Catching up and a Day Trip to Cowichan Bay

 Hi all,

Just a little post to catch you up on where we are... I also thought I'd include a little post about a day trip we took to Cowichan Bay because it was such a beautiful day and I actually remembered to take some photos 😀

So we've been home for a month now and of course I'm feeling fine now that we made the effort to come home. We just decided that we better figure out what is going on before heading anywhere exotic. It's hard to be sick at home, and even harder to be sick somewhere that you can't communicate or find food you can eat. So far we have found out a lot of things that AREN'T wrong with me 😀 Still waiting for a couple more tests to prove this was some sort of punishment for getting old and nothing ominous.

Now, what have we been doing all month you ask? Well we've been doing a lot of visiting with friends. A LOT! It is nice to realize you have so many good people in your life. We've also discovered in our year of early retirement that you have way more time to get together with people!

We've also been visiting our favourite restaurants in Victoria, riding the motorcycle, taking drives to our favourite places and reading plenty of books. I can't complain about any of that.

Here is my favourite bookstore, Russell Books!

It's a bit odd to be in town in September and not be heading back to school. We both had a chance to go into our schools and visit our former littles. I was so excited to see them I forgot to ask them all the important questions like, "What are you reading?" and "Can I see your writing?"

Okay, that about sums up our month. I thought it might be interesting for our readers who don't live on this beautiful island to see a little slice of how lucky we are to live in this part of the world.

Did I mention that Steve bought a car while we are here? It's a little Fiat 500... Steve thought he could give me a little piece of Italy without actually taking me there!

The whole point of buying this car was that the car and the motorcycle could both fit into one parking spot at the condo. Mission accomplished!

He also bought a TomTom which is a little portable GPS. We figured this would be extremely helpful for road trips as not only am I directionally challenged, but I get car sick when I try to read in the car. Two strikes against me for being a good navigator!

One sunny day we decided to take the new toys out for an adventure. I can't even remember why we chose Cowichan Bay (it may have been that I saw it labeled as a "seaside village" who doesn't want to visit a seaside village?!?), but I looked up some restaurants (adventures always need to include food!) and found a place called Cow Cafe that seemed good (patio in the sunshine, view of the water, good food reviews... sold!)

Steve plugged in the name of the restaurant into the GPS and we were on our way.

Look how easy that looks... seems foolproof, right?

You may remember that I am directionally challenged... it appears our GPS is also a little challenged (or perhaps it was the users of the device?!?) but we ended up on some back road in Duncan, with no restaurants in sight.

Steve was starving at this point, but I convinced him to drive to Cowichan Bay anyway (it is only about 10 km from Duncan). Cowichan Bay isn't that big so we easily found the real Cow Cafe and even got a parking spot right in front of the door! Lunch was delicious, the patio was lovely and sunny, and the view was terrific.

From the patio of the restaurant you could see the colourful houseboats in the marina.

After eating lunch we walked through the town... it's literally a street bordering the water. There were tons of cute little shops and restaurants, some touristy things (whale watching, fishing charters, maritime museums) and that's about it.

I've included some photos to show you how cute this place is!

We bought some bread (and cookies of course!) at a great bakery True Grain Bread, and then headed on our way back down to Victoria.

If you are ever visiting remind me to take you there. It is a short drive from Victoria, and absolutely beautiful.

This is the gorgeous scenery on the drive back... you may also notice that there is still plenty of room in the Fiat for my feet to rest on the dashboard 😉

So the next part of our adventure is completely unplanned. We are heading to Fossil Bay for a couple of days... it's a short drive from Victoria, but we had never even heard of it before now. Then we are up to Ladysmith to stay with the Handsome Man's parents. We're hoping my appointments get done quickly so we can head out again. (Unfortunately, things are moving at a snail's pace...) Anyway, we are planning to do some trips on the island while we wait for the go ahead to leave. Any suggestions?

I feel like if I blog about it, I'm still on vacation... so I'm going to blog about it! See you soon!