Incidentally, we’ve now learned that smoke from the Old Man Lake Fire is responsible for the almost-apocalyptic sunset in our last post.  So there’s the proverbial silver-lining, we suppose.

We also passed another photo-worthy sailboat, this one with crazy people dangling off the bowsprit.

Anyway, we made it to Sidney.  Sidney is our last stop in Canada this year, thanks to the CDC morons who made a stupid rule about dogs and then waited to reverse that stupid rule until it was too late to help us.  Grrr.  The Port Sidney Marina, however, is fabulous.  Excellent dockhands.  Wide fairways.  Concrete docks.  Hanging flowers that probably are quite stunning in sunlight but we’ll never know for certain.

This morning, more rain.  Fortunately, we carry two huge umbrellas on board for this very situation.  So off we went to walk around town.  Unfortunately, “It looks like the rain is over so let’s not take the umbrellas” proves foolish every stinking time.  But things dried up a bit later and the weather is trending in the right direction.

Dana even bonded with Janet—of Janet’s Special Teas—who gave us a literal tea spoon to go with our Christmas tea.

Here’s a bonus mural we forgot to include before we sent the emails out.  It depicts the moment before terrified natives who should’ve stayed home were dashed into pieces.  All the poor dude in the waffle-cone hat could do was point.

So that’s it for Canada this summer.  Somewhat sadly, tomorrow we head back to the US of A.