Our Best Western is right across route 1 from the Honda Dealer. It’s time for an oil change, and why not now? So when I finally get up I drive over and drop BLUZ off. Now when I say ‘right across’, that is accurate. The walk back is anything but. I got my days allotment of exercise on the two treks between here and there. Not only that, but without thinking, we had planned to eat breakfast here at the hotel while the oil was being changed. Duh! I had taken the dog house to the Honda dealer! We had no place to put the boys – can’t leave them in the room, ever!
With new oil we headed for town so Sally-Heath could do Curves. While she did that I took the boys for a walk through town, where they soaked up as much attention as possible, and that was a lot. For some reason the flags at City Hall are at half mast – no other flags in town are, and we never got to the bottom of that.
By now we are both famished, and we head for lunch at a place I noticed while walking the boys. It was nice, good food and outside, on a raised patio. Very pleasant.
The only ‘planned’ event for the day is to photograph totems in Duncan and do a little shopping in Duncan. And that is what we did, covering all four of the streets, getting pictures of every totem we saw (thirty pictures, but some totems got more than one. I think we missed a few). And stopping in a few shops that looked interesting. Sally-Heath got a finger puppet for Nozomi, but couldn’t find a replacement for her broken belt.
Of course, we stopped by the dog park – the boys enjoyed that – the park was empty again. I think they are more active when they have friends there.
We drove north from Duncan, along the coast, just to see the scenic countryside and various bodies of water. It was a fairly short drive actually, but very pretty. We came back south on route 1, and when we were almost back at the hotel we took route 18 west to Cowichan Lake. There is a story here – I’ll try to be brief. Quite a few years ago Gary, Jane, Sally-Heath and I took a road trip, and Vancouver Island was part of it. We stayed at a bed and breakfast on the west coast, close to Victoria, and then drove up the west coast, and across the island, AROUND Cowichan Lake, and we camped on the western end of the Lake for a night. I won’t bore you with the very interesting details of that camp, but Sally-Heath and I wanted to see if we could find the site, and we think we did. The road is still gravel, but the area had been developed quite a bit. It is hardly recognizable. But there are two campgrounds, and we visited both. On our original visit there were no campgrounds (as I remember), just a road to the lake in a few different spots. Anyway, we went to both campgrounds, and although they are very similar, we are pretty sure our old campsite is where the boat ramp is in the second (west) campground. Everything seems to fit what we remember. The lake appears to be about 1-2 feet higher, because we could only see the very top of a prominent rock in the lake close to shore, where before there was quite a bit of it exposed (as was the weird guy sitting on it!).
Our drive back to town brought is into town, and we had already planned to have dinner at Just Jakes. So we went straight there. We were primed for a great meal. Everything Ian had recommended so far had been excellent, and our meal at the Craig Street Brewing Company, owned by Jake, had been excellent. We were not disappointed. The food was great, the service was great, and we had a wonderful time. In fact the whole day had been good, right up until we got back to the car.
The boys were asleep, as usual. But they had been busy. I cannot express my frustration enough. I can’t blame them, but at the same time I hate that they get into things and destroy stuff in the process. This time it’s sunglasses. And a set of earphones. And who knows what else. These things were in a closed compartment in the car – but Woody knows how to open it now. Low marks to the Honda engineer who designed this latch! Damn. That’s about all I can say.
This is our last full day in Canada, if Homeland Security will let us back in the country. Gotta get rested up for the crossing. Goodnight.
1 comment:
Good night. WLC.
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