The GR8 Life!: Vancouver Island 2008

Sunday
Sunday morning I set off early with the kids, luckily we were able to leave the house at approximately 8:30am. The plan was for me to drive down to Merritt. Samuel was flying back from London to Vancouver and would take the greyhound from Vancouver to Merritt. Great plan considering what had just happened on Wednesday night on the Greyhound bus. The drive down to Merritt was good. Roads were clear and kids were well stocked with books, colouring stuff and food of course! We got to Merritt at 6:15 (after getting lost!) and met up with Samuel shortly after.

Monday
We headed down to Vancouver on a quest to find the kosher pizza everyone had been telling us was great (and the ferry that would take us to the island). We got to Vancouver and of course we couldn't find the pizza place, so we stopped off at people's houses to track it down, but we had no luck finding it and ended up at Pinny's instead. We were actually really impressed with the pizza (see what going without kosher pizza for 6 months can do?) bought a few provisions for our stay on the island and headed over to Tsawassen (can you pronounce that?) for our ferry.

Aww, sweet. A pretty typical picture of Hadassa clambering all over me.

The view of the Olympic Mountain from the port and ferry. We arrived in Nanaimo (as in the Nanaimo bar) and drove to Courtenay in the Comox Valley, where we discovered that the infallible Google maps are actually fallible!! We drove around for an hour or so until we found some kind soul who actually knew the road where we were staying and directed us to our house. The owner noticed we were Jewish (I wonder how?) and commented that one of the coffee shop owners was also Jewish.

Tuesday

Being the good wife I am, I woke up early on Tuesday morning and took the kids with to Superstore so that Samuel could sleep in - he was pretty tired after his trip to London, and so that we could have a little bit of food to eat. We headed out to Goose Spit for the morning and after driving around for about an hour and a half we arrived in time to have lunch there (On the way back it took us about 10 minutes to get home).

The kids had a great time at Miracle Beach, where we spent the afternoon. I think it was the first time they have been at a beach. Definately HM's first time. They loved playing with the sand and burying limbs in it. Meanwhile we (the parents) took turns sleeping.

Wednesday

We went to Campbell River in the morning, had lunch at the water, where we watched the planes take off and the kids threw rocks into the sea.

We then took a chair-lift to the top of Mount Washington. We decided to hike down the mountain instead of taking the chair-lift - the exercise can't hurt (or a certain someone was scared of going down the chair-lift). There are quite a few hiking and biking trails down the mountain. Somehow we made our way down one of the 'extreme' biking trails.

Thursday
We took the ferry to nearby Denman and Hornby Island - the undiscovered Hawaii of BC. You decide.

At the beach in Hornby Island.

A walk along the coastal line.

Friday
Before leaving Courtenay, we had to get a picture of the Comox Valley which you see from downtown.

We drove down to Victoria and had a little time to drive around Victoria and take some pictures:

Monday

The garden of the Lieutenant Governor. Apparantly this is where the Queen stays when she comes to visit. The gardens are open to the public.

Dovid's bus. I'm not sure how it happened but somehow these buses got dubbed 'my buses' by Dovid.

Hey! There is a hand in the olive jar!

Snapshots from a viewpoint on the scenic drive.

Chinatown

We got this view by mistake - we took a wrong turn and saw the beginning of sunset - we were hoping to make it to the inner harbour so we could see the full sunset but we missed it by a couple of minutes.

We waited until dusk so Samuel could get pictures of the government building lit up. Then we drove to Nanaimo where we were staying until Thursday. Which was fine ... until we got to where we were supposed to be staying and we couldn't find the house. We were looking for the number 425 and a driveway - but it was too dark for us to find it. Eventually after driving up and down the gravel road numerous times we realised that the gap in the hedges was actually the driveway.

Tuesday

Our home in Nanaimo - easy to see during the day but very difficult to find in the dark.

Tuesday was the first day we had in Nanaimo and the first day we had of bad weather. It was grey, cloudy and raining. In the morning we went down to one of Nanaimo's beach. The kids had a great time playing in the playground there - but it wasn't the right weather to really enjoy the beach.

In the afternoon we went to our private beach (on a lake) - we had our own private boat too. It was really nice - even though it was raining!

Wednesday

Eating breakfast on the deck.

Hey that's a nice picture!

We drove to Tofino, passing the famous Coombs and the goats on the roof. Dovid loved seeing the goats - and spent the day asking if we could go back to see the goats on the roof. Hadassa, of course joined in the chant for 'goats on roof'.

Long Beach on the Pacific Rim - part of the miles long beach between Tofino and Ucluelet. The waves here are magnificent, very popular with windsurfers - when we were there it was a high risk of tsunami (out of moderate, high and extreme) and along the drive to the beach they have signposted the tsunami evacuation route.

Much to Dovid and Hadassa's delight we passed the goats on the roof on the way back!

Thursday

Rathtrevor Beach - one of the places we were told was a 'must' to see on the island. It was beautiful, but Samuel wasn't impressed - when we were there (on the way to catching the ferry) the water was very far and out and uncomfortable to get to.