|
|
|
|
Sister Pam gave us a night's stay at a bed &
breakfast of our choice. We chose the Red Caboose Inn in Sequim.
Our caboose was themed the "Orient Express", and was elegantly furnished.
A jacuzzi bathtub was at one end. |
Mo is checking out comments left by previous
guests in this caboose. |
Orient Express memorabilia is found
everywhere in the caboose. |
On a rainy morning, you can see we were in a
nicely restored Sante Fe cupola caboose. It was originally fabricated
at PacCar in Renton (according to the builder's plate). |
|
|
|
|
I got better wireless reception up high in
the cupola. |
|
Breakfast is served in a restored Zephyr
dining car. And the breakfast was something else - four complete
courses, including dessert! When we get home, I'll scan the breakfast
menu and attach it here. |
There are four cabooses fully restored at
this B&B, with
two more in various stages of repair for future use. |
|
|
|
|
This poster decorated the small bathroom.
You can't easily read the brass plaque to the left in this compressed photo,
but it offered the usual railroad admonition: "Do not flush toilet
while train is in station." Nowadays, that warning is no longer
required. But pity the gandy-dancers of days gone by! |
After our extensive breakfast, we drove
through Dungeness Meadows, where Mo's mother lived for quite a while.
We stopped in to see her neighbors Langdon and Elaine Gardiner, who still
keep in touch frequently. |
|
Elaine's house looks good with a new coat of
paint. The roof and skylight repair that Mo orchestrated in order to
sell the house still look very good. |
|
|
|
|
|
I have no picture of this, but needed space
for a comment. On Friday night, we attended dinner theatre at the Oak
Bay Beach Hotel in Victoria. We timed this trip to visit the Oak Bay Hotel on
its last weekend of operation before closing for a major renovation that
will take two years. The theatre show was a Celtic group from Victoria,
The Ecclestons.
Their take on Celtic music is decidedly non-traditional. They call it
"Full Contact Folk Music". It was high-energy and great fun, and
included the men in sequined kilts. |
Our up-island train departed on a misty, gray
day from the Victoria waterfront. The passenger load was low today -
about 25 persons in a single RDC (Budd car). VIA will run two or even three RDCs
on this route to handle the 200 or so daily passengers that are typical of
the summer tourist season. |
Upon arrival in Parksville, we picked up our
rental car and headed to Macmillan Provincial Park. We enjoyed a walk
in the wind and rain through Cathedral Grove. |
|
|
|
|
We saw hundreds of carved pumpkins decorating
the Port Alberni highway. Some of the carvings are very intricate. |
Even the Cathedral Grove trail was decorated
with pumpkins. |
More interesting pumpkins, including one that
is clearly French. |
Lots of large trees, mostly Douglas-fir or
Western Red Cedar. |
|
|
|
|
The Big Leaf Maple had....well, it had very
big leaves! |
A 1997 storm blew down many of the oldest
trees in this area. You can see many examples of the wind damage from
the trail. |
I call this "Helter Skelter".
Look at all the different angles at which the trees lie in these pictures. |
Very heavy rains today gave us swollen
rivers, very muddy with runoff. |
|
|
|
|
Interesting angles on some of the trees that
(barely) survived the 1997 blow. |
Tall trees. This area is similar to
what we find in the Quinault and Hoh Rain Forest near our home.
Although our familiarity with this kind of forest makes this scenery not surprising,
it doesn't make it any less impressive to walk amongst these giant trees. |
That's one big tree stump I'm standing
inside. |
This is thought to be the largest tree in
this area. The recent windfall makes it impossible to get right next
to it, but you can see how large this tree is from my wingspan. |
|
|
|
|
A nice example of a temperate rain forest
nurse log. |
A few miles up the road, we visited Little
Qualicum Falls Provincial Park. As you might have guessed, there's a
lot of water in the river today! |
|
As we walked along the river and falls, the
sky started to brighten a bit. |
|
|
|
|
The river makes its way through a narrow rock
canyon. |
The largely abandoned rail line to Port
Alberni runs right through the Park. You can see these tracks haven't
seen maintenance in quite a while. |
When we arrived at the Bayside Inn in
Parksville, the rains had temporarily given way to patches of blue.
This is Parksville Bay from our hotel room balcony. |
Just before dinner, we had the gift of
moonlight on the bay. |
|
|
|
|
One of us was up early enough on Sunday to
catch this beautiful sunrise over Parksville Bay. |
We took a short drive to Englishman River
Falls. The rain-swollen river put on an impressive show. |
Upper Falls on the Englishman River, taken
from the bridge. |
Upper Falls. |
|
|
|
|
Looking downstream from the bridge. The
Englishman River cuts through a rock channel much like the Little Qualicum
River we toured yesterday. |
The bridge is a long ways above the canyon
floor.... |
I had a hard time walking on the bridge
because of the open view. My vertigo is triggered anytime I can see
down from my feet. |
Is this sign really necessary? Why
would you be tempted to jump from a bridge high above a steep, granite
canyon? |
|
|
|
|
Big trees at steep angles. |
It was damp and foggy on our walk along the
river. |
The Lower Falls at Englishman River. |
After considering all the possibilities, we
think that aliens from outer space planted these trees in a special geometric
pattern. |
|
|
|
|
Our rental car was a Toyota Yaris.
It's a new 2007 model (replaces the Echo). Tiny, but quite fuel
efficient and more than adequate for our touring needs. |
The Qualicum Bay train depot is nicely
maintained. There's an old Bloedel logging locomotive in the distance. |
This is the road on the way out to Rathtrevor
Beach Provincial Park. The fall colors were striking to a pair of
coastal low-landers. I suppose that people who live where there are
more hardwood trees with their vibrant fall colors would find this pretty
tame. |
On our walk at Rathrevor, we saw a swan
swimming alone. |
|
|
|
|
I don't think I've ever seen a park with so
many picnic benches. I couldn't easily get a picture that showed them
all. I'd guess there were more than 100 picnic benches at the park,
with nice views of the Georgia Strait, but sheltered by tall trees. |
Sounds a little like a pig farm.
Seek, slip, slap, slop. |
The restored water tower near the Parksville
station. |
The garden was just planted this year.
It's in anticipation of celebrating 100 years of railroad history on
Vancouver Island in 2010. |
|
|
|
|
It was a cool, wet wait for our train back to
Victoria. We turned the rental car in an hour before train time just to be sure we
could get to the train station with no rush. Then we had to wait for
45 minutes outside in the rain (the building is not open on Sunday). Mo was especially pleased with how I
planned this part of the trip. Thankfully, the train picked us up in Parksville right on time. |
We spent our final night in Victoria at the
Marriott (using reward points built up with all of those road trips I made
to Portland last year). It is located just a couple of blocks from the
Royal BC Museum. Here is Mo taking a quiz on some of the more bizarre
reproductive habits of the animal kingdom that are featured in the Museum's
"Fatal Attraction" exhibit. |
The sign said to "embrace the snail", and to
watch for its "love dart". You can see what happened here when
Mo rubbed this snail's belly. Hmmh..... |
The museum's HMS Discovery exhibit highlights
one of my favorite sayings: "Back when men were steel and ships were wood." |
|
|
|
|
We saw many examples of this in downtown
Victoria - trees that had been paved right into the sidewalk. That's
asphalt surrounding the tree. |
Here's another view of pavement surrounding a
tree. I don't understand how the trees survive this encapsulation.
Where do their water and nutrients come from? |
The MV Coho departed Victoria at 4PM for our
return to Port Angeles. There's wind and rain ahead on the crossing of
the Straits. |
|