Posts by: WantsToTravelMore

If you are in Sooke and only have time for one scenic walk, visit Whiffin Spit Park. To find Whiffin Spit, you must head down Whiffen Spit Road, which heads south of the main road (Highway 14). Follow the signs to Whiffin Spit or Sooke Harbour House, both of which are found at the end of Whiffin Spit Road. There is a small parking lot that I imagine during high season is hard to find space in. You may need to find street parking and walk in. According to the signs, Whiffin Spit is named for a clerk on the […]

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The name of this new hotel in Sooke BC is a bit of a mouthful, but it is worth investigating. I’m very fond on new hotels because you never get a “tired” room. This feels like a double branded hotel. This Sooke hotel is part of the Prestige Hotels and Resorts collection of hotels which are in major BC communities like Vernon, Nelson, Kelowna, Cranbrook, Golden, Radium Hot Springs, Rossland and Salmon Arm. When you pull into their parking lot, you are met with white columns and a very high impressive front. It was off season when we visited so […]

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Located off of Highway 14 (Sooke Rd.) on Phillips Rd, this is one of the more interesting Visitor Centres to visit. A lot of times when you go to a visitor centre, it’s a dull looking facility with racks of brochures and booklets. This is not the case with Sooke‘s visitor centre. This place has the top of a lighthouse on it! The Triangle Island Lighthouse was moved from its original location to the Sooke Visitor Centre and Museum. Once inside the staff running the centre are very knowledgeable and within a few minutes we had set our priorities of […]

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I suggest visiting this park on a cold wet day in March when the kids are out of school because you’ll have the whole place to yourself. If you are like me, you think of potholes as something in the road that you don’t want to drive over. In the case of Sooke, this city’s potholes are geological formations that make deep pools in the Sooke River’s rock that offer excellent freshwater swimming, or when it’s really cold and wet, some of the best waterscapes around. To reach Sooke Potholes Regional Park, you head north from Highway 14 east of […]

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While on the last few hours of our trip to Sooke, we wanted to see one of the train trestles on the Galloping Goose Trail. This trail is part of the Part of the Trans Canada Trail. It begins in Leechtown (a former gold rush town), north of the Sooke Potholes Regional Park, to the Johnson Street Bridge in downtown Victoria. Our tiny 20 minute walk began after we investigated the Sooke Potholes Regional Park. A local said that the best way to see a trestle was to access the Galloping Goose Trail just north of Meota Drive, off of […]

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We had a lunch date in Sooke with a relative who lives close by and the question came up, “where to go?” In my recent experience (see Stickleback West Coast Eatery in Sooke) there can be a hit-and-miss aspect to random dining in Sooke. So, we did the smart thing and asked the front desk at the Best Western Premier Prestige Oceanfront Resort. We were directed down the road to the Edge Restaurant which apparently is run by a former chef from the Sooke Harbour House, which is a swanky B&B/Resort/5 Star Restaurant. Perhaps the most challenging part of the […]

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For this particular side trip, we were based in Sooke. Port Renfrew is a slow 72 km (45 mi.) east of Sooke. I say slow because Highway 14, also known as the West Coast Road, winds a lot and is comprised of a mixed quality of roadway. It’s best to leave at least 90 minutes for the trip so that you can add on a couple of minutes to reach the Botanical Beach Park parking lot. To make our trip more challenging, we did this in March and the road changes elevations and also a couple of degrees in temperature. […]

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It was snowing in Sooke on this mid-March day and was not conducive to vacationing, which is what my wife, I and our two children were trying to do. (This Spring Break felt more like Winter Break.) We arrived, checked in to the hotel and then had the usual eventual question: what about dinner? Our search for dining options in Sooke became a bit comic. Our first random choice of a pizza place turned out to be take-out only. The recommended grill across the street was closed for a private function. The third option taken from the 2011 local guide […]

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It wasn’t until I started working on this piece that the West Ender newspaper in Vancouver renamed itself to WE. I’m not sure where I’ve been … Regardless, WE is a free newspaper that is not mainstream and concentrates on local arts and culture. It’s the kind of paper that I try to find when I’m travelling as the content and ads are more real than mainstream papers. In the February 23-29 issue, WE published its “Best of the City 15th Annual Readers’ Choice 2012” survey results. The survey covers many subjects, not of all of which is of interest […]

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For many Vancouverites on a visit to Jericho Beach, there is a hidden gem of a museum sitting peacefully at the corner of a park with a view onto the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club. The Old Hastings Mill Store Museum is located at 1575 Alma Street at Point Grey Road. Many people speeding along Point Grey Road tend to veer left to head south on Alma and never know the museum is there. What makes this 1865 building a true rarity is not just its age, but also the fact it survived The Great Vancouver Fire of 1886, which destroyed […]

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