This space has been very quiet lately, and there is the happy reason why, as mid-September brought a rare chance to get away from work and the farm for a few weeks, and with that escape, a time away from the computer.
My husband and I are, as some of you already know, the proud possessors of a 1971 Triumph Spitfire (among a number of other vintage “project cars”, of which the less said perhaps the better, the old sports car interest being something of a joint secret life which we try to keep a low profile about, as it bemuses most of our friends) and once in a while we go all out and take her for a serious run.
Abandoning numerous pressing projects, we took part in a 3-day vintage sports car rally which started in Kelowna, progressed through southern interior B.C.’s Monashee Mountains, and ended southwest of Kamloops at the Quilchena Hotel on the Douglas Lake Ranch.
We had a well-timed breakdown on travel-to-the-rally-start day, and with the aid of a serendipitous series of exceedingly helpful old-British-car buffs and an early morning mechanical session in our hotel parking lot, we got Baby put back together again. That out of her system, she ran like a charm for the next 3 days, bringing us home again after better than 1000 miles of top-down driving under mostly sunny skies.
Sometimes things are better than anticipated. This trip was one of those. It was utterly perfect.
One of my favourite views – looking out over the Spitfire bonnet. The only better place is behind the wheel. Here we are heading down the highway towards Vernon, B.C., on Day 1 of our 3-day rally. On the other side of Vernon we head off into the mountains, onto frequently narrow, highly scenic, beautifully curve-filled rural roads – perfect for our treasured cars to show off what they were really built for. Completely frivolous creations, but a whole lot of fun.
Day 3, with our Spit in the foreground in the parking area of Douglas Lake Ranch’s historic Quilchena Hotel as we all begin to converge for a final meet-up and meal before going our separate ways, to points throughout B.C, with a few hardy souls heading home to Alberta and down into Washington State. (This is less than a third of the group – sadly I did not get a shot of all of us together – and it was a nicely eclectic group, with our working-class, 4-cylinder Spitfire on the lower end of the sports car hierarchy and a stunning 1955 Jaguar – red car, 5th in line – representing the posher end of the scale.)
We made it home, hastily parked the Spit without giving her the usual post-run wash-and-brush-up, and spent the next day frantically packing up our old camper in order to take our daughter on the trip to the ocean we’d promised her in the spring. “C’mon, let’s do this, it may be my last trip with you,” she kept saying, piling on a bit of the kids-all-grown-up angst on our parental heads, and though it was rather odd being a trio in the camper instead of a quartet – her older brother, now mostly moved out, came home and kindly farm-sat for us – it ended up being a very pleasant trip.
The weather had turned, bringing wind, cool weather, and rain, but we forged on regardless, and though we came home rather more exhausted than when we left, we’re glad we made the effort.
Beach walks, conversation, peaceful evenings, books. We then left the ocean more or less behind, and spent a day in Victoria, where we took in the Swedish History Museum’s touring Viking exhibit at the Royal B.C. Museum, and joined the tourist throng queuing for chocolates at the venerable Rogers Family confectionary store, before heading for the ferry line-up, and the long trek home.
It was great fun to get away, but it feels very good to be back. All of our projects are here still waiting for us – darn! – why couldn’t those have done themselves while we were gone?! – but we’re all the happier for our two weeks away.
And here are some photos from the trip, a very small sampling of where we went and what we saw.
The next post will be back to books – the pile of to-be-talked-about has grown to ridiculous proportions. I think a round-up post or two may be in order.
Pacific Ocean at Long Beach, western side of Vancouver Island. Next landfall, Japan.
Same stretch of beach. A storm has just passed, and the setting sun appears briefly. The swell is immense; we are being very careful, as the day before another beach walker was almost swept away by a rogue wave.
Pink sea anemones, tide pool, upper Long Beach. No sea stars, though the rocks show grazed areas where they were abundant on all of our previous visits to this particular group of rocks and pools, a sad disappointment. Over 95% of the sea star population between Alaska and California has suddenly died off since late winter, 2014, due to a suspected viral disease thought to be exacerbated by warmer-than-usual ocean temperatures.
More empty beaches, just us and the birds most days…a major storm system out at sea has just passed, leaving the wave danger rating at extreme, and keeping the hardy wet-suited surfers who generally frequent these shores holed up in their various retreats.
Finally, several days after the highest storm surges of the year to date, the waves subside enough for some surfer action. This brave soul was up a few times, but never for long. Awfully hard work for a few moments of catching the wave!
Misty morning sunrise.
Blue heron, low tide.
As inland dwellers, this sort of thing leaves us thrilled to the core: what an incredibly rich thing is the sea!
And then there’s wonderful stuff like this: urchins and anemones at Ucluelet.
Sea isles off Ucluelet. Rather makes one dream of setting up a hermitage on one of those to escape the woes of the human world…or, thinking a little harder of the lack of arable land for even a wee garden, and the constant rain and sea roar, maybe not…
Mildly eerie but decidedly cheery: dwellers in the rainforest at Tofino Botanical Garden.
Heading down island, into some welcome sunshine, which lit up the evening waves at French Beach, near Jordan River. We sat on the rocks in the sunset and watched three sea otters frolicking in the kelp beds as the tide turned and started rolling in.
Into the city, to do the tourist thing in Victoria, our province’s capitol. Totem poles in Thunderbird Park, with the stately Victorian-era Empress Hotel in the background.
City botanizing: fall-blooming cyclamen in a quiet corner of Victoria’s Beacon Hill Park.
Leaves & Pages 
Stunning pictures from the island!
Thank you. It is so beautiful! At some point I just quit taking pictures, hence nothing captured for our short stay in lovely Sooke and the long road home, through golden leaves and velvety sagebrush hills. This province is utterly outstanding in its physical beauty, isn’t it? – such contrasts!
It really is! I’m in Toronto right now, which has its own attractions (namely the four day wedding of a dear friend), but home is definitely best.
I hope you are having a lovely time in Ontario, Claire. Enjoy the wedding celebrations! From the last weather report I heard, sounds like you’re merely missing more Vancouver rain; perhaps the sun is shining in Ontario? (Even if not, I’m sure the chance to see good friends will make up for such minor things as mere weather.) 🙂
Oh thanks for that vicarious trip. (This was not our year for Victoria and Pacific Rim.)
I hope you did some serious damage in the bookshops.
We had intended to hit the Victoria bookshops hard, but found ourselves in the Museum from opening to closing on the one day we’d allotted to the city. The Viking exhibit from Sweden was fascinating; we were fortunate enough to tag along with a tour being given by a UVic professor of archeology whose thesis speciality was the Viking era as she elaborated on the exhibit for a group of SCA enthusiasts (Society for Creative Anachronism/historical re-enactors) – her anecdotes and explanations went far beyond the self-guided material! We spent the rest of the day up in the First Nations area on the third floor. What an astounding collection this museum holds…
But no worries. We stopped in Chilliwack at The Bookman, and at Baker’s Books in Hope, and managed to accumulate some promising new reading material. (Because we have so little to read here at home, you know…) 😉
Just the most amazing photographs! Thank you for sharing this trip with us. It looks like it was truly a dream vacation. Now go hit the books, for crying out loud!!
You’re most welcome. I thought an explanation for the long silence was in order, and I’m not quite “home” yet in my mind; still replaying the time away!
And I’ve been reading such wonderful books. I promise to settle down and write about some of them very soon. 🙂
Well, y’all are tremendously cool. I want to drive that car! And it sounds like a marvelous trip–so glad you were able to get away for a little while and have some relaxing times.
That car is probably the coolest thing I have going on in my life! By a long stretch. Otherwise I’m just a quiet little old country gal, uh huh. 😉 And yes, you *do* want to drive that car. It is an absolute blast!!! We have given rides to total strangers who have come up to us when we’re parking or getting fuel and admire her and say longingly that they’ve never ridden in a convertible. Little vintage sports cars exist to make people happy. (Seeing that they are utterly useless for anything else, lol.)
Beautiful photos, what kind of camera do you have? A much deserved holiday. Also wondering where you order books online? New or used.
Hi Rob & Cathie!!! What a lovely surprise to hear from you. 🙂 Hope all is going well over on “the other side”.
The camera is a digital Olympus E-410 (single lens reflex)which I purchased about 7 years ago to replace my ancient Olympus OM10 35mm SLR “film camera” which I’d had since the early 1980s and which I *loved* but which had started to have serious issues – had to send it out for very expensive repairs several times and it wasn’t making sense to keep going that route – plus it was gone for months for each repair as it had to go to Vancouver, and then they had to find parts – you know the story. Nothing lasts forever, I guess…
Anyway, the digital Olympus is pretty good. Not as good as the old one, but that is more a lens issue – on the old one I had a wonderful Tamron lens which was perfect for plant photography – but the new lenses in general for the digital are certainly more than decent. This digital is quite large – about the same size as an old-style 33 mm camera – so one has to be prepared for the inconvenience of having it around one’s neck – no pocket-tucking!
For book ordering I generally go through the Advanced Book Exchange – ABE. A really good search engine, easy to use, and unites an astounding array of booksellers from around the world. I generally order from sellers in the UK, as their postage rates are excellent – frequently cheaper than within Canada. I quite recently started using EBay a bit – but you need to keep checking as the listings expire quickly and the postage rates can be ridiculous and quite frankly I can’t usually be bothered to spend the time needed to wade through the process. Amazon is generally a waste of time – the prices for used books, at least those I am interested in, can be rather silly. (Plus shopping at Amazon feels rather like patronizing Walmart, if you know what I mean. One does it when necessary, but feels rather dirty.)
I don’t seem to buy too many new books, but when I do I try to patronize The Open Book in Wms Lk – they are very good about ordering things – great service and as you no doubt know, a pretty decent selection. But honestly most of my book shopping is in random second hand bookshops, and visits to the charity stores, Sally Ann, Rotary Club book sales, library book sales and such. One never knows what one will come across – have picked up some excellent stuff just by going by “feel” – have also acquired some real clunkers here and there, but they are easily disposed of – back to where they came from! 😉
We are still busy with digging carrots, but am getting geared up for a winter reading list. I am very inspired by your blog, especially when you talk about “project reading”. I’ve a few in mind for the winter. Thanks for the info, we too had Olympus cameras, when the time came for digital we opted for a smaller version, just for taking people shots mostly, convenient. Now were shopping for another camera, and am very tempted to go even smaller, pocket size. But I must say, your photos are lovely.
we’ll have to cross the river one of these days, in the mean time it’s great to read about what you’re reading, and a little other info thrown in.
Well, it seems like even the tiniest of the new cameras are getting better and better – one of my cousins who is a professional wildlife photographer, used to toting about MASSIVE lenses and all sorts of specialty equipment, recently shared some of the images he took with his cell phone camera, and stated that they are as good as what he can take with his conventional gear, for general image capture at mid-range, which honestly is what most of us are doing. We don’t really *need* the specialty lenses and such. I am myself mulling over getting a tiny pocket camera – so easy to use – I was given a small “economy” one a few years ago which is nice for things like our car trips but which is really not great for close-up pics of flowers & such so I only use it occasionally. I know there are very good ones available, just need to take time to shop around & examine features, I guess. I do like the various Olympus cameras I’ve had in the past, but really I think most makes are tremendously good these days.
Hopefully we’ll connect sometime this winter – we’re all so busy going so many different directions – miss those times when there seemed to be more visiting opportunities! Might make market this weekend – have only been to a few – Ed is off work on Sat and if the weather is nice it would be a good excuse to take a quick outing. Maybe if we’re lucky we can snag some of those carrots! 😉
What a great post, fabulous photographs. Thanks for letting me see places which I never will experience in the flesh.
You’re most welcome. This is one of our personal very special places, and I am pleased to share these small glimpses. 🙂
I hope you don’t mind this brief advert: my friend Margaret Horsfield’s latest book, “Tofino and Clayoquot Sound” will be published by Harbour Press on Oct 25. It’s all about the west coast of the Island and its history: http://www.amazon.ca/Tofino-Clayoquot-Sound-Margaret-Horsfield/dp/1550176811/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1413624275&sr=8-1&keywords=Horsfield
Sounds grand! I will be keeping an eye out for this on future trips to the area. Fascinating natural and human history down there.
Margaret will never forgive me if I don’t mention that the Tofino book is co-written with Ian Kennedy, just to set the record straight.
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