Day Tripper

Saturday morning we packed a lunch, hopped in the Loon and headed for the west coast. Our third and furthest trip to Juan de Fuca Park took us to Botanical Beach and Botany Bay just past Port Renfrew. We timed our arrival so we could explore the tidal pools left behind by the receded tide.

Heading down to the beach.

As you can see, there are plenty of puddles to explore. Each little groove in the rocks is like its own little ecosystem. We saw a lot of of large nymphy things, maybe they were fish, we're not scientists. We also saw some anemones, urchins, and that rarest of ocean animals - - - ducks!

Ducks!

There was plenty of plant life too, also crabs and lots of things that shall remain unnamed in this post.

Purple things.

These growths were abundant and quite pretty. The speckles on the edges look like gold when the lights hits them. Unfortunately we are not destined to have Sunshine, we are oh-for-three on that aspect at this park. You can get a sense of the weather and the crashing of the waves in the video below.

Panoramic shot of Botanical Beach.

Yes, our spirits remained high despite the foreboding weather. Here are some more shots of things we saw on our trip.

Concave cliff wall.

Nymphy, fishy things.

Purple sea urchins.

Green anemones.

A discovery by another intrepid adventurer.

Again, the Sun didn't do us any favours so a lot of the pictures are a little dull. We did get a couple of shots of the sea that made the weather look considerably worse than it actually was.

The surf meets the sky.

The tide coming back in.

The blue sky and Sun began to tease us as we prepared to go. We went for a little hike to Botany Bay before heading back up the parking lot and departing.

Where do these stairs go?

Yet another ridiculous tree.

Botany Bay.

Gowlland Tod

I've been pretty envious of Brenda's adventures this year; she's already been to the mainland twice, venturing as far as Camrose, AB. Finally on Sunday we were able to get out of town together for a short hike at Gowlland Tod Provincial Park. The park covers a lot of ground up the east coast of the Saanich Inlet, but we only covered a small portion of trails in the southern end.

Out on the trail.

We saw lots of arbutus trees.

We hiked up to Holmes Peak which looks out over Finlayson Arm. Usually we're on the other side of the water driving on the Malahat, so it was neat to see things from the east.

At the top.

Tourism Victoria

Last weekend there was a special on a lot of the local tourist attractions. We checked out as much as we had time for, and here's a rundown:

♫ A Three-Hour Tour, A Three-Hour Tour ♫

Actually a twenty minute tour of the Inner Harbour. There isn't much to see in twenty minutes, and at any rate you can see everything from the shore. It was still nice to be out on the water for a little bit even if it was pretty chilly.

The real tour boat.

We saw a few seaplanes swoop in.

This boat is ridiculously large.

After our harbour tour we headed to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. In a lot of ways it was more of a museum than an art gallery, the largest exhibit was dedicated to Chinese archaeological artifacts. We saw hilariously small Chinese urinals which made some sense after we saw some thimble-sized goblets, another highlight was the funerary butt plug. Our thirst for Chinese history was definitely quenched.

On Sunday we toured the Pacific Undersea Gardens. I'd done some research on Tripadvisor prior and most of the reviews were pretty negative, but hey, how bad could a fish tank be? The answer is - awful. I would go so far as to say it was depressing. There was plenty of garbage and a poor scuba diver who showed us some (supposedly alive) local specimens. We didn't have to pay anything to get in and somehow we were still ripped off by the experience.

After that we wandered across the street to the Legislature. I work across the street and usually walk around the building every morning but we'd never been inside before.

Where they make the laws.

"Splendour without diminishment."

The "Leg" is a pretty impressive building and a popular photo on many local post cards. We'll have to get some more shots of the outside before we go. Inside is nice too, the gold you see in the picture above is really gold.

We finished our sight-seeing with some tasty burgers at Irish Times before heading home to catch a brutal thrashing of the Raptors by the lowly Bobcats.

Mmmmmmm . . . burgers.