Barnacles, beaches and lots of driving

This is a little slide show of our trip to Vancouver Island. We left early Sunday Morning and arrived to find that my Dad and Caren's car (which they kindly lent to us for our stay) would not start.... Dead battery. We looked on this small issue with a rather good sense of humour, mostly because it was early in the morning and the weather was Super Fantastic!. After a short-ish wait, the tow truck arrived and we were finally on our way. Our first day of exploration took us out past Sooke to Port Renfrew and then over a very winding (but lovely) road over the mountains towards Duncan. We did take a wrong turn somewhere and ended up coming out at Cowichan Lake rather than Shawnigan Lake, but it was still a lovely trip.

Day 2 was our "explore Victoria" day. We took the Mill Bay ferry to Brentwood Bay and stopped at the Butterfly Gardens. After this we drove across the Saanich Peninsula and drove along the ocean to Victoria. It was along this drive that we discovered something interesting about Eli...... He is afraid of Barnacles...... There are an AWFUL lot of Barnacles near the Ocean and our patience was sorely tested (OK... I'll admit it... I had NO patience... I mean, come-on.... BARNACLES????.... not giant man eating squid or evil man eating sharks or even just creepy crawly spiders...... but BARNACLES) He was afraid they would leap off their perches and attach to him and suck out his blood or something.... and although he normally trusts me when I explain how things work (this is the child that helped me calculate how many years it would take for Christmas to be in mid-July if we didn't have leap year)... he did NOT trust my explanation about barnacles... we even READ about barnacles and that didn't help......

Day 3 we drove out to Ucluelet (stopping many, many times along the way) and Long Beach were we played in the sand and in the waves and hiked along the beach to touch anemones and try to overcome the "FEAR" (which was semi-successful, hopefully his week on the boat with Opa and Cary will take care of the rest). We spent the night there and started to drive back.

Day 4 consisted of driving back to Duncan from Ucluelet, but along the drive we had some trouble... Chey started whining and saying that she felt "coughy"..... We soon discovered that "coughy" meant "pukey" as she vomited all over Opa and Cary's car. We stopped in Port Alberni to buy cleaning supplies and a clean outfit and then when to one of the harbour Quay's to clean up and let the kids play... We loved it down there. There were lots of cute little shops and a nice play area for the kids... Pukey-girl actually ended up making our day....

Day 5 was leaving day and we spent the morning touring around Duncan before heading for another tour of the Saanich Peninsula and home...... we did leave Eli behind to spend his first "alone" week with Opa and Cary on their boat..... I was a bit nervous and sad to leave him, but I know he's going to have a blast.....

It was an exhausting trip, but very enjoyable..... if I could sleep for a week... it'd be great......