2005/08 Alaska Trip - The Island and home - Victoria and Duncan |
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Dear All,
This is part 4 of the story of our trip to Alaska, but it has nothing to do with Alaska, as this part covers our trip home from British Columbia to Minnesota, with a substantial side trip to Vancouver Island, and another to Alberta’s prairies.
Some of these paragraphs and photographs are only available via the family's userids and passwords |
After bombing around Alaska and the Yukon for five weeks, Sandie was looking forward to some extended quality time with her grandson. I was worried that we’d get in the way as Karen and Stewart would be busy building their house. There was also a schedule problem as we had volunteered to transport her brother's inheritance from BC out to Lake Ontario, preferably before the snow started flying! As it turned out, the two weeks in Port Alberni were a good rest (for us, anyway!) and the house-building had not really started yet.
We were taking things easy, so part 4 is not as eventful as the earlier parts.
Monday, August 15th
That morning, we had taken John and Edna to Vancouver Airport for their flight back to Australia, and then crossed to Vancouver Island on the ferry with our truck.
However, our first stop was at Sandie's sister in Victoria.
Tuesday August 16th
Our first stop before leaving Victoria was at the Rockhound Shop to look at rock saws. We didn’t buy one, but it is a great store and we came away with some soapstone and a carving kit. Then we were off on a mission to look for an native-art crib board for Christina. .
The obvious place to start looking was the cultural centre in Duncan. The centre is located on the Cowichan River,
its name is Quw’utsun’, and its dance troupe is called Khowutzun. I think these are all different spellings of the same name, so it must be tough to learn spelling in that community. The centre had been remodeled as well as re-spelt since we were last there, and we found that the gift shop had been relocated to the middle of Duncan. We found a good board there but just e-mailed a photo of it to Christina for review.
We also took a look in Chemainus, famous as the “city of murals”, but more accurately as the city of souvenir stores, but found nothing suitable. Then it was time to drive over the hump to Karen and Stewart’s place in Port Alberni. It is an oddly-spread town, with the old part clustered around the paper mill and pier, and the newer part hugging the highway that connects the rest of the Island with the west coast.
Next.