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We embarked on a full day drive (180 miles) along the Pacific Marine Circle Route. This scenic drive took us north through the Cowichan Valley, inland to Lake Cowichan, through dense evergreen forests to Port Renfrew, and then home along the coast of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

We stopped at Lake Cowichan and saw a number of people preparing for a day of tubing along the creek. It seems to be a popular activity, as there were commercial vans to shuttle people back to the starting point with their tubes.

The drive from Lake Cowichan to Port Renfrew is very remote. There are no signs of human activity except for clear-cut logging in places. We stopped and walked around in a dense forest that contains some of the oldest and largest trees on Vancouver Island.

By lunchtime we were in Port Renfrew so we stopped at the Renfrew Pub. We had a waterside table on their deck, which was great on a warm day.

The drive back to Victoria was a bit of a disappointment. On the map the route appears to go right along the coast, so we were expecting lots of ocean views and views across the strait to the snow-covered Olympic Mountains in Washington. But in fact the forest is so dense that it obscures the ocean most of the way.

BC Ferries offers a day trip out of Swartz Bay (north of Victoria) on one of the local ferries that serves the Gulf Islands, a series of small islands located generally between Victoria and Vancouver. For only about $12 you get a 4-hour trip stopping at Saturna, Mayne, and Pender Islands, and then returning to Swartz Bay. We took the trip on a nice sunny and calm day. Being on the water helped us to avoid some of the heat wave.

We saw some beautiful island scenery along with waterbirds in the channel. It was interesting to stop at these isolated islands and get a glimpse of life there. Tourism is a major industry and we saw lots of nice looking vacation homes along the water. Other folks raise sheep or operate small craft businesses such as weaving or soap making.

Following the ferry ride we stopped for lunch at Sea Glass Waterfront Grill in Sidney. We had a window table by the water so we continued our nautical day. Sidney is a busy town, the center of commerce on the Saanich Peninsula north of Victoria.

We attended the Lavenderfest at Damali Lavender and Winery. Located about an hour up the island from us near Cobble Hill, Damali is in the Cowichan Valley, one of the warmer sections of the island. They grow lavender commercially to use in products such as soaps and scented oils, and they also grow grapes for their winery in the relatively warm climate.

Once a year, just prior to the lavender harvest, they hold their Lavenderfest, hosting local craft and food vendors and showing off their beautiful lavender fields. We were able to enjoy their fields, taste their lavender-infused wine, and get our lunch from a local taco truck. The chefs make their own fresh tortillas so the tacos were quite good, up to California standards.

We drove past Damali a few weeks later and indeed the lavender flowers had been harvested. We were fortunate to have seen them at their most beautiful stage at the Lavenderfest.

We were fortunate to have several provincial parks nearby. Vancouver Island is a very rural place and it doesn’t take long to get out of town. We enjoyed hiking in the parks and getting out into the forest. The most amazing thing is that everything is so lush and green, but the humidity is low and there are no bugs like mosquitoes or gnats!

Goldstream Provincial Park was only about a mile from our condo as the crow flies but it was a 10 minute drive because there was a big mountain in the way! We enjoyed hikes through the forest along the stream which contained salmon fingerlings born this season. The stream empties into a nearby estuary that leads to the open ocean. In a few years these fingerlings will come back to the same stream to spawn.

Farther away, near Butchart Gardens, is Gowlland Tod Provincial Park. Our favorite trail in this park led through a dense evergreen forest to Tod Inlet, where there is a small beach. At the end of the hike we would sit on a bench and watch the boats, the birds, and sometimes the jellyfish in the water.

Other nearby hikes that we enjoyed were at Langford Lake and at the Galloping Goose Trail at the Sooke Potholes.  Both are pictured below.

Goldstream Provincial Park

Ed Nixon Trail at Langford Lake

Galloping Goose Trail at the Sooke Potholes

Gowlland-Tod Provincial Park

 

Butchart Gardens is one of the most spectacular formal gardens in the world and one of the most visited spots in Canada. Located on the site of a former limestone quarry owned by the Butchart family, it was transformed into a floral garden by Jennie Butchart once the limestone was exhausted. The colors of the flowers are stunning, especially during the summer season.

We purchased season passes to the gardens so we could go as often as we liked, and we eventually went a half dozen times. Butchart Gardens has live music outdoors every night at 8 PM and we attended twice, once for a musician from Senegal in West Africa and once for a bluegrass band from Vancouver. Who would have guessed that there is an excellent bluegrass band in western Canada?

Butchart Gardens also offers a boat tour around the adjacent Tod Inlet, which we took a couple of times. We saw a bald eagle, lots of small jellyfish, and a colony of purple martins that spend the summer in Canada before migrating to Brazil.

With Friends at Butchart

We enjoyed our visits to Hatley Castle and Gardens, about a 10 minute drive from our condo. The castle and gardens were constructed in the early 1900s by James Dunsmuir, heir to a coal and lumber fortune and one of the wealthiest men in British Columbia. His children squandered the fortune and in 1940 the castle and grounds became a Canadian military college. In 1995 the military closed their facility and it became Royal Roads University, a part of the BC education system to provide advanced degree training for professionals.

We toured the castle and gardens but our favorite discovery was a series of hiking trails on the Royal Roads campus and in the nearby woods. Our favorite hike, about a mile and a half, began in an evergreen forest, transitioned to a deciduous forest with constantly running streams from local springs, moved on to a meadow covered with blackberry bushes (great for summer picking!), and finally to a seaside lagoon. We took this hike several times a week throughout our stay in Canada and we especially enjoyed the cool, shady walk on hot days. We both agreed that it was our favorite thing on the island.

Hatley Castle and Gardens

Piney Woods at RRU

Picnic with friends at Hatley

On July 4 we took a one hour boat tour through the Victoria Gorge, an inlet leading northwestward from Victoria’s Inner Harbour. The coast of Vancouver Island is very rugged and there are many inlets up and down the island. The Gorge has an urban feel as there are houses, bridges, and a public park all along it.

The boat tour was a good introduction to Victoria. We saw some of the neighborhoods and learned some of the history of the city. Many of the old buildings from the gold rush era in the late 1800s still exist along the shore. Today the Gorge is popular with boaters, fishermen, and even swimmers since the shallow water warms up in the summer.

The 4th of July is just another day in Canada; their big celebration comes three days earlier on Canada Day. But our tour guide’s wife is from the US so he had a small American flag at the back of the boat to celebrate the day.

The Gorge park extends for over a mile, beginning about a mile upstream from downtown. We enjoyed taking walks in the Gorge park along a trail next to the water. But we avoided the Gorge on hot days as there was little shade.

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.

Click on the first picture to see the pictures enlarged, then click the arrows to view the slide show.

 

We took a day trip to Bisbee, about 100 miles southeast of Tucson. Bisbee was founded in 1880 as a copper, gold, and silver mining town. The huge open pit copper mines are still visible on the edge of town. But the Bisbee copper ore was of poor quality and by the 1970s mining was no longer financially viable and the last mine closed. The miners left town and property values plummeted. But poor artists and hippies discovered they could buy a house for almost nothing and so Bisbee was reborn as an art and tourist center, as it remains today.

The old part of Bisbee is built upon steep hills on either side of a deep gulch. We wanted to explore the interesting old buildings but we didn’t want to drive on the treacherous narrow streets and we definitely didn’t want to climb the steep hills on foot! So we took a 1-hour tour of the town on the back of a golf cart. Our tour guide, a Bisbee native, was very informative and we got to see many interesting homes and commercial buildings, so it was worth the expense.

We took several day trips to the region between Tucson and the Mexican Border at Nogales. One day we went all the way to Nogales, Arizona, and did some exploring. We especially enjoyed the Pimeria Alta Historical Society Museum, a small museum with fascinating displays about the history of Nogales and the border region. The docent, a Nogales native, was around 70 years old so she had lots of stories about Nogales and its past; she was very interesting. Believe it or not, a hundred years ago or so the sister cities of Nogales Arizona and Sonora were separated only by a dirt street, and people crossed the border at will. That’s a far cry from the big wall that separates the two cities now. The museum had a special exhibit of items from Bracker’s department store, a favorite of wealthy Mexicans who would cross the border to shop. Founded in 1924, Bracker’s went out of business just a year or so ago. After the peso was devalued most Mexicans could no longer afford to shop there.

The twin cities of Nogales were founded in the 1800s as a location to connect the US and Mexican railroad systems. Today Nogales is a major transportation point for commerce between the US and Mexico. The north side of Nogales hosts dozens of truck depots. Trucks bring their loads from Mexico, mostly Mexican produce, and their loads are inspected and then loaded onto US trucks to go to US markets. Shipping is the backbone of the economy in Nogales, Arizona.

We found a great little Mexican seafood restaurant on a back road in Nogales, Arizona. Never would have found it without a Google Maps search for restaurants!

On another day we visited Tumacacori National Historical Park, north of Nogales. The park consists of the ruins and grounds of one of the old Spanish missions. Father Kino, who came to be beloved by the indigenous people, founded as string of missions in what is now Arizona and Sonora. There is a small museum associated with the park.

We also made a stop at nearby Tubac, an artist colony with lots of galleries showcasing southwestern art. We had been to Tubac several times on previous visits to Arizona. We ate at an interesting restaurant, Elvira’s, which served a unique take on Mexican food.

Our final visit to the border region was unexpectedly interesting, the Titan Missle Museum. During the Cold War, beginning in the 1960s, there was a network of missle silos in Arizona, Arkansas, and Kansas. They housed Titan II missles equipped with nuclear warheads, ready to be launched if needed. Most were decommissioned in the 1980s but one silo, near Tucson, was retained for historical purposes (the nuclear warhead was removed, of course). We were able to tour the underground silo and view the missle as well as the control room. Our tour guide had worked at the silo himself so he was able to provide interesting insights.