Wednesday 3rd February
Rain
Thursday 4th February
C to hairdresser
Finished Brideshead the movie – a little compressed (compared to the TV series) but pretty good.
Friday 5th February
Gloomy day.
Saturday 6th February
Overcast and rainy but took a short bike ride anyway.
Sunday 7th February
Shopping day with the highlight of dragging some young idiot (who had tried to drive his SUV across a ditch), out of the ditch.
Monday 8th February
Family day in BC. We’d arranged to meet our friend Ken’s brother at a Chinese buffet that turned out to be closed at lunchtime. So we ended up back at the Turmeric Restaurant (our Christmas Day lunch spot) with Phil and partner Chris.
Tuesday 9th February
Movie of the day: Hail Caesar – NOT a Cohen standout.
It may rain a lot here but how about blossoms in February?
Wednesday 10th February
Since we can’t stay in Pedder Bay for the rest of our stay on the Island we had booked into a campground north of Victoria. Today was the day to take a drive and visit.
The Oceanside campground is huge, our site number would have been 519 and that wasn’t the total number of sites.
Anyhow, we were not impressed by the surroundings. The campground is on an Indian reservation which does not look in great shape at all.
While we were near Sydney, a seaside resort we took a look. Maybe in better weather it would have been more impressive.
Feeling somewhat despondent, we dropped in at Weir’s Beach where we’d checked before for a spot with no luck. This time they had an opening in March and we tentatively took it.
Thursday 11th February
Received a refund invoice from Oceanside minus $20 cancellation fee and so to Weir's Beach to register
Friday 12th February
Bike ride for me along the Galloping Goose trail.
Movie of the day: Mad Max Fury Road – Way too much action for old fogies.
Saturday 13th February
Monthly run the generator time – a lesson learned the hard way.
Windows 10 wants to do a major upgrade and it’s not going well.
Sunday 14th February
Can’t even update Windows 10 off a USB stick (the solution when I upgraded the first time). Apparently I’m not alone!!!
Food shopping day.
Monday 15th February
Rain
Tuesday 16th February
A walk round Metchosin Park. We’re noticing a pattern with our walks. Mostly we get to see a lot of towering tree trunks.
We don’t see this too often though.
Or a giant plant pot.
Movie of the day: Bridge of Spies – Most excellent movie, that Speilberg guy can make a movie.
Wednesday 17th February
Downtown Victoria for a visit to C’s doctor. Value Village for some waterproof pants for me – shoulda got some sooner.
Thursday 18th February
Met with Jill and Robin for lunch at the Royal Roads Cafe followed by a trip around the park.
The main building is impressive.
If anyone should have seen the movie Deadpool, although not credited at the end of the movie, it was used as the place Colossus and his buddy Negasonic Teenage Warhead were hanging out.
Here’s the facts:
The back of the building is pretty cool too.
Since it had been raining like crazy for a few days there was some serious water flow on our walk.
Dire warning near the shore.
Love this tiny aqueduct.
Friday 19th February
Another rainy day, so I watched movie Carol wasn’t interested in: The Hunger Games – I can see why young folk like the series.
2nd movie of the day: Steve Jobs – Another winner.
Saturday 20th February
To Blinkhorn Park for a walk. Nothing very picture-worthy there.
Sunday 21st February
Food shopping day.
When I was walking Buddy, Rick, the park superintendent gave me the claws/legs from a sizable Dungeness crab. So we ate it with garlic butter. It was tasty but as someone pointed out, anything is good with garlic butter.
Monday 22nd February
Investigating Windows 10 fix. According to the Microsoft ‘help’ site the best thing to do is blow it all away, reformat the drive and load from scratch. It used to be that Microsoft would blame Windows problems on viruses, now it’s shifted to ‘data corruption’ i.e. it’s still YOUR fault.
Langford has a lake of the same name with a trail that goes around a good part of it.
It was another gloomy day but no heavy rain.
Tuesday 23rd February
Stared backing up my data ready for the big purge.
Bike ride for me.
Wednesday 24th February
Vet trip for Buddy to get his nails done and have some glands expressed.
Thursday 25th February
Started the re-install and it goes (relatively) smoothly.
Roche Cove Park for a hike. We didn’t go to the lookout but we talked to someone who did and they said it was a great view of ... tree tops. But there’s always a weird tree.
And on the drive back we stopped to see the Washington State Olympic mountains just across the straits.
Movie of the day: Joy – A little Nicholas Sparks-ish.
Friday 26th February
Putting the computer back together.
Saturday 27th February
We always said before we left we would have breakfast in the marina cafe and times a runnin’ out so today’s the day. A tasty egg McMuffin and good Starbuck’s coffee.
Movie of the day: Animalisa – animated movies should do something live actors can’t and this doesn’t.
Sunday 28th February
Food shopping.
Movie of the day: Trumbo – Very good on all fronts.
Monday 29th February
Doing some preparation for the move. Took a trip to Weir’s Beach to suss out our new spot.
The Oscars
Tuesday 1st March
Time to move to our new location: Weir’s Beach. Although we’re not exactly on the beach it’s just 100yds away.
Wednesday 2nd March
Another rainy day settling into our new spot.
Thursday 3rd March
The Internet here is definitely not industrial strength so we signed up for Shaw Internet and today’s the day we get it.
Movie of the day: Ex Machina – Wow! Smart Sci-Fi.
Friday 4th March
Buddy to the vet again, some kind of infection on his tail.
Saturday 5th March
After 4 months here we now have continuous cell-phone service, so making lotstsa calls.
Took long walk around the neighbourhood, up to Galloping Goose and back along the road.
Lots of cavorting lambs – not a common sight in Canada. Note the black sheep.
Vegan Shane who works at Weir's Beach pointed out they would be on someone's table at Easter.
Close to the campground lives an artist, this is in their garden.
Sunday 6th March
Weekly food shopping.
Monday 7th March
Received really inexpensive Bluetooth headphones from Amazon. Hey, and they work just fine.
Movie of the day: All Is Lost - Must see for all sailors.
Tuesday 8th March
To the movies for Deadpool – OK, that really is THE LAST super hero movie we go see!
Wednesday 9th March
High winds and rain, enough to knock the power out for several hours but not enough to deter a couple of crazy kite surfers.
This time we have a working generator so no interruption of service.
Thursday 10th March
Went to Jill and Robin’s for lunch and then a walk round somewhere close. Given the continuing high winds Jill was leery about being near trees.
Interesting street ornament.
Friday 11th March
Rain
Saturday 12th March
Went for another walk with Jill and Robin through an old military complex.
Sunday 13th March
Weekly food shopping.
More high winds and tree branches hitting the RV fortunately with no damage to the trailer.
Movie of the day: Trainwreck – a rare thing, a smart comedy
Monday 14th March
Rain
Tuesday 15th March
To the movies: Zootopia – Terrific animated movie.
Wednesday 16th March
The truck has occasionally been blowing white smoke but now it’s doing it far more frequently so we made an appointment for it to be looked at and rented a car with our Avion points.
Thursday 17th March
First order of business is pickup the rental car and then head over to meet Robin and Jill at their daughter Tara’s.
They have two Fainting goats that live in a tree house:
Fainting goats’ defence mechanism is falling down if they’re panicked - not too effective.
They have four horses: Sheriff, Hotspot, Zapper and Trigger.
We were there to take them a walk. Take horses for a 'walk'? Well you can if they're this size.
.
Shetland ponies are small, bu these guys.
So we took them and two dogs for a walk. This is Carol with Hotspot.
After dropping off the truck for diagnosis, back at Weir’s Beach we get a rare glimpse of Mount Baker.
The snow covered peak is 80 Miles away and that’s Victoria in the foreground.
