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.