Canada gulf island day 4 - Vancouver Island Day 2

 Vancouver Island Day 2

Today is Labor day and a lot of places are closed. Once we realized the garden is open, we took advantage of that and book a afternoon tea and visit with them. 

Butchart Gardens!

Driving to the garden

It easily takes 1.5 hours to leisurely walk through the gardens. 

Around the rose garden area

Beautiful tree at the garden

Dragon statue

Main house

Totem poles in the garden

Layers of flowers in the sunken garden

Concert venue

What's really interesting is they are still privately owned

150 years ago the wife had a vision to make a quarry mine into a garden and it became the sunken garden. 

The quarry mine that becomes the sunken garden

The fountains in the sunken garden

They cultivated a Japanese garden too

Japanese garden

What's amazing for me is the vision and the fact that they continued through the multiple generations to maintain the garden. And at Victoria, they are the ones that made and maintain the flower baskets in Victoria. 1200 baskets to be watered from midnight to 6am from spring to summer! 

Can you spot Bill in the top picture?

Had high tea at the restaurant with a priceless view

Doing the sparkling wine with the afternoon tea

Yum sandwiches, pastries and good sparkling wine too

After the garden, we went to Sea Cider for more cider tasting. 

View from Sea Cider

This place is easily the best cider place that we had. We like everything except 2 that has the wild yeast so the taste is quite strong. 

Tasting 12 ciders at Sea cider

After that we met some friends in Sidney for a drink before heading back to the campground

We got a rotisserie chicken with some Caesar salad for dinner. 

Rotisserie chicken with Cesar salad for dinner

Canada gulf islands day 3- Vancouver island day 1

Vancouver Island Day 1

Today is travel day for us to go to Vancouver Island. It's been a common misunderstanding that Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island. It's a big island with named towns like Victoria and Sidney

First stop is Embe Bakery to get some sausage rolls and coffee for the road (sorry no picture as we are driving and eating). 

We got a chance to check out Fulford Harbour area as we came in via Long Harbour side. 

We were the first car in the ferry and it's a smaller ferry that has an open front. So we were able to see the islands going by during the whole journey which is great. The weather is also prefect but we stayed in the van as it's higher and give us a better view

Fulford Harbor ferry with our front row view

We got in at Swartz bay on Vancouver Island and went to check out Sidney town

First row seat shows all the equipment at the ferry terminal

Sidney has some really cool shops that we enjoyed popping our heads into.

Sidney

The marina is popular with boaters as it's a big enough marina for supplies and provisioning

Sidney town from the Harbor

View from Harbor

Marina in Sidney

Nice park with chairs in the harbor

View of the marina

Haunted bookstore has a lot of old books that Bill could have easily spend another few more hours in there! We also went to Sidney museum to look at how old settlers live in Sidney. 

And chanced upon Rogers chocolate that turn out to be 150 years old brand. 

Sidney museum

Sidney Bakery has a 50% off flash sale so we stock up for desserts for next few nights

Sidney bakery flash sale - meat pies, short bread cookies and Nanaimo bars

Sidney statues

Went to Small Gods Brewery where Bill got a cider and I got a sour. 

Small Gods brewery

After that we went to Smonecten campground that's run by BC parks. 

Found our campsite for the next 3 nights

Our campsite

The campsite is very close to Sidney and in fact had a couple of yacht club near us. We didn't get a chance to check them out this trip. Bummer! It's more flat than the garden Faire. But it's also more nature (aka more dirt and vegetation) which makes it very challenging to keep the van clean.

We rigged up the privacy tent and solar showers.

We can't really get the showers to heat up as the campground are in shade most of the time with the trees. But the bucket toilet with the privacy tent is great for me. Dealing with the composting toilet on oasis made us used to pouring out liquid waste that is not an issue handing the bucket toilet

Bob came in with his campervan and joined us for dinner

We made some pork chops with green beans from the market and some salad. 

Bob joining us at the campground

We appreciate how quiet the campground are and realized how noisy we can be 😂

But it's great to see Bob!

Canada gulf island day 2- Salt Spring day 2

Salt Spring Island Day 2

Trees with funny hair cut in Salt Spring =)

Salt spring was the first island in our planning as they have a big Saturday farmers market. I anchor the trip to get there on Saturday to check out the market. If we plan out this trip again, what we learned is places in the smaller islands like Pender or Mayne are not open Monday to Wed. Salt Spring and Victoria/Sidney have more things open on those days. But that obviously don't change the Sat farmers market option =) 

We visited the market in the am and it's pretty cute. While it's not as big as the market in Hillcrest, it has a lot of good local produce. We got some goat cheese from the cheese farm, peanut brittle, dried kale and pastries for breakfast. It gets busy and we got there by 930am and when we left at 12pm, we had to fight the crowd to get out!

Salt spring market

Salt spring coffee

We went to the visitors center and got a pretty good summary of where to visit in Salt spring. The guide said in general the hippies are concentrated in the fulford area (Hipsters) while ganges are the old retired population (Hip replacement). 

Map of salt spring

Hike at Ruckle Provincial Park and Beaver Point

Ruckle Provincial Park and Beaver Point

We decide to drive to Ruckle Park for a hike with lunch at the picnic table at the park

Picnic at Ruckle park

We didn't stick to the coast for a shorter hike but end up we saw a deer on our hike. 

Deer sighting in our hike

As the Ruckle hike is short, we end up going to Beaver point as well. 

 

Great views at Beaver point

Beautiful cove at the point

BC ferry from the point

Beautiful views

 

After the hike, we head over to Cider Works to continue the cider tasting adventure! 

The flavor's from this place is even more extreme, They mix 150 varietals of apples and aiming for 250. And wild fermentation is key for them too. Red Rebel is my favorite and Bill prefer Firkin. 

 

Cider works with great patio view

For dinner we stir fry some pork chops with zucchini and bell peppers from the farmers market

A little frog decide to visit us and we look it up. It's a  large local non  poisonous frog that is so green! 

Dinner with our froggy friend

After dinner, we walk to Ganges to get some ice cream from ssi chocolate. They have Dubai choc ice cream. Very good crunchy fillo with pistachio. We didn't get chocolate from them but it seems like they would be a good source of truffles too. 

Ice cream from Salt spring chocolate 

We only have 2 days at ssi and could have easily extend one more day here. It can easily occupy 3 days and there's large grocery stores to load up on supplies as needed. We end up missing trails like Mt Maxwell, the cheese farm and the Burgoyne bay side. 

Canada gulf islands day 1 - Salt Spring Island day 1

Salt Spring Island Day 1

We been wanting to visit Bob and Meg again in Galiano and always been curious on campervan camping. So off we go to the gulf islands for 10 days with a campervan! 

View on top of Mt Erskine 

Karma Campervan # 129 for our trip!

I'll write my thoughts on camperrvan experience in the last day blog as we learned a lot in this trip. 

Planning is a little tedious. We depend on the ferry to move around the islands

All the BC campsites park campsites are full in August weekends. They only free up in September but BC ferries schedule is also changing at the shoulder season. To complicate things, the last weekend in August where we departed is a long weekend with Labor day holiday. 

Our flight with Westjet was a good deal so we booked it first landing on August 28th 4pm. But we were not able to get ferry on Friday August 29th in the day time. So we had to bite the bullet and book the 8pm ferry to Salt spring on Thursday. 

This meant we had to land on time, collect our baggage, get a cab to the van office, collect and inspect the van including notes on any issues to them, plus going to Walmart to buy groceries for a couple of days and then head to the ferry terminal. And the ferry is delayed for 30 min after we rushed to get there!

Getting the van in Karma office

We are both nervous driving the big van around for the first day especially at night and boarding the big ferry but it all worked out. Having a ferry reservations from Vancouver to the islands is essential with a vehicle, not to mention an oversize one. This is partially why I can't get the ferry on Friday as oversize space are sold out with the big camping weekend due to Labor day. 

Ferry terminal and loading into the ferry with the car

Salt Spring Island is our first destination.

Ganges Harbor at Salt Spring Island

We managed to get into Garden Faire campground which is $50 Canadian a night (compared to $15 Canadian in the other BC parks). But we get water right on the site and an umbrella and chairs in the camp ground. Not to mention they have gravel which is great. The only thing to note is the campground is not completely flat which is more important for campervan camping than tent camping. 

Site 31 in Garden Faire Campground

The campground can also offer electrical and water hookup for normal RV but with solar panel and a water tank, we didn't need those and that made it cheaper. We are also able to use the sun shower to heat up water and tie the bag in the shower room as the campground is in sun all day. That way we didn't have to pay for the heater in the shower room and they are totally cool with it. 

My only issue is all the bathrooms are pit toilets in all the campgrounds that we visited. That is a bigger problem for me than for Bill. So that is a major learning. 

Anyway, we drove into the campground and got settled in for the night! 

Woke up bright and early to go to Barb's Bakery. It's a local place and we got a couple of great quiches and a ham and potatoes pastry. We also got a loaf of sourdough bread to make sandwiches for our hike. 

Barb's Bakery & Bistro breakfast

Hike at Mt Erskine

Hiking is the best way to see the views of the islands. So we decide to hike Mt Erskine. 

View on top of Mt Erskine

View on top of Mt Erskine

Hiking at Mt Erskine with the fairy door!

Saw the most cars at the trailhead parking. Even then we didn't really see anyone on our hike till we got to the top

Salt spring wild cider is our next stop after the hike. 

Salt spring wild cider resturant

Apparently the cider makes in salt spring are quite out-there in their fermentations. 

We took the traditional flight and the cidermaker's flight. The one that Bill like is the scrumpy and we both really like the pear and I like the red grapefruit. The wild fermentation that they do at this cidery makes very interesting ciders. 

Our tasting of the ciders and they allowed us to eat our sandwich as we are drinking

This cider tasting set the tone for us for this trip as we realized the islands have a lot of fun flavors for cider and we decide to try and taste as many ciders as we could! 

After the tasting, we came back to the campground and did a quick dinner of salad and grilled chicken with sourdough bread. 

Bill grilling for the first dinner with the campervan!

Truly how we felt with the campervan