Best Coast West Coast, March - May 2017 (with a wee gap in there...)

The trip across was a bit of a blur.  We were delayed so badly in Halifax (over 12 hours) that we were sure we had missed our connector from Toronto, but it luckily turned out that our flight was boarding as we arrived in and hauling sleepwalking kids we made it on.  Arrived in Victoria in the wee hours feeling very wiped out.  We went straight to our house which was (thank god and the land lord) all made up with milk and bread in the fridge and the beds ready for us.  Dumped the kids into bed and slept until 11 the next morning!

So!  First impressions!  It is very green.  Very mossy.  The view from our deck is great - we can see Mt Baker over in Washington, and down to the Olympic Mountains out to the right.  House much smaller than Halifax (where in the name of all things good am I going to put all our stuff and how am I ever going to manage sleeping in a queen sized bed again?) The trees are tall... so tall!  Straight towering douglas firs and cedars..  Songbirds!!  It's been so long since I've heard birds singing!  Fabulous!  There are also deer everywhere - sort of smaller and scruffier looking than the NS deer but lots of them all the same.

The road we are on is part of a citywide cycling trail - I think it used to be a rail route - so the road is narrow without kerbs and there are about a gazillion bikes go past every day.  The school is about 10 mins walk away, and just beyond it is a little shopping centre with a market, restaurant, gallery and some other little shops.  The beach is 5 mins down the hill.  It is grey sand and pebbles with loads of great big logs lying everywhere.  It looks pretty calm and shallow so could be good for swimming!

We only have a couple of days with Matt so there is a flurry of setting stuff up activity, finding the local supermarket and all that stuff.  The second afternoon we are here we went for a walk on the beach just to stretch our legs.  About half way along my phone rings and it is the school asking if Alex and Owen are going to pop in for a visit before spring break.  I got my dates wrong and thought we had another week to go visit the school but it turns out that they are shutting for the break today so if we want to vcisit we should get down there!  We wandered back along the beach and up to the school where we met the office lady and the principal.  We walked down and met the boys' teachers and had a good look around the school.  After some nerves the boys seemed to settle into their classrooms and even volunteered to stay for the afternoon!  Best result ever!  So away we went and left them in the capable hand of their teachers for the afternoon.  Picked them up later both as happy as sandboys which was awesome and took some pressure off over the spring break!

Matt soon departed and not long after so did we - a dash back to NZ to see Great Gran who wasnt well but thats another story - leaving our Victoria adventure on hold.  We arrived back in Victoria the day before our truck load of goods arrived which was quite good timing!  With about a million boxes to unpack and a house to reorganise I was quite busy for the next little bit.    We slowly got back into some sort of routine.  Walking down to school with the boys turned into riding to school and Amelia started gym, forest school and a dance class at the local church.  We rediscovered all our treasures (and threw a whole bunch more stuff out!) opening all the boxes, and by the time Matt arrived back I had it down to 3-4 boxes for him to empty.

We have done a bit of adventuring - we spent an afternoon wandering around down town watching the float planes out on the harbour and checking out Beacon Hill park and its tallest totem in Canada.  We have picked up sea glass on many beaches, including Glass Beach in Sidney, which kinda takes the fun out of finding it...  I told the kids to only take stuff that they thought was really special, otherwise we would have ended up with buckets of slightly grubby white glass...

We have been to the top of Mt Doug - our local high point and the site of Amelia's Forest school - for a bit of a look around the area, and been for lots of walks on the beach.

One of the highlights so far has been a visit out to Buchart Gardens.  I had heard they were spectacular, but I didn't really appreciate how big they were when we rocked up at about 2pm and ended up being one of the last out the gates!  Floriade in Canberra has nothing on this for the sheer volume of tulips  they have going on in spring!  The whole thing was absolutely gorgeous and the highlights were the sunken garden, the carosel and the Japanese gardens.  The kids loved it and have been asking to go back which is great!

We have ridden about 4 km in each direction along the Lochside bike trail and are looking forward to checking it out further when some of us can ride a bit further without whining too much.....   The afternoon we headed towards town we ended up down on the beach for a bit of a break.  The tide was right out and we soon discovered little indentations in the sand that spurted water at us if we poked them with our toes.  The boys thought this was hilarious and tore around madly digging in the sand trying to get wet.

A passer by informed me that they were sone kind of seacucumber, and someone else said they were clams.  When we got home we googled them and found geoducks...  the bizarreness that is....  Either way they were great fun and I'm sure we will be annoying them again in the future!

So the scene is set - fabulous area and great opportunities!  All we need to do is find some good friends and get out there and enjoy it all!