Canada, Day 2

We decided to go check out a waterfall that was right near the campground, Goldstream Waterfall as a matter of fact! We had gone out to the viewing area last night, but it was just getting too dark. I am so glad we went all the way down in the morning. It was gorgeous!

Some cool mushrooms along the way.


We took a ton of pictures here, but they don't capture the essence very well. It isn't a huge fall, but it was the grotto setting that made it so beautiful. This is the first full view you get from still a bit up on the trail.

Yeah, another family photo thanks to a nice German couple who was also out for a morning stroll.

Closer up. We found this crawfish shell completely whole and sitting inside a log next to the water. Not sure if a bird got him or what.
Finally into Victoria proper at the famous Blue Fox Cafe. I am so glad we were there on a weekday, so the line was not bad at all, just a few parties ahead of us. I understand it can go all the way down the block on weekends. The food was wonderful, with huge portions, just as I had read.

Yes, it's another window shot! We decided to just drive down by the waterfront since we weren't going into any of the museums or anything.

Then we headed to over to Beacon Hill Park and decided to stop at the Children's Farm. Ron was quite excited by this fellow. He had never seen an albino peacock before.
I don't know if this will seem as hilarious to anybody else as it did to us. Maybe you had to be there.... There were peacocks roaming around everywhere, inside and outside of the farm, but this dude using the crosswalk just cracked us up!
Inside the actual farm.
What follows are lots of pictures of the mellowist and friendliest goats I have ever ecountered. I have been to alot of petting zoos in my 18 years of childrearing, but I think this is the first time I went to one with a no feeding policy. As a result, the animals don't stampede you and immediately try to eat your fingers. On the other end of the spectrum, I have been to working farms where the goats were not as friendly - they weren't mean, but they didn't seek you out either.. All these little dudes wanted was to be petted and brushed and loved, and it was great to see the babies nursing from their mamas as they are meant to do.

Basking in the sun, not a care in the world.

King of the mountain!
I tried to get a better shot of these two, but this was the best I could do. The one on the right kept nibbling on the other one's ear. It was so cute and funny.
They had lots of brushes everywhere for the kids to use.
Look at the next three as a series...

And who knew Ron was obsessed with peacocks? Turns out you can be married to somebody and not know all their stuff. I swear he must have taken at least 20 shots of this bird alone.

This was probably the neatest experience of our whole time there. Many of the mama goats were still pregnant. I went over to this mama and could feel her babies moving inside. I was all excited about it and called Orion and Ron over. Ron pronounced it creepy and gross. (???) I said you felt Orion inside me, what is so different? But he just thought it was weird. Men.

One thing I noticed was alot of elderly people would just sit on the other side of the gate to watch the animals, which I thought was pretty cool.

We headed straight out of the city to Fort Rodd and Fisgard Lighthouse. I am not much on military history, but I love old buildings, and somethings those two things go together. This is part of an old gunning area.

The walkway out to the lighthouse. Yeah, um, you will figure out I like lighthouses in a minute.


View from the lighthouse of the military area.

Just in case you were burining to know about the lighthouse haha.



My son, the dirt lover.

Walkway up to the door. We were totally shocked to find it open. There were no signs or anything, but you can just walk right up to it and there were a bunch of displays inside. It just seemed so much more laid back than what you would expect in the states. You could even walk on up to the second floor and more displays. However...
... stairway denied... to the very top. That part was locked up. :(
View from the point. This picture is included because Orion declared that sailboat a pirate ship haha.
Yet another thing I found hilarious. This was in the plotting room LOL. There was a bunch of stuff on display from WWII inside. If I have to explain why this is funny, you wouldn't get it anyway...

One very dirty little boy. Does that make me a negligent mama? Oh well. Several times during the trip he informed us he was talking to his fingers, and we were told quite clearly we were to stay out of the conversation.

Next stop, a winery up the coast that I can't remember the name of right now. We really liked several of their wines, though, and bought a few bottles. Many people grow a grape up there called Ortega we thought was yummy. The barrels were declared fine drums by Orion.

Ah, Petroglyph Provincial Park - one of the expected highlights of the whole trip. Um, yeah. Give me a break, though. I was an anthro major. First of all, I didn't have great directions - it had just been mentioned as on this one road outside of some town, and it wasn't in Ron's new GPS either. We found it just by a stroke of luck, and it was nothing more than a small parking lot at a trailhead. To be honest, the pictures came out pretty good, but in general, most of the stuff was really hard to see. Alot of it has been grown over by moss, so you can't make it out at all. It seemed odd to be they wouldn't clean it off, but I guess they want things left in their natural state. Again, completely laid back. There was a sign that requested you not to walk on the art, but there were places where the only way to see stuff was to walk out over large slabs of rock where stuff had been carved. No fences, no signs. There was an area on the trail designed as an interpretive exhibit, but when you got out to the original stuff, it was just sitting there.

This one is presumed to be a human figure.
Cool mini cave we found along the trail.
Back on the road - funny sign along the highway teehee.


And on to Englishman River Falls. Now this one really could not be captured on film, mainly because the only way to view it was from a bridge going over the river just a bit down from the drop, which totally freaked me out by the way because it was so high. The thing was made of concrete, but you could still feel the whole thing shaking from the force of the water! This fall was gorgeous. It was really wide and had water coming down in several different areas, which made it hard to shoot.

Downstream

Back on the trail. There are actually two falls in this park, so we made the loop to go look at the Lower Falls as well. We saw this cool black slug that Orion was fascinated with. Lower Falls - although you can't really tell from these pictures, this one was a fraction of the size of the first one, but it had a much better viewing area. Maybe this will give you an idea just how big the other one was!

And then we had a rather interesting end to our evening.... This was the night I had planned to have our one nice dinner. I had a place picked out and reserved I had seen online that looked like a pretty good menu for both Ron and I. Well, come to find out their chef had changed. The menu was still pretty good, but there was nothing that appealed to Ron, so we was actually considering getting an overpriced burger. At that point, I had a feeling we should just go, but I decided to ask some questions about the other selections. There was literally nothing on the menu I could have! All the side dishes had wheat or dairy in them, and the chef was pretty much totally unhelpful and unwilling to make any substitutions. The final clincher was finding out they had frozen fries for their kid's meals, and they had wheat in them as well. So we just left.

All I really wanted was some good salmon - didn't seem like such a tall order up North, but who knows. We spotted this other place that said it was a seafood restaurant, so I hopped out to check the menu. Looked pretty good, so we went in there. The waitress was totally wonderful and willing to ask questions and find solutions for our needs. The place kindof had a European flare, with gravlax available and spaetzel as a side option. So you would think the salmon would have been really good.... It was totally mediocre, but not the end of the world. Ron LOVED his dinner. The only real problem we had was that the food took AGES to come out from the kitchen. The late sunsets there at this time of year can fool you, so I wasn't even thinking about time. Then I remembered a couple of the campgrounds we were in had a policy of locking the gate at night... and we were still about an hour's drive away. I checked my reservation sheet, and sure enough.... So we ended up rushing through eating and barely getting on the road in time to be there before getting locked out.

My favorite memory from that restaurant, though, was the little old man who was on his way out as we were coming in. He must have been 80 or 90, all gnarled up and with a bad eye - looked like it had been injured and was missing or something. Orion, in his usual sunny manner, said hello to him as he does to just about everybody he passes these days, so the guy stopped to talk to him a bit. He was a jolly old thing, and he told Orion he better take care of his eyes or he could end up like him! It sounds weird writing it now, but it was really funny the way he said it.

So no campground pics as it was dark when we got here....