We arrived in Victoria by ferry from Port Angeles, WA, on July 1. It was Canada Day, the 151st anniversary of the founding of the country, so there were lots of Canadian flags and red shirts all around. Festivities were underway at the Inner Harbour so it was crowded and very active. Victoria is the capital of British Columbia and the old parliament building dominates the Inner Harbour.
We drove to our new summer home, a condo at Bear Mountain Golf Resort, about 10 miles west of Victoria. We are not golfers but the condo looked nice, the mountain scenery was beautiful, and the price was right. Our condo overlooked the 18th hole so we watched golfers every day. We learned that much of the game involves tromping around in the bushes looking for your ball. The rest of the game involves riding around in little carts.
We chose Vancouver Island for the summer because we thought it would be cool, but we got fooled. It turned out to be one of the hottest summers on record, with temperatures often well up into the 80s in our hilltop neighborhood. Because it is normally much cooler our unit did not have air conditioning. To compound things, our unit was west-facing and the Canadian sun did not set until after 8 PM, so dinner time was the hottest part of the day. On the warmest days we went to the movies just to cool off.
We had lots of smoke from wildfires in mid to late August. At one point, there were more than 500 fires burning in BC, most started by lightning. On several days we could smell the smoke, it was so thick. We were not threatened by any fires nearby but there were big fires in the northern part of Vancouver Island and on the British Columbia mainland, all up and down the province. Parts of the Alaska Highway were closed due to fires.
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