Thursday morning we continued our trek westward. After looking at our choices we decided to take the Fraser Canyon Route to the coast. We stopped for the night at Canyon Alpine RV Park, about 1/2 hour away from Hells Gate.
On Friday morning we stopped at Hells Gate Airtram. Unfortunately we had missed the salmon migration by about one week. The good news was it was the end of the season and the fudge shop at the fish ladders was having their end of season sale.
Shortly after lunch we arrived at Peace Arches RV Park in Surrey. What a nice park. We would certainly stay there again. There are lot of seasonal people in the park, so we took a walk around the park checking out what people had done to prepare their units for colder weather.
Saturday (October 1st) we headed for Tsawassen to board the ferry to Sidney. Once again the ferry gods were smiling at us. We had not made a reservation. We arrived with just enough time to turn off the propane before boarding. It was a calm incident free crossing. Shortly after 1 P.M. we arrived at Westbay Marina and RV Park in Victoria where we are staying for the winter. It is a really great location, on the Victoria harbour. The sites are small, so it took us a while longer than usual to get the trailer manouvered into our site.
For the rest of the week, we worked on leveling the trailer a little more carefully since we will be here a long stay. We assembled the steps that Janet had cut out for us in Sicamous. It is much easier on the legs climbing standard 7 inch risers instead of the trailers 9 inch steps. We got the satellite dish setup for the living room TV and are using the cable connection for the bedroom TV. Now we can each watch different programs, particularly when sports are on.
The wi-fi is unpredictable. The signal strength seems quite good, but the connection comes and goes. Since they have cable service here, we ordered internet from Shaw.
Wednesday morning we woke up to find a Holland American Cruise ship moored in the bay. This is a busy bay with float planes coming and going. As well, pedestrian ferries, cruise ships and freighters all stop here.
Thursday dawned sunny and warm. We took the opportunity to walk up to the fitness centre. Rather than just blindly pay for 6 month, we decided to take a look first. As a result we came to the conclusion that we would rather find another place to swim and exercise, or perhaps just walk around town, weather permitting. After lunch we walked to the Johnson street bridge, a 3 km walk from the rv park. Just across the bridge is downtown Victoria and a number of places that we intend to investigate over the course of the winter. We wanted to find out how long it would take us to walk. We discovered it is an easy walk to many of the places we are interested in seeing.
On Sunday, we drove the 45 minutes to Sooke to check it out. After finding a spot to park the truck close to the cove, we walked down to the beach, and took in the views from there.
We followed the boardwalk along to another point on the beach, and walked back up the hill on a very nice boardwalk that switched back and forth many times.
Then we stopped at a really nice place called Mom's Cafe for lunch. They had a small sign on the main street pointing to it, and we decided to give it a try as it had many vehicles parked at it, a good tip that it the place to eat. We were a little disappointed that they didn't have the Thanksgiving turkey dinner available for lunch, but enjoyed a salmon burger and a Hawaiian burger.
On Monday morning, the Shaw installer arrived and hooked up our internet. He did check the co-axial connection from the outside of the trailer, which I have never been able to use successfully, and found that the connection is there, but isn't strong enough to drive modern digital cable (or satellite). He figures that is due to a splitter somewhere on the line, probably in a wall somewhere. So now we have three cables running in through windows, the satellite for the living room TV, cable for the bedroom TV and internet.
Future posts may be few and far between over the winter, as items of interest will probably occur much less frequently than when we were moving from place to place.
