Trip to Victoria

 We were barely back from Mahood and we headed off to Victoria for a week.  Syb and Dave were also staying at Dorothea's house so we slept the first night in Dorothea's tent in the back yard. Glamping!

Above we posed for a selfie at the community garden in Oaklands Park near Dorothea's house.

We were all in town to attend my nephew Stephen and his bride Heidi's reception at their home in Nanaimo.  They got married the week before via a helicopter trip to an alpine lake up one of the inlets on the coast.

Here's the 3 sisters in our finery:

2

And here's the whole family:

Heidi and Stephen are 4th from left (with dog) and 5th from left.

The next day we went hiking with Dorothea's hiking group to the Cowichan River.

Fish ladder on Cowichan River

1

Looking out over the rapids

Big Leaf Maple

The next day we visited Gowlland Tod Provincial Park (another park added to my life list), situated on the very attractive Tod Inlet.

You can swim at the beach here, but we prefer fresh water so we stopped at Pease Lake, also within the park boundaries, and took a dip.

Here we were delighted to see

Crayfish!

I've never seen them in the wild before (though I've eaten them boiled on Tybee Island in Georgia).  They looked huge magnified by the water but they were probably about 4 inches long.