Category: Vancouver Island

I had a free afternoon on a trip to Victoria BC and I was in possession of a restless four-year-old.  The four walls of the hotel room were not conducive to joy and gladness so we made our way to Beacon Hill Park. Beacon Hill Park is located in downtown Victoria and is bordered by Douglas Street to the west and Cook St to the east.  It ends at Dallas Road, but if you cross the road, you will see some amazing ocean scenery. There’s a perfectly fine playground in Beacon Hill Park where my child could climb and play […]

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The world famous Butchart Gardens are often the first stop for anyone seeking out notable local gardens in the Victoria area.  Butchart Gardens are a privately owned 22 ha (55 acre) estate that is now a National Historic Site.  The gardens are located 23 km (14 miles) north of Victoria and their street address is 800 Benvenuto Avenue in Brentwood Bay.  These spectacular gardens were begun over 100 years ago and today close to a million people visit them each year.  Visit butchartgardens.com for more details on hours of operation, admission fees and the many featured attractions of the garden […]

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The months of April and May certainly bring out the wildflowers. The south western slope of Mt Tzouhalem, home to Gary Oak Trees has been set aside as a wild flower reserve. Keeping this area free of Scotch Broom allows the sun to awaken the beautiful little flowers and fill the meadow with an amazing array of colour. Today [April 23, 2012] we enjoyed blue Camus, pink shooting stars, yellow spring gold, white saxifrage, and amazingly large yellow balsam root. Growing on the rocky edges are sedums. White Easter lilies are slowly fading and a few chocolate lilies are still […]

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You may have heard of Nanaimo because of those delicious Nanaimo bars that are sold all across Canada, and yes, it was named after the city on Vancouver Island! But there’s more to Nanaimo than Canada’s favourite dessert! Did you know that this is the ‘Bathtub Racing Capital of the World’? No, seriously! Bathtub racing was invented here in Nanaimo in 1967 with a race between Nanaimo and Vancouver as a way of promoting this quirky little city to the rest of the world. The idea took off and now there’s a bathtub race here on the last weekend of […]

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Butchart Gardens near Victoria BC is, without a doubt, one of the finest botanical gardens in the world, and is consistently ranked as one of the city’s top attractions, even being honoured with an exhibit in its name at Florida’s Epcot Centre. Whether you plan to visit the gardens for only a few hours, or if you intend to spend an entire day or two taking in the flowers and foliage, you are certain to come away feeling relaxed, and refreshed. Butchart Gardens History and Highlights Built over several decades by Robert Pim Butchart and his wife Jennie, who established […]

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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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Embarking on a whale watching cruise in search of Orcas, Grey Whales, or Humpback Whales is an excellent way to spend a beautiful day on the water. Let’s take a look at some of the top whale watching experiences British Columbia has to offer. When to Go You’ll find whales in the waters off BC all year long, but the whales are most abundant during the months between May and October; the weather during these warmer months is ideal for enjoying a nautical adventure, too. Where to See Whales In 2010, Travel and Leisure Magazine named the west coast 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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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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