HAPPY BIRTHDAY & HAPPY TRAVELS, CATHIE! HOPE TO SEE YOU ON THE ROAD SOON.
Day 243 – Cathie, because we haven’t had a signal, your birthday greetings are belated, but know that we’ve been thinking of you!
We didn’t take any pictures today. We’ve always been taking a camera or two with us. We never know when we’ll see a bear (or at least we hope we will)! But today was not a day for pictures.
The campground has been filling up somewhat for the weekend, but nearly every site is marked “Reserved”. No one has filled many of these so-called-reserved campsites, though. This is something we’ve been seeing more & more of, and we’ve read complaints about this: people are making reservations early because due to the large amounts of campers these days, much of the first-come, first-served camping isn’t being done anymore; campgrounds are requiring reservations. It’s certainly understandable that people make their reservations early, but from what we’ve heard, many are double and triple booking, then once they’ve decided what they’ll be doing, closer to their vacation dates, they don’t bother to cancel all their reservations. So the campgrounds hold the reservations and the campsites remain empty. And people who don’t book as early, can’t find places to stay because everything shows up online as already reserved. OR, people aren’t showing up at their reserved campsites because of all the rain? Either way, we wish people would cancel their campsite if they are not going to show up. It didn’t effect us, we had reserved a site, but just saying……
The sun came out after lunch, so we headed south to the Sooke area to run a few errands and gape at the trees & scenery. We have some hard to find items we’ve been looking to stock up on, so when we see health food stores, we like to check them out. The Sooke health food store was not impressive and didn’t have anything we wanted. We also went to a regular grocery store and got a couple of items there. No Bhakti Ginger Chai Mix, no LOVE Bar Dark Chocolate candy, no Beyond Burgers (wah, sob), we did find Oat Milk & Almond Milk but not our favorite brands, got some produce, etc. We got gas in the Honda and filled one of the small propane tanks for the RV. (Gas in Canada so far has run around $2.22 per liter, which is more expensive than the U.S. even with the Canadian to U.S. conversion – that’s about $6.72 per gallon in U.S. dollars. We try to find gas on Indian Reservations; it is cheaper, maybe because they don’t have to collect certain taxes????)
On the way back to the RV, in Shirley, we stopped at Stoked, Wood-Fired Pizza and ordered pizza to go. This place is trendy, popular with the surfing/hiking crowds, and is fairly close to one of the Provincial Parks. It was very laid back and it was fun to browse the books and knick-knacks for sale while waiting for our food. In addition, they had a great variety of homemade desserts for sale. We left with pizzas and desserts to last at least one dinner and one lunch, if not more. LOL.
Back at the RV, we sat out in the screened tent, had a beer and a glass of wine, and talked about how beautiful it is in the Pacific Northwest. Tomorrow is our last day at this Park. Monday we leave for another (of many) Provincial Parks.