We intended to leave Salt Spring early, but somehow we just did not make it to the 9:50 ferry. We did a last load of laundry, clean up the cottage, and packed the car. We headed south to the village of Fulford where you catch the ferry to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. Fulford seems like a place where the 1960’s live on. The old houses are painted gaudy colors and every shops sells pottery and organic baked goods.
The ferry ride from Fulford is actually free! I guess BC ferries figures that you must have already paid enough on your previous rides to get to Salt Spring. It is not a particularly nice boat, however, and we were parked not far from a garbage truck.
John and I went up on deck to look around. Poor Edie and Eli were stuck in the car. Of course, maybe Edie liked the smell of the garbage truck! Parked only a couple of cars behind us was the woman Edie had slammed into yesterday on the beach. We had a nice talk, and she assured us that she was fine and scheduled for a knee replacement anyhow.
We arrived at our new digs in Cadboro Bay, just east of Victoria. It was not easy to find a place which was affordable and took dogs in Victoria. We are actually in a small basement unit underneath a house in a suburban neighborhood. It’s been nicely setup as a rental unit, but we miss the stunning natural views we had on the islands. However, it’s only a short walk to the beach. There’s a nice playground there for the kids.
For dogs, there are off-leash areas on the sand and in the park. Edie really does not like to chase a ball, but she enjoys trying to get Eli distracted when he is chasing it.
We went into Victoria. Since the car was filthy after a week on the islands, we first went to the car wash. It was not in a particularly picturesque part of the city, so we did not bother to take pictures. We then went to the very picturesque waterfront where we took lots of pictures. Here are the dog with totem poles.
And here they are at the BC Provincial Legislature buildings.
And here at the Empress Hotel. Dogs have no interest at all in having afternoon tea, so we did not bother with it.
Instead, we followed a walking tour of the waterfront which I had found on the tourist board’s website. It helped us find a few places we might otherwise have missed. For example, we walked down a small alley off of Yates Street where it pointed out that the pavement was made of wooden bricks.
In the evening, we went to a performance of Good Timber and the Royal British Columbia Museum. It is a show featuring mostly the poetry of Robert Swanson set to original music. Swanson is supposed to be for loggers what Robert Service was for gold miners, but his poetry really isn’t very good. It works reasonably well, however, as song lyrics and the show was well-done and entertaining. The difficulty with the material, of course, is that the loggers that Swanson celebrated were engaged in the wholesale destruction of the North American temperate rain forest. There were some new poems incorporated into the show which acknowledged this troubling fact.
Tomorrow, off to Butchart Gardens and other adventures.
