Today, Bob and I decided to explore another park with Rafa for our daily long hike. This time, we went across the island to the Mount Work Regional Park, and it is aptly named, as we did have our work cut out for us on the Summit Trail. While easy to follow, it was mostly rutty and rocky, so we spent a lot of time focusing on our footing — especially on the way down. Rafa was much better at it.
We have had a fairly tame, close-to-the-condo few days, as Rafa has been having some stomach troubles that has had us (mostly Bob) getting up in the middle of the night for some potty runs (literally). He’s been otherwise fine in terms of energy, interest in food, etc., but we did get him into the vet the other day to ensure nothing serious was going on. As we suspected, the avid scrounger has likely eaten something that is disagreeing with him, so we are giving him prescribed probiotics as well as a deworming pill. We have kept up with walks but closer to home.
Today, we stumbled on a new trail near the Flight Path around the airport. The short trail runs along Patricia Bay, and it allowed us a closer view of the bay than we’ve had before.
Mid afternoon we headed out to do a bit of sight seeing. We started by checking out the inside of the airport that we’ve been walking around.
We then drove to the small community of Brentwood to check out the ferry and the Brentwood Bay Resort.
We have been taking photos of Sidney over the past few days — mostly of Beacon Street (the Main Street through town) and along the Waterway Path. There are a number of benches along with Beacon that have statues on them. See below.
The views along the waterfront change daily. The pics below are from our walk with Rafa this morning.
Tonight Bob and I went to the Church and State Winery and had a lovely tasting experience.
Today, we were off to another of the 34 parks listed on the Capital Regional District (CRD) Parks and Trails map that we picked up earlier in our stay at the Sidney Tourist Office just a few blocks up the street from where we are staying. Today, we were off to Thetis Lake Regional Park, which at 30 minutes from here, was our farthest drive to date.
Thetis Lake Regional Park was established in 1958 as Canada’s first nature sanctuary and has over 40 kilometers of trails. We combined the Lower Thetis Lake trail and Upper Thetis Lake Trail to get lovely views of both lakes and beaches, plus more impressively tall trees and rock formations, that made for a great outing.
It was the first park we have had to pay at, and that was only $2.20 Canadian ($1.66 US) for day parking. Below are pics from today’s tramp.
Today, Bob, Rafa, and I went back to the first park that the homeowners had taken us to when we first arrived for the walk through— Island View Beach Regional Park. It’s an easy 10 to 12 minute drive south down Highway 17 to the park along the shore of the Haro Strait. The park itself was as busy as we’ve seen with lots of dog walkers — townies like us but also campers at the park as well. There is a short walking path, but you can walk up and down the shore as well, depending on the tide levels. We were there at relatively high tide, so mostly stayed on the trail for ease of walking.
As you’ll see from the pics, it’s a lovely area and is also a bird habitat for resident and migratory birds.
One of the friends of our homeowners had told us about the Saanich Fair that is held over Labor Day Weekend, as I was in 4-H for 8 years and showed exhibits at the fair I am always interested in checking out other fairs. We went today after a trip to the dog park with Rafa. The fair was bigger than we were expecting with a large midway but also lots of exhibits from 4-Hers and maybe others — from animals to food to flowers and stitchery. The weather was sunning and in the mid-60s F, so a lovely day although I’m used to warmer weather for fairs.
Today, we drove about 15 minutes to Bear Hill Regional Park to summit Bear Hill with Rafa for views of the surrounding area. The description of the trail is 220 meters of glacier-scoured rock. It was definitely one of the rockiest trails we’ve done recently and required some serious attention to footing.
We did a loop trail add-on after the summit for a longer hike. We ran into quite a few dogs and their people towards the end of the hike.
Bob, Rafa, and I did a 10k walk today at Elk/Beaver Lake Regional Park. This is a 1,072 acre park containing Elk Lake and Beaver Lake. We began our walk near Elk Lake.
We have been exploring a couple of new parks with Rafa, both on lead and off. Yesterday we went to Cole’s Bay Regional Park for some ball fetching. It was quiet, so Rafa got quite a bit of off-lead time in.
Today, we had a good walk around many trails at John Dean Provincial Park. From the website, the park is “situated on top of Mount Newton on Southern Vancouver Island and overlooks the pastoral Saanich Peninsula, the Gulf Islands, and the Cascade Mountains.” We headed toward a viewpoint, but t was a bit obscured with the still smoky air.
Bob had read about a 9.3 km walking/biking trail around the Victoria International Airport, which is actually located here in Sidney — less than a 10 minute drive from the condo. We thought we’d tackle it today (Saturday) as we assumed the parks might be busy. This trail was also being used but with its length was not crowded.
The path goes around the perimeter of the airport and has signs along the route highlighting some of the history of the area. We saw people walking, running, biking, and skating on it. It made for a lovely walk as we watched the airport traffic (both commercial and small planes).
Peckish Travels