Day 3!!

Well day 3 saw us leaving our B&B and heading North again in the rental car. We had to be in Port Hardy by 1 ish and we made it. Barely. The drive was about 4 hours and it rained almost the whole time. On and off. We stopped at one town to buy more batteries for the camera and spent almost a hour looking for a fuel station and buying batteries. The town was amazingly short on fuel stations. Port Hardy was worse. They only had 1 that we could find. Oh and the price of fuel jumped 12 cents between the 2 towns. (about 2 hours apart!!) There was quite a bit of traffic on the road mostly truckers and RVs pulling boats. Papa passed LOTS of them and managed to get out in front and then it was clear sailing all the way to Port Hardy. When we got to Port Hardy we checked into our hotel (honeymoon suite!!) and topped off the car before bringing it back. The car rental guy was the friendliest guy we meet on our entire trip. He chatted about everything. Telling us a lot about Port Hardy and what to do and where to eat. He suggested we take a trail down to the river and watch the bears come out to eat the salmon that were getting ready to go up river. Papa and I thought about it for a bit but ultimately decided NOT to. In a car... yes. On foot 20 minutes walk from the nearest town?? No thanks. We've seen lots of bears and didn't feel like being prey. Though it would have been fun in a car. Instead we found a local diner and had lunch and walked along the few streets that had little stores on them. But it really was a foul dock area. Smelly and growing and gross and we didn't spend too much time there. Of all the docks we saw this was the worst. The people were not super friendly and there was very little to do. Thankfully we only had the afternoon and evening to spend there. So we headed back to the hotel and watched the wharf from the balcony and took pictures of the boats where we didn't have to smell gross rotting fish. On the other side of the bay from us was a cannery and a log yard. The cannery had fishing boats unloading (though we couldn't see much.) but the log yard was COOL. They had these little tough boats that blew BLACK smoke (which is how we noticed them.. you could barely see them in the logs) and they worked as skidders and moved the logs here and there. Then a self loader loaded his truck with these logs that the skidder boats brought him. It was neat to watch them move the logs around in the water. The salmon were congregating in the harbor and doing a lot of jumping. We could hear them every few seconds..Plop. Plop. It was cool. Even when it got dark we could still hear them. They will go up the rivers soon. The room had a big tub and we had a nice soak to get the smell off us. Watched TV for a bit (They had a VCR but no place to rent movies?? Weird town.) and went to bed early so we could be ready for our Ferry shuttle at 5 am!!! The room at the hotel.

A salmon jumping.

The little skidder boats.

A Port Hardy sign.

The wooden carrot. If you can, read the sign. Kinda neat.

A huge sail boat that came into Port Hardy while we were there. The man working on the boat below thought that the sailboats mast was at least 110 feet tall!!

A character boat in dry dock.

On the road to Port Hardy.

At Port Hardy... See the guy running to get into his picture!

A rain speckled view of a mountain on the way to Port Hardy.

We saw this view a lot during the 1st few hours of our drive.

Some cute signs at our B&B.

Our B&B.

Day 2.

The next morning we ate chocolate crepes at the Bed and Breakfast with about 20 other guests and visited with our table mates from Dallas Texas who though we were amazing to have 4 small children and on our 10 anniversary trip. They also thought it was funny the way Papa and I shared our fruit cups. Papa doesn't like pineapple or kiwi so he gave all of his to me and then after eating all his and most of mine I handed over the rest of my fruit cup for him to finish. After breakfast we left the B&B and headed back down town to take some pictures and have some lunch at the Swans. Papa found the Swans on the Internet before we went and they have micro brews so he had to go!! They also have great food and a beautiful deck to eat it on. Papa got a 6 sampler of beer and loved them all. I had one of their root beer and it was wonderful too. After lunch we headed out to Butchart Gardens over 55 acres of flower gardens. We took a LOT of pictures and (sorry Mom) decided we would pass ever going with Grandma Griggs. LOL. Seriously we walked through it in about 3 hours and Grandma Griggs, we are sure, could spend DAYS there. We would have liked to see it at night too but we had to get a move on. Don't worry Grandma we are planning on putting the pictures on CD and sending them to you!! The Gardens are wonderful. Awesome even. What is also fabulous about them is that part of it (the sunken garden) is in an old pit. There used to be a cement factory there and they completely obliterated any signs of the factory. Oh actually there is one left. There is an old tower standing behind the sunken gardens but other then that. Nothing.
After leaving the gardens Papa and I headed out North up the island to find a place to stop for the night. We had to get to Port Hardy by 1pm the next day or they would charge us for an extra day on the rental car. We had a booklet of B&B's and we drove to one in Nanaimo and they had a room so we left our stuff there and headed out for a night on the town. We went out for supper, we went to a brew pub and Papa had a few samplers. After supper we headed to a movie and then to bed. What a great day. The movie was "The Time Travelers Wife" and it's very good. We both enjoyed it. If you liked "The Lake House" you'll love this one!!

I really like Tugs. Here is another one.

Where we had lunch.

A house I loved!! They were working on it but boy was it nice!!

The Bed & Breakfast. It was build in 1912. I think. :)