Sorry for the belated follow-up to our two week trip to Vancouver Island and the Discovery Islands. Beth wrote a bit about our couple of days on the road and I will post what she wrote here:
Day 1: Took the ferry to Sidney, B.C. (Beth slept the whole way.) Carl chatted with fellow bikers Adi and Todd, who were doing some ultra-light touring; just a large saddle bag and tent pole bag taped to their top tube. Upon arriving in Sidney, we headed for our favorite souvlaki place: Maria’s. There, we met up with our first CouchSurfing.com hostess, Yvette, and began to see what an amazingly cool person she was.
Yvette drove us into Victoria that night for Luminara, a magical community lantern festival. There were many artistic light displays, sculptures, wandering and performance art of lanterns, and more light. The main attraction: the fire juggler. Nick Woolsey of PlayPoi dazzled us with his various choreographed routines, spinning balls of fire in more ways than one can imagine. Afterward, Yvette herself performed a 36-point turn to get out of a parallel parking space into which she had been sandwiched by an inconsiderate driver.
A video by VegasWildfire (far better than the vids I took of that night)
A blurry Nick Woolsey
Fireflies
Ginger Bread Men running very fast
Glowing Wildlife of British Columbia
Day 2: Fueled by an amazing breakfast prepared by our hostess with the mostest, we headed onto the Lochside Trail toward Victoria. It’s a pretty nice way to go: part road, part trail, but always lots of cyclists. We saw a billboard for Obama, which we thought was interesting, since we were in Canada. Note that there was almost no place to pee on this stretch as the highway was on one side and expensive housed on the other.. The first park we stopped at had restrooms that were locked. Finally we found one that had port-a-potties. Whew!
Once in Victoria, we turned onto the Galloping Goose Trail. At the juncture, there is a cool little bike shop, which I’m hoping Carl will say something about here. The Galloping Goose took us to our destination: Hatley Castle. We had wanted to tour this castle a year and a half ago, when we were there on New Year’s Day. Alas, it was completely closed at that time, so we were making another try. This time we got in on a tour and visited the elaborate gardens. Score! On the way there, Carl reached out while cycling to grab a flower for Beth. Unfortunately, he got stung by a bee in the process, which at least enhanced the romance of the gesture.
Riding the Lockside Regional Trail
Hatley Castle is the home of Royal Roads University, and it has a fabulous café. As we stood pondering the menu, we wondered where the “high carb” options were, as there seemed to be plenty of “low carb” offerings, which were not what we needed after all that cycling. Hatley Castle is also where the X-Men movies were filmed.
Wanting to maximize our time at Hatley Castle, and also not wanting to wear ourselves ragged on the first day, arriving back at Yvette’s in the dark, etc., we decided to take the bus back to Sidney. Unfortunately, the bike racks on the buses have only two slots for bikes, and it was a beautiful Sunday, so there was a lot of competition for rack space. We finally found a bus driver who offered to lash one bike in between the two that were fitted into the slots. Success! Still it was dark by the time we got back to Sidney. Beth started to get a sore throat this day, so we picked up zinc lozenges and echinasea. Back at Yvette’s, we gobbled up the amazing dinner she had prepared (candied salmon salad with dried cranberries–AMAZING), and then we soaked in the hot tub a bit before falling very fast asleep in the comfy sofa bed.
