April Fool's Day brought us to the end of our time on Vancouver Island. We had one full day left to act like tourists and check out a few things before packing up and heading for home.
The girls wanted to check out a market called Goats on the Roof, located in Coombs. We headed up there for a while and checked out all the shops. There was a woodworking gallery nearby that had some fabulous custom furniture and native carvings. None of it was in our price range but we admired it all the same. The lady at the gallery recommended that we take the girls over to a nearby wildlife rehabilitation center. Mostly they had eagles and other raptors, but there were also bears. The girls we really thrilled with a pond that had turtles in it, as well as some geese and some fish...
Afterwards we headed over to Parksville and back to Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park. When we stopped here at the beginning of the week it was really windy and raining and the walk on the beach was not particularly enjoyable. This time around the weather was considerably better. It was low tide and at this place the shallows are extensive and the tide goes way out. We wandered around for a while and took a few snapshots. The big camera never made it out of the truck, here, or at any other location on this day.
Late in the day we made our way back up to Courtenay and our rental house. As this was the last full day of our time on Vancouver Island we had to spend the evening tidying up and packing up all of our stuff. It was with some sadness and regret that we found ourselves having to prepare for our departure. The girls splashed about and enjoyed the hot tub one last time as we made our preparations.
The next morning we loaded all of our stuff in the truck, locked up the house, and hit the road. This time around our arrival at the ferry terminal was not quite as lucky. We just missed the ferry and had to wait nearly two hours for the next one. Eventually we were finally able to board and get going. By coincidence we ended up on the very same ship that had brought us across a week ago, the Queen of Oak Bay. Once we hit the mainland we started driving, hoping to get as far as we could on our first day of driving. The girls had all been sick and in various stages of a bad cold. This was eventually passed on to me and by this time I was fully consumed by the virus. Tired and cold and coughing with sore aching muscles all over, and in generally poor spirits. Margarit managed to fight it off and refused to allow the cold to take hold. As a result she took on a significant part of the driving duties. We pushed through Vancouver and the lower mainland, and then on over the Coquihalla. We stopped for a crappy supper of fast food in Kamloops and then decided to push on a little further. This time we decided to continue on the Trans-Canada Highway, rather than the Yellowhead route. We were a little gun shy of the traffic jams and congestion that we had experienced on the Yellowhead on our way out to the coast. Not that the return trip was without incident for we got stuck in traffic, the result of a motorcycle accident near Langley, for nearly an hour. We pushed on past Kamloops for a while and drove into the dark but eventually ran out of ambition and stopped for the night in Salmon Arm.
The next morning, after the typical hotel breakfast we hit the road for home. We made it over the Rogers and Kicking Horse Passes without incident. We rolled up the Icefields Parkway to Saskatchewan Crossing and then took the Thompson Highway out of the mountains, eventually making our way back home. It was around 8:00PM when we rolled up to the house, tired but content with the experiences of our week on the coast.
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