Seals and Salmon

I know that I'm in a beautiful province when I taken 101 photos before noon.

We started the day at the Community Farm Store in Duncan which sells nothing but organic products.  We love looking in grocery stores when we travel and this one didn't disappoint us.

Most of the produce has signs telling which farm grew the items.

Not only do I not want to eat water buffalo, I particularly do not want to eat any organ parts of said water buffalo.

This Estevan boy loved spotting this tuna.

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There were more rows of saurkraut than this one.

We then went to Cowichan Bay where I loved the clouds reflected in the water.

The seals made us laugh as they were incredibly noisy and then all of them would stop barking for  about a minute before they started up again.  I imagined they were having their Sunday church service with lots of hymns and a few silent prayers.

This was the only boat on the bay that Bob and I could afford.

Cowichan Bay reminded me of you, Jocelyn, since you are the only person I know with a real Cowichan sweater.  Folks, my sister bought one in the sixties when she was a teenager.  She can probably tell you what she paid for it and she still has it ... and it still fits!  Now rather than me having a true Cowichan sweater, my mom had an aunt knit a fake one for me.  This aunt was a terrible knitter and she was even worse at putting a zipper in a knit sweater.  In those days you didn't just throw out a miserable piece of knitted clothing so I wore it and have pictures of me wearing it.  Those pictures will never appear on this blog.

Cowichan Bay has lots of little shops.

At Udder Guys Elizabeth found soft drinks from Victoria.

We lunched at this cafe which has been featured on You Gotta Here.

This building is from 1863 (older than our country) and the windows pretty much look original to the building.

Bob and I then crossed the Malahat to see a salmon spawning area.  Lots of others were there too on this beautiful Sunday afternoon.

This family had along Larry, their sheepadoodle.  They said they made up the name as they haven't come across any other dogs which are a cross  between a sheep dog and a poodle.  Larry was easier to pet than Finn as I didn't have to bend down to get to him.

The salmon come up the river to spawn and then die shortly after so salmon carcasses are everywhere.  That brings in the gulls and bald eagles to feast on the remains.  It's a great place to teach children about the circle of life.

Back in Chemainus I spent some time by the water.

I've been typing this, not in Tofino where we planned to be tonight, but rather from Vancouver.  We nixed our plan for Tofino when we saw snow predicted between there and Chemainus.  We can't have the stage manager stranded on the other side of the island.  She has a few days off so has come along with us.