Well, I’m back from my vacation. A week ago Friday I drove from Los Hideous to Eugene, OR. It took about 13 hours. The next morning I visited my friend in Hoquiam, WA. I gave her some (new) vertical blinds I had and she was happy about them. (She does a lot of housework, most recently putting in new stairs.) We hung out and watched Titus and Gladiator on DVD. Titus was awesome. I told her I’ll give her my extra volume of Shakespeare when I dig it out.
Sunday I drove up to Bellingham to visit another friend. He’s buying a house in Birch Bay and Monday we went there to meet with the inspector. I think the house is in poor condition, but he’s getting it for $11,000 under the appraised value. He says he’ll put in “sweat equity” (a lot of sweat equity) and get a house cheap.
Tuesday we drove my Jeep up to Tsawassen, B.C. to catch the ferry to Nanaimo. We were told we might not make it onto this ferry because the lines were already long. When they started loading they stopped us right at the “wait” line. Then they said we could try getting on, but we might not fit. I drove onto the ferry and they let us on with my rear bumper about a foot over the aft line. Just made it. Light rain accopmanied us on our way up to Campbell River where we had lunch and got some Canadian currency. After eating we got on the ferry for Quadra Island.
The Whisky Point Lodge (?) is right off of the ferry landing. We got our stuff into the room and took off on a trail behind the hotel. I saw a deer. When we got back shortly after 20:00 we went to the pub for a bite to eat. Nope. No food after 20:00. So we went to the diner. Nope. Closes at 20:00. Market? 20:00. We ended up at a rather fancy-looking lodge, the only place that was open.
We decided not to catch the ferry back to Campbell River and drive to the western side of Vancouver Island. Instead we took a hike on Quadra. Elisabeth Spit is an easy trail, but we walked on the rocky beach. It was a little rough going on the rocks, but I found a piece of driftwood my friend could use as a hiking stick. We saw an eagle. When we reached the end of the spit we took the trail back to the Jeep. I carry a machete under the seat in case I need to cut brush to get out of soft sand when I’m off-road, and we used it to chop down the new hiking stick. That was a little rough so we used the saw on my Swiss Army knife to make it better. I used the machete to strip off the bark. The stick turned out great!
After that we decided to take a “moderate” trail up to a lake at the north end of the island. The directions said to start hiking on an old logging road. When we got to the top of the rocky road there was no trail. Oops. We hiked down and drove up the dirt road a bit more, finding the trailhead farther on. We had a good hike through the rain forest. I was huffing and puffing on the uphill parts. “Moderate”? It was for me, but I think that it would be easy if I was in shape. We saw frogs and a noisy loon. We ended up hiking about 7.5 km on Wednesday.
Thursday was the drive back to Bellingham. My friend and I talked business on the ferry. Nothing else much happened on Thursday.
Friday my friend bought a DVD player. We watched Seven. After that we saw The Others, but the other friends did not show up.
Saturday I began the trek home. I saw a deer. I left Bellingham at about 10:30 and arrived in Anderson, CA (south of Redding) at about 21:30. I fell alseep at 22:30, but the a/c caused my nose to run at about 02:30. Couldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up at 03:30 and left after a shower and a pot of coffee at 04:30. I got home at noon.
The Canadians were as friendly as ever. Being in Hell-A, I’m not used to people being so nice. We had the radio on up there and a song said “Have a nice day / As the Americans say”. Funny, I hadn’t noticed that before. We do say that a lot!
I can’t wait to move to Washington so I can enjoy some of the trails around there. And the cool wet weather. And being closer to my (female) friend in Hoquiam 
.