You are my sunshine

We set off on Wednesday with our lovely niece Rachelle driving, for a little trip to the famous 'Sunshine Coast' an area that though part of the Canadian mainland is reached by ferry across Howes Sound.

The ferry ride was only about 50 minutes, but the wait at the terminal in Horeshoe Bay was quite long as the first ferry of the day had in some way broken down, no one told us how, in fact no one told us it had broken down until it was quite late arriving. Still we got on to the replacement ferry and had not had to wait as long as the man at the front of the queue who had been there for the first ferry sailing at 6.30 am (we were there for the 11.20)

On arrival at Gibsons landing we had a lovely lunch at the famous Mollys Reach, not many of you will know this, but it featured in a 1970s and 1980's Canadian tv series called "The Beachcombers". Anyway we were served cheerfully, promptly and the sandwiches were reasonably priced and absolutely delicious. After lunch we visited the tourist information office and the cheerful and efficient ladies there found us a lovely bed and breakfast in Sechelt, the Seschelt Inlet B & B on Snookumchuk Road.

We pottered of towards Sechelt, it was a bit rainy, but we saw fantastic sceenery. B C is so beautiful and you don't get all those big, green trees (often covered in hanging moss) without a bit of rain. The B & B was wonderful, it had a hot tub a view of a fantastic body of water and mountains and our breakfast the following morning was substantial and really tasty. That was just as well, as our stop for lunch in Pender Harbour was distinctly disappointing, for $9.25 Brian got the saddest bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon you have ever seen, no salad with it, nothing but a very small and poorly filled bagel.

After the sad bagel we went off to our next accommodation (found for us by Jean our landlady of the previous night) and checked in. 'The Lodge at Gunboat Bay', run by Laura and Yvonne is also wonderful, fantastically comfortable beds, lovely bathroom, friendly welcome, 3 well behaved dogs and one quiet cat, several Yurts one of which was a studio where wonderful yarn was spun and made into woven and knitted things. The peace and quiet was fantastic and the view so lovely.

After checking in we went off to Egmont to walk along a forest path to see the sea bore, if you look on a map you will see that the sea comes into this very long inlet and the retreating tide meets the incoming tide and a natural phenomenon occurs. After the walk we drove into Egmont (a very small place) stopping at Egmont Wilderness Lodge hoping to get our evening meal there but they had been varnishing their floor and the restaurant was closed, our second eating failure, the Ruby Lake resort was also closed and that meant no chance of seeing the paintings of one Joni Mitchell, their 'neighbour' that are sometimes in their gallery. Leaning over the balcony of the Egmont Wilderness lodge and looking at the fantastic view I asked the owner where he went for holiday and he just looked at the view and sort of shrugged in a 'who needs to go anywhere else' sort of way. We ended up having our supper at the Back Eddy Pub, lovely, good beer and good quality good value food (making the sad bagel seem even sadder)

Our rest was very restful and after another wonderful breakfast (and awarding best bed for 5 months award) we set off to meander our way back to the ferry. We had a nice walk at Smugglers cove (very amusing meeting with some Beavers, 'Chuck, where have you put your woggle' 'Dont climb that tree, I SAID DONT Climb) and another meal at Mollys Reach, we reached the ferry and set off home to Vancouver and Rachelle and Sheldon's house, tired but happy.

Tessa