Our Vacation

We're back from our holiday to Vancouver Island. We arrived home yesterday afternoon at approximately 5:00 pm. I don't know why exactly but it was a long drive home from Kelowna. It was the normal 8 hour drive but it just seemed long.

In contrast, the vacation seemed very, very short. We spent a total of 7 nights at Cameron Lake which is longer than our previous vacations but it went by faster than any other time spent there. I can honestly say that I had less fun there this time too. This should have made the time drag but the opposite was true. We spent a day of either side of Cameron Lake in Kelowna, our pit stop destination while traveling. The weather was great and we were once again very, very lucky. The only day that was a little off was Saturday at Cameron Lake. There was a terrible wind storm, no clouds, just lots and lots of wind. So windy that we did not get into the lake all day. There were actually white caps on the waves. We spent that day going into Qualicum Beach and Coombs. So it was still a good day just not a beach day.

The best day I spent there was the day before we were going to leave the island. Jacob and I went to Qualicum Beach and we lucked out and arrived during low tide. It's my favorite time to be at a beach. Jonathan spent the time talking to real estate people in town and missed all the fun. Jacob and I walked along the beach, walked in the water and just explored everything. We saw so many wonderful things. Jacob found what I could best describe as a sand dollar bed. The sand dollars were everywhere. I've never seen so many in my life ... it was incredible and I was so happy. Jacob and I picked up so many to see if they were still alive or not. Many were alive and we would skip them back into the surf. The ones that were dead as a doornail and not smashed we took. We filled up a little sandwich ziplock bag and took no more once that bag was full. It was great. Jacob also found a sunflower starfish. It was dead but a rare find all the same. I took a photo of it. I've only seen one once before, years ago, it was alive but I didn't take a photo of it. He also found a jellyfish. It was beautiful and I took a few photos of it. I hadn't touched one before so touching this one was fun. He found an anemone and dug it out of the sand ... it was gross ... not like the open ones you see in tide pools. This one was closed up and it was difficult to determine what it actually was. Anemone was my best guess as to what we were looking at. He ran around the sand poking his finger into holes and was squirted by clams ... luckily I have video of that ... it was funny. We thought they were geoducks but then he found a clam half buried and we came to the conclusion that it was indeed clams squirting water out of those holes. We had a really good time. Jacob and I decided that we will spend a couple of nights in Qualicum Beach, right on the water next year so we don't miss a moment of fun.

Next year I also want to go back to the west side of the island. It seems like such a shame to go such a long way and not see Tofino, Ucelet and Long Beach. It's really too wonderful to miss and I regret not going this time around. But the decision was to take the kids to see Victoria instead. The restaurant I love was still there and we went there for lunch ... yummy ! We walked around the inner harbour which was quite nice. We also walked down FanTan Alley, which I really love (I don't know why). We drove down the street where I used to live which was very cool. You can see the ocean looking down the road. Jacob, Jillian and I walked on the water break just down that same street. That was sort of cool. I wanted to go walk on the little beach at the end of the block too but Jonathan seemed to be in such a rush and we just ended up leaving Victoria and going back to Cameron Lake. It wasn't quite the trip I wanted it to be but at least we went.

So our family holiday has come and gone. It was good but I know it could have been better. I'll be doing the planning next year and we will see more and do more. We were talking and I think we will go for longer period of time next year, perhaps 2 weeks and we'll spend some time in Victoria, Qualicum Beach and Cameron Lake. I still want to live there.