A Weekend on Salt Spring

Our adventure on a little piece of yuppie paradise.

Like all of my island trips, this one begins with a ferry trip. The sailing from Vancouver to Salt Spring is a bit of a Milk Run - you visit Galiano, Mayne, and Pender before visiting Salt Spring. The 3 hour sailing gives you time to decompress from city life.

Afraid of ferry food, we waited until we got on the island for lunch. I've always been fascinated by the tree house cafe - a small cafe built under a shade tree in ganges. It's always been too busy when I wanted to go, but one of the benefits of off season is no line ups! The Treehouse has really good grilled tofu (Island made) and bread (Barb's Buns) so lunch was great.

After a bit of shopping we decided to check into our Bed and Breakfast. I decided to stay at Beddis House - a 4 and a half star luxury bed and breakfast. Beddis House has a stable house with three rooms, and a main house with a reading room and a tea service at 4pm. The rooms have a wood burning stove (and a log provided every night), nice beds (our was pair of twin's pushed together) and a wonderful claw footed bath tub. It's a nice place to stay, but I think I liked our Galiano B&B more.

Settled in, we went for a short walk to the check the area out. The bed and breakfast is set on ocean front property with a small white beach. The view is of Captain Passage and Pender Island. Sun was setting quick so we decided to head into town for dinner.

Getting back from dinner (Moby's was busy) we took in the beautiful clear sky. I've always want to try some star trail photos (I tried some on Galiano without luck). I spent some time online before hand and found I wanted my brightest lens (my 50mm, f1.4), long ish exposures (10 minuets) and fast film (unfortunately, I had velvia loaded - ISO 50.) I wasn't sure what I would get, but I tried anyways.

The next bit of fun I've always wanted to do was draw with light. (I've played with sparklers before with good results) Using the same lens and film, I used my pocket flashlight to paint Andrea in while she tried various poses. The narrow depth of field rendered the closer Andrea's a little blurry. Overall, I'm happy with the results.

Walking back from the beach we went to sleep, ready for our next day.

Full tummy, we drove off for our day of adventure. We weren't very far down the road before we noticed the pigs! The pigs had escaped from a nearby by farm and were madly rooting in the soil beside the road. At first the pigs were a bit timid but after a few minuets they got used to our presence. The pigs are using their snots to overturn the first few inches of soil and eat something growing under the surface. They make a pretty big mess of the ground cover and can overturn a surprisingly large area quickly.

Churches of Southern Salt Spring

Our first tourist destination is the churches on the southern end of the Island. There are three notable churches, Burgoyne United Church (1887), St. Paul's Roman Catholic Church (1880) and St. Mary's Anglican Church (1894). These are all small churches, and built within 15 years of each other.

Duck Creek Park

So it's a rainy afternoon on Salt Spring, what do you do? Go for a hike of course! I printed a few hikes off from the internet, and the Duck Creek trip came recommended so we drove up and did a little walk.

Duck Creek is on the western side of the Island, close to Vesuvius and based on the plant life, it gets it's fair share of rain. Andrea and I kept commenting that this place looked like the backdrop to so many Robert Bateman paintings (an Island painter) but when I got back to the B&B that night and looked through a book of his work, I couldn't find anything that I could firmly place in Duck Creek.

The hike is over a network of paths so you can choose to hike near the creek (under the trees) or in more open fields. The field is quite short (in most places) so I wonder if it is used for grazing local animals.

Mount Maxwell

By this point it's nearing the end of the day and I'm starting to look for places to take sunset photos. On my last trip I enjoyed the views from Mount Maxwell so I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately the weather just wasn't cooperating and the sun set into a never ending bank of fog.

One positive thing I did notice over my last trip is that Mount Maxwell is now protected in a park. Texada land corporation had logging rights to as much as 10% of the island, and the Land Conservancy has bought some substantial portions to make up a trust. Andrea and I got back in the car and drove (in the snow) back down to Ganges for dinner, this time at Restaurant House Piccolo.

Another day, another adventure. We had horse back riding booked at 11, and we had finished breakfast at 10 - we needed something to do for an hour. looking up in the guide book, I found a reference to a petroglyph. We went out to investigate.

Horseback Riding

We originally booked our ride for Saturday afternoon but it was too rainy for a ride. Thankfully, Carol was flexible about the time and Sunday morning looked good. I hadn't been riding in 15 years, Andrea in at least 3 so we booked a shorter (1 hour) trip.

The ride was through fields and forest around the Mount Maxwell park area. Carol rode with us and talked about life on the island, selling to tourists and raising horses.