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Canada Day Cake
Roberta had a piece of this, said it was pretty goodCanada Day, take 2
It’s been overcast much of today, and at 5:00 pm it seems to be turning cold. We are parked again at Long Beach, amongst the surfers, who are here in force. When we first got here, around 8:30, all the best view spots were already taken. We settled for one of the lesser view spots, made and ate our breakfast of oatmeal, Buck grapefruit, and mocha, and then headed for Tofino, where we aspired to use the Internet and take showers. We succeeded at the first, but failed at the second, so I think tonight it’s going to be sponge bath in the camper time. Or maybe we should fill the black plastic shower bag and put it on the roof for a few hours to see if it works in this kind of weather. I imagine we could safely shower outside our camper once it’s fully dark - the campsites at Green Point are well separated from each other, and there’s no light anywhere near ours. Though the mosquitoes and no-see-ums could be problematic under those conditions. Well, if we don’t’ manage that, perhaps we’ll try for showers tomorrow in Ucluelet - we have found
Dressiing up for the holidays
Unknown celebrant at Tofino festivities them there before.
We had a fine lunch in Tofino at one of the little places on the main drag, which are probably, shut most of the year but look like they have a license to print money during the summer. They offered lots of variations on the fish and chip theme - the one we shared was something like Big Daddy’s Grand Bouffe, and it contained cod, salmon, oysters and prawns, all in a tempura style batter and served with enough chips to feed a family of 15. Tonight we are making tuna sandwiches in the van to atone for this.
Tofino had a nice little Canada Day celebration, which included a little madrigal sized choral group, and free cake for the part we attended. If we’d stuck around, there would have been BBQ but we figure we’d had our quota of rich food for one day. So we headed back south, making a brief stop for Roberta to scout a crab take out place on the way out of town. Our favorite crab place, The Rusty Anchor in Ukee, we discovered has closed its doors. So she has been on a relentless quest for a replacement
ever since. She’s discovered we can get a whole cooked crab there for $12, which she thinks is the best deal yet. The best price she has found for a cooked crab in a restaurant is $30. So she figures we’ll have a little crab feast one of these days, with some melted butter, salad, and fresh sourdough bread, on a picnic table somewhere near this joint. Then there’s the Mexican place in Ukee, the restaurant at Wick interpretive centre, Ukee Dog, and if we feel flush, Wickaninnish Inn in Tofino. So many places to eat, so little time. And money. I think we may manage one or two of them before we blow out of here on Monday.
I can’t believe it’s already Friday - we are more than half way through our stay here. We are just getting used to the rhythm of living in this small space. We had a little hunt this morning for the tooth brush charger, finally finding it in the last place we looked - where I’d put it at some point thinking it was going to be so easy to find.
Anyway, it’s 5:30 now, and we’re sitting in a
Roberta getting down
Actually, she let go before her side was ignominiously defeated in battle.... partial view parking spot at Long Beach. We had a little nap. I slept so deeply I didn’t even hear Roberta get up and leave the camper. For those of you familiar with the sound a VW sliding door makes opening and closing, you will know it takes a near coma to sleep through this. This place is hopping today, full of surfers, and it’s been this way since early morning. Even before the surf was really up, they were all here, readying their gear and staring out at the waves. There are as many women as men doing this, we are pleased to note. I suspect we are the only people here not surfing and I wonder what these young folks think of these old ladies sometimes. It’s kind of incredible to think of ourselves as old ladies, but when you find yourself so surrounded by people in their early twenties, it’s kind of hard to think of yourself as anything else. (I don’t have to like it, though!)
Before Roberta got back, I heaved out Morag (that’s Morag Fionnula McIntosh, my faithful 15” PowerBook G4, which I normally keep stowed in a secret space inside Vanita) and
Roberta looking up
Couldn't resist getting her picture taken with this gorgeous RCMP officer from Nanaimo. Related to Diana Krall, you think? plugged her into the cigarette lighter. I purchased a DC power converter for this purpose before we came on this trip, and I’m delighted with it. I’ve used a power inverter before to run a computer in the camper, but it never worked like this. It’s just like having her plugged into the AC outlet in my office, and it takes far less power than an inverter, which has to convert first from 12 volt DC to AC and then back down to the correct DC for the computer. I pull out the table, and sit here writing, feeling like Hemingway spinning his stories while looking out the window of a grass hut looking out over the Caribbean. The temperature is a bit cooler, I grant you, but on the whole I think I like this better.
Roberta has returned from her last jaunt, has hung out briefly, and taken off again, restless, to watch the waves. She came back earlier with a sack full of loot some other visitors had given her. They are heading home to NZ tomorrow and have no further need of this stuff. It included a hamburger grill, a flint fire starter, a couple
Wet Westies
Getting prepared for the pot luck dinner; Bjorn and Gabriele pulled their Syncro behind Vanita. We hoped they might breed! of metal plates, some tin foil, and two ears of corn. These latter two got Roberta thinking about supper, even though scarcely three hours have passed since we ate that huge lunch. She is a creature of the clock where her stomach is concerned. I doubt I’ll be able to hold her off much longer so now I think I will follow her down to the water’s edge. We’ll come back soon and make our supper by the sea, and this will get posted whenever we next get to a suitable place.
July 2, Still celebrating Canada Day
We took a morning constitutional today, one turn around the campground. We met a couple who were camping with two gorgeous cedar kayaks, which they had made themselves. They had been kayaking up at Grice Bay, and said it was beautiful. By the time we finished this walk (which we clocked later today at 1.6 km, or a mile) it was about 9:30 and we were really hungry. We turned on the stove to discover it was on the last drop of propane. Good timing because that means the fridge was running OK all night. We had to run into Ukee to fill up. It’s been about 3-4 years since we last filled and it was about $3 last time; it was $8 today. But still cheap when you don’t have to do it that often. That being accomplished, we headed for Wickaninnish Beach, where we made breakfast, and basically spent the entire day. It was clear and sunny all day, with a nice offshore breeze. Kath got her kite into the air again, and it flew without any coaxing. In fact, the breeze was so stiff she got nervous it was going to break loose, so she brought it down after just a short flight.
Attack of the killer amphipods
Early in the day, as the tide was beginning to come in, we had a poke around some of the tide pools. Kath had been wading in the surf near some rocks, examining some little critters waking up as the tide reached them - some tidy barnacles waving their little arms in the salt water, some sea stars, lots of anemones. Stepping out of the water, she looked down at her feet and saw to her dismay they were covered with what looked like about 20 tiny bloodsuckers - about a quarter to a half cm long. And they were biting her - in fact it was the blood running that caught her eye. They brushed off without any trouble, but left small wounds which bled for some time. According to one of the park guides, they were probably amphipods, an animal that looks a lot like a sand hopper, but without the front end antennae, and which frequent tide pools rather than the seaweed heaps favored by the hoppers. They are opportunistic feeders, and must have recognized a good opportunity when they saw one. The guide said he’d never seen such a “vicious” attack (his word). Kath washed them off with soap and water and they stopped itching and stinging after about an hour. She said she felt insulted to be assaulted in this way! In all her years of wading in the surf, she’s never had an experience like this before. It’s not bad enough she is always mosquito bait, now the sea creatures are out to get her too!
We ended up having lunch at Wick interpretive center, on the deck, with a terrific view of the beach, but protected from the wind by glass barriers. Roberta had scrumptious liguini with prawns and scallops, and Kath had a little gourmet mini pizza - flatbread with artichokes, pesto, sun dried tomatoes and feta cheese. Afterwards, we shared a slice of mocha pecan torte, and then had a little nap in the camper before returning to the beach.
Wet Westies
The best part of the day was a spontaneous pot luck meal which materialized when we got back to camp. As we passed the entry kiosk, one of the interpreters told us someone else in a VW van had been looking for us earlier in the day. She had let them in, and thought they might still be parked in the parking lot. Sure enough, there was a white Syncro parked there, so on the assumption it was one of the Wet Westies who said they might come join us here this weekend, we left a note on their windshield. Then, driving through the campsite to get to our spot (which is near the end of the circle), we spotted a fellow chatting with another Westy owner we had met this morning on our turn through the campsite. Kath thought he might be the syncro owner, but he was
another Wet Westy! So we ended up having a nice pot luck in our campsite with the syncro owners, Bjorn and Gabriele; and later George, who just bought his first Westy last week, joined us, along with his wife Yvonne and their daughter, Chelsea, for a pick up dinner and a bit of Westie talk. We made a campfire - our first of this trip - and had a really memorable evening with some really nice people. This is our first experience of a Westy pot luck, which seems to be a tradition, judging from the listserve.
Tomorrow is our last full day in Pacific Rim. It’s hard to believe how fast this week has gone!
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Patrice
non-member comment
Hum
Hey...got your card - you sneaky woman. Thanks...if I can do cyberspace as well as you two I'll get you both back. Enjoying your trip a bunch.