Thursday, Sept 13th Victoria to Black Creek

Today we woke up to a beautiful morning at Westbay and saw a seal as well as many seaplanes landing and taking off at/from Victoria’s inner harbour. Did drive all the way to Jordan River which is southwest of Victoria – despite raised eyebrows and smiles from the girls (Christine, Fiona, Josie, Maria) and Chris, Josie’s husband, when they heard about our planned itinerary. „Aha, and all in one day...?!“. Anyhow, we had to skip the original plan to take the logging road from Port Renfrew up to Cowichan Lake. The rental form suggested that these are forbidden roads, or simply no goes. Still, the scenery was beautiful and we enjoyed oceanfront breakfast in Jordan River – we are sure it would have been even nicer without the fog. It took us 75 (timed!) minutes to cover 66 km and that wasn’t because of the fog but speed limits and winding roads. By the way, Markus is driving the RAM 3500 „Heavy Duty“ as if he hadn’t done anything else in his life. Were rewarded with spectacular views on our way back along Sooke Road, then up north Malahat Highway (TransCanada#1), highways 19 and 19A to Black Creek. The GyPSy guide is really neat. Although it is a fairly new product and covers only the main touristic parts of BC at this time, it provides interesting commentary along the way. E.g. geology of Vancouver Island, short introductions on towns and suggestions where to stop. The latter was actually very helpful on Malahat Highway as it announced scenic view points ahead of time. GyPSy is easily installed and connects thru the radio band, so it automatically starts commentary once it receives a signal. Rental is 20,- CAD per day.
Stopped to pick up some BC wine along the way and are at „L50 – Lattitude 50“ at the time writing this blog (a I forgot to ask the folks at the RV Resort if they had internet access (Dr. Freud?), so I prepare the script for times when we have access again. By the way, the wine is a bit too sour for my taste buds.
We arrived around 18.00 hrs. at Saratoga Beach Resort. Very nice stretch of beach with panoramic views of the Sunshine Coast and the Coast Mountains in the distance. Campground is fairly small with 30 slots, probably half of them are long-term campers or frequents. We had L50 on the beach while the sun set, talked to a Dutch bird and photography addict who lives in the Fraser Valley and visits Saratoga for 15 consecutive years now. While chatting with this gentlemen, our neighbour of slot 28 introduced himself to us as such (we hadn’t seen him before but obviously had been seen). Turns out that he was Dutch himself and had already heard about the other fella... we took the chance to retire as we hadn’t had dinner yet and I was developping a cold.