The Adventure Begins

A mere 5 days after moving into the apartment in Oak Bay, we decided that now would be the best time to set off on a road trip to discover more of Canada.

Before jobs, before commitments, before our money runs out. 

With our first destination decided, we caught the 7am ferry to Tsawwassen, Vancouver, and started heading to Hope – a location we believed to be a significant distance away. At 10.30am, we arrived in Hope. Not so far away and not so much to do.

“Hmmm… I think we should just keep driving.”

“Ahm, yes.”

And off we began on our road trip, not knowing where we were actually intending to go.

Always having an affinity to warm weather and summer it came as no surprise to Lewis that I chose to follow signs to Summerland. Just past Peachland. I am not joking, these places actually exist. They are lovely and you expect pixies to live there.

We drove up to a hotel (I honestly think it was the only one we saw) and checked in. We ended up in a Junior Suite at Summerland Waterfront Resort and Spa with stunning views over the lake and a bottle of wine to welcome us. All for a fraction of what we had budgeted for.

During our two-day stint in the land of summer (which was still a tad chilly), we visited SumacRidge Estate Winery, walked up Giant’s Head Mountain and pondered around their little town. It was delightful.

From there we drove to Kelowna, a place my Dad had been swooning about before we left Scotland. It was his location of choice if he moved back to Canada and I can (slightly) see why. It hugs the side of a beautiful lake, with cute cowboy and western style buildings that you feel Clint Eastwood may appear out of at any time. For some reason though we were not entirely taken with it and decided after a couple of days to jump back in our faithful Scooby and begin what seemed like a never ending drive to Jasper.

Scooby The Car

Upon moving to Victoria we decided it was about time to buy a car, especially to enable us to begin our South Western Canada road trip.

We started scouring usedvictoria and kijiji for hours a day trying to find a ‘young’, low-mileage car. What began as a search for a truck soon became the hunt for anything that had four-wheel-drive, a necessity if we were going to make it to Jasper and Banff on our trip in Spring.

Google, search, hunt, scour, reset criteria, change search word, scroll, edit, expand search… oh hello Subaru Lagacy. And here we finally find Scooby. A delightful red estate car that comes with two sets of wheels - winter and summer. It’s as if it knew we were wanting to take him to snow-capped mountains.

If only it were going to be as easy to actually buy him. Oh how simple things could have been. What we believed to be a straightforward money transaction between our British account to our pre-paid travel Credit Card, became a frantic money chasing fiasco that caused us significant grief.  It took almost 10 days to have our money moved, transferred, accepted and available from British to Canadian banks and Lewis was living in constant fear that he was going to lose his beloved “Scooby”.

Finally, with a cheque in hand we got Scooby and drove away with him eleven days later than imagined.  Epic.

Vancouver Island

So the long silence has been for good-ish reason. It has been a whirlwind the past few months and it is hard to know where to begin. I guess where we left off?

After our delightful skiing adventure in Whistler, we jumped on a ferry from Vancouver to Victoria, Vancouver Island, where we stayed with fantastic family friends in what can only be described as the most stunning coastal house I have ever seen. 

Based in North Saanich, their home’s back garden actually led out onto the ocean. It was phenomenal. In the three fabulous weeks we spent there we saw a myriad of wildlife from the comfort of the beautiful deck. There were bald eagles regularly visiting the trees a mere 50m away, sea otters flapping about the boat 20m from shore, a massive sea lion killing a mighty big fish just as close and many a seal floating past looking for its dinner.

Not only that, but on the way to a stunning hill walk we actually drove behind another bald eagle trying to lift a dead raccoon from the road and fly off. I have put the video of it below. There are just some things you never expect to see and this was certainly one of those moments.

During our second week, our wonderful hosts had arranged to visit their children in San Francisco so asked if we could please dog-sit while they were away for five days. It was a no brainer. We were delighted to look after their home and their lovable, bounding, energetic, thinks-he-is-human dog.

Everybody meet Kula.

Crazy Kula would take us on walks and show us new areas of North Saanich (whether we wanted to see them or not) and was hilarious to play with. He often came and lay down next to me while I was doing Pilates or Yoga and I think he must have thought he was pretty good at it as after a while he would push me over and roll around showing off.

During those three weeks, with a little influence from the amazing climate and a lot of great stories from our hosts, we decided that we wanted to stay in Victoria and test it out. Amazingly we found a gorgeous little lower lever apartment just minutes from Oak Bay that we could move in to immediately and that was how we came to stay in Oak Bay… for two and a half weeks.