The personal authentic travels of a world-wide drifter, you'll always see pics of me at the locations being described (if the other blogs you're reading don't do that, odds are they were NEVER there, just saying…)
Two adjoining towns about 1/2 way up the Island; Searches for the best restaurants in Vancouver Island put many of them in these two towns, so I had to check them out.
As I’ve said many times before, I judge cities by how well they eat. Since a search of the best restaurants in Vancouver Island, according to Yelp, put them in these two towns I had to check them out. They WERE very picturesque, but I was underwhelmed by the restaurants. They’re fine, WAY better than the ones currently around me in Shwanigan Lake, but not worth traveling for… not the like the Wolf in the Fog, located in Tofino, for sure — that was worth a 4 hour drive.
Came across this on the AtlasObscura website, it’s a breakwater that was constructed by sinking a bunch of due for the graveyard ships.
I made a strategic error, I tried to walk across the sand that had been exposed by the low tide, and at a certain point it became like quicksand and it stole my shoes off my feet. I was able to get them back… but then it stole them a second time. And then, as I tried to pull them loose, I fell down. Suffice it to say I was good and muddy with some really FOUL smelling gunk that soaked through EVERYTHING…
That night I had a major score. I have since before the breakwater to make a booking with an Airbnb in the area, figuring it was late, and would like to see the place in full daylight in the morning… and the woman I had made the pending booking with never responded. So I called Airbnb to try to cancel. I told them that it was getting late, and I couldn’t afford to wait much longer for her to respond because I was a good 2 1/2 hours away from my place and the sun was going down and I was tired… basically worried that it wouldn’t be safe to drive (no lights along those roads, and I’m starting to loose my night vision). Basically I said, “If I’m going to have to drive back I need to start now” …. Happily, they not only cancelled the request, but they told me that if I could find a decent hotel for the night they would reimburse me for the cost up to $150. So I stayed at the Holiday Inn on their dime…. Score!
That night, I took the shoes, the socks, the pants, into the shower and tried to wash them clean. I kept wringing out the socks and this black water kept coming out. Even after, and I used shampoo, the stuff still stunk. Took them home the next day and put them through the wash….
Because there are goats on the roof do I need another reason??
As a kid, for many summers in a row, my mom used to take us to Door County in Wisconsin (its the peninsula that sticks into the lake) where there’s a Swedish restaurant called Al Johnson’s that also has goats on the roof… so this was nostalgic for me. Only this is a massive market (with a pretty amazing selection of foreign foods), as well as a lot of cool looking stuff.
Just off to the side of it is a collection of tourist traps if ever there was one — loaded up with with massively overpriced stuff from China
Rebecca Radnor's Personal Blog: Consider yourselves warned! 