Thursday, July 7, 2022

A Trip West

 As I told you last time, we headed west for a gathering of the clan. Lots of pictures were taken and I will share a few.

In Victoria, we stayed in a condo apartment complex. The gardening around the building was wonderful.


The tree on the left is a Dogwood, floral emblem of British Columbia. The one on the right is a California Lilac, a popular hedging plant in Victoria.


I also discovered that Dogwoods come in pink, too.

The condo had a lily pond and it was just getting ready to bloom.


Oddly, although there were lots of benches through the apartment gardens, we never saw anyone sitting on the benches (except us).

It seemed that nearly everywhere we went in the city, we had to go around Mt. Douglas.


I liked the sun shining on it at sunset.

While in Victoria, we did some geocaching. I think we found a total of 10 caches. Our biggest achievement was to climb to the top of  Observatory Hill to find caches.


This is the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory. It was opened in 1918. You can read more about it here.

The walk to the top and back was about 4.5 km and the rise in elevation was 167 m. We were fooled by the cache posting that said the cache could be done in about 30 minutes. If you drive to the parking lot inside the fence, that is possible, but we were there on a Sunday when the road is closed to cars. I'm pretty sure I got my steps in that day. We didn't see very many people (mostly nobody) but we did see a couple of bunnies and this lovely.




We saw a second one on the way back down the hill. We were surprised that it looks like the deer we see here except eastern deer have white tails and western deer have black tails.

This was the view from the top, looking down.


We also spent time in Parksville, which is the home of Rathtrevor Beach.


At low tide, the tide goes out a very long way.


You can observe little sea creatures in the tide pools.


You can build sandcastles.




Or, you can enjoy the wonderful views. 

The purpose of the trip, and the gathering of 4 generations was to celebrate a very special event.


It was the 90th birthday of a mother, grandmother and great grandmother. We decided to do it up in style.

On the way home, I was reminded of how vast my country is. While flying east, overnight, I awoke at about 2AM (maybe it was 3) local time, somewhere over the middle part of Canada, to see the sun rising in the north.


How cool is that?


9 comments:

  1. That is very cool indeed! We've been up Mount Doug, and to Parksville - it had a great bookshop, and a quilt store too - but we haven't been up Observatory Hill. Victoria is a very pretty city.....and California lilac grows here, too.

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  2. What a great gathering and such a special age to celebrate.Seeing the sun rise. Yesterday I had a very early hospital appointment and as we drove along the top road, the sky in the east was a deep orange that spread the glow across the horizon.The sun was not showing as we left the main road.And then I think, I see the same sun down here as you did in the plane.

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  3. Lovely view of the sunrise. Well, lots of lovely views, always interesting to see other peoples travels. Lovely reason to travel too. xx

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  4. Thanks for taking us along. Victoria is one place in Canada I haven't been.

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  5. Wow! What a wonderful way to celebrate a life and have adventures along the way. exploring and finding treasures along the way. The best doing it as a family.

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  6. What a wonderful trip! And thanks for the memories -- travelling from Calgary to Vancouver (and sometimes over to the Island) was an annual event for my DH and me and our kids for several years, as there were 2 sets of grandparents, several cousins and a BIL to visit. It was lovely to see those beaches etc again.

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  7. Sounds like you had a great time. The last pic is gorgeous. Life in Singapore has pretty much returned to normal. We still need to wear masks indoor but it's not a big deal. Travelling out of the country is now normal altho' I haven't considered it yet as I don't travel well. Also my passport has expired.

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  8. Thanks for the wonderful photos... lovely trip you had. It's wonderful to get together for a big birthday... and it's wonderful to climb a mountain and look down.
    I wish you a happy week.

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