Skip to main content

Stuck at the Bottom of a Canadian Hill

Monday, June 27th – Victoria to Port Alberni, British Columbia - Day 136 

We woke up early to pack up the trailer to hit the ferry, then pulled a full 180 degree turn and decided to see if Mary could take the bus to the train station. Gen drove her to the bus station in downtown Victoria and was just in time to buy a ticket on a bus ride that delivers you directly to the train station, no fuss, no muss. 

We decided we needed to explore the island and with much help from James, Matthew’s brother/Gen’s cousin, plotted a route along the coast of South-West Vancouver Island, across the island to Nanaimo and then back across the island to Pacific Rim National Park and Tofino. We packed up the trailer and with much love for our gracious hosts, Patrick, Leila, Matthew, Paolina and James, hit the road. Before we left, Pat and Leila, and their friends Dave and Deb, invited us to join them at Dave and Deb’s chalet in Whistler in a few days. We weren’t planning to go to Whistler, but we decided we’d take them up on the invite. 

Before we left Victoria, Gen had heard about our Mount Douglas experience and wanted to go as well. We drove the trailer up the steep grades, parked and walked up to the peak. The view of the ocean, mountains and the islands around Vancouver Island were spectacular. 


After we passed Sooke on the south-west coast of Victoria, we reached the first of our recommended destinations, Mystic Beach. The road down was a very rough gravel road. We thought it looked like we would get stuck at the bottom, we didn’t even bother taking a closer look. 

The next stop was Sombrio Beach. The road looked good, not too steep or rocky. We even asked a few people hanging out at the top of the road if the road was good for a trailer; they said, “Good road, no problems”. As we started moving down the road it got worse and worse. Halfway down, Gen asked me if I thought we would get back up, I was optimistic at the time.

 We arrived at the parking lot and took a trail downhill to a fork in the trail. Gen had gone right to a suspension bridge, unknowingly Jo-Ce, Charlotte and me went the other way to a beautiful rocky beach. We corrected our mistake and met Gen for lunch on a rocky creek bed under a suspension bridge. The hill up was tougher than the way down. 

To be continued...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First Day of Online School

Tuesday, February 22nd – Grayton Beach, Florida – Day 15   We signed the girls up for online schooling and today was the first day. They were on their laptops at the crack of 9am EST (8am CST which is where we were). We have decided to have them attend class for an hour a day from 9-10am and see how it goes. It provides a bit of structure and we were tired of not yelling at them to stare at a screen. Kidding. I don’t know how it’ll work out. If it doesn’t, we will pull them from school and they will be officially home schooled.   Mary decided she was left out when she lost the opportunity to see the Goodwill so Gen and her went off to the store while I took the kids to the beach. We had a pretty good time. I’m not the biggest of beach fans but I have to get use to it because we are in Florida and everywhere is beach. We kicked around the soccer ball, hit around the baseball, the kids collected shells and played in a tidal pool near the beach. The surf was up so the k...
4 comments
Read more

Sand Sledding on White Dunes - More Photos

Post a Comment
Read more

Meow Wolf and O

Wednesday, May 25th –Lake Mead National Recreation Area to Las Vegas, Nevada – Day 104  We woke up in our roadside turn out and got ready for the day. Our plan was to go for a swim at Lake Mead, see the Hoover Dam and head back into Vegas. The morning was stifling hot, we were looking forward to the swim.   We drove to the visitor centre at Lake Mead Recreation Centre. We could see Lake Mead on the way. The water was well below the high-water line on the rocks. At the visitor centre we got our passport stamped, filled our water bottles, and received junior ranger booklets. The air conditioning was so nice we set up the kids to work on their booklets and hung around. The kids finished up enough activities that they were sworn in by a very nice ranger before we left.   We decided to go see the Hoover Dam first. We dropped the trailer in the parking lot. We heard it might need to be opened at the security checkpoint and we couldn’t be bothered. The H...
Post a Comment
Read more