Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Of ropes and fish
Yesterday we continued north on Vancouver Island from Goldstream Park to our campground just south of Nanaimo (Living Forest Oceanside Campground) (only a 60 mile day). It’s quite nice for an RV park, and our site has a wonderful view of the ocean through some trees. It’s no match for Goldstream, but it’s been nice, and it hasn’t rained in the two days we’ve been here (and it doesn’t look like it will rain for quite a while ).
After we got settled and had lunch yesterday we decided to go to “Wild Play Park” which is basically a large ropes course with courses for kids and adults. Since Patty has asked to go on a ropes course for her birthday for the past 10 years (and I haven’t delivered), I figured this was a good way to get a birthday present for her 6 days early. It was a really neat place. Patty did the entire adult course and I watched and coached the girls on the kids course. The minimum age was 7, but they were willing to look the other way for Jessie even though she just turned 6. It was a challenge for her, but she did great. Not surprisingly, Patty had a blast flying through the course.
Since before we left, Kelly has had her heart set on going Salmon fishing here in Nanaimo. Last night after dinner I called a guy who does Salmon charters. He’s based on the west coast of Vancouver Island, because that’s where the good salmon fishing is. It would have been an incredible day if we had tried it: 1.5 hours drive each way, 1 hour boat ride out to the good fishing spot each way and then 5-6 hours of fishing. I decided that wouldn’t work for us, so he recommended a guy who’s local here (well actually he’s out of Gabriola Island which is nearby). After talking to him on the phone and much consternation, we decided that Kelly, Kate, Jessie and I would leave at 7:30, drive to the local ferry, take it to the island, drive to the other side of the island and then go fishing for 3 hours. So we did. It worked out surprisingly well. Bob, the owner of the boat, was originally from Los Altos(!) but moved up here 34 years ago when he was 20 to become a fisherman. He’s never left. Gabriola Island is beautiful. We went out on his 24 foot boat and he started by having us “jig” on the bottom to catch some bottom fish because he knew it would be more entertaining for the girls than trolling for an unlikely salmon. Although the conditions were far from ideal (it was quite windy which posed some challenges), we caught about 8 fish, 7 of which we threw back. The ling cod we kept was about 10 pounds and fed us all a great meal tonight. We trolled for salmon for the last 45 minutes but came up empty.
We made it back to Nanaimo at 2:00, picked up Patty from the campground and went out to checkout the town. We came back, cooked our fish, rice and green beans for dinner and then walked to the campground office and got ice cream cones.
Tomorrow we’ll pack up reasonably early and drive to Nanaimo to catch the ferry to Vancouver. Unfortunately we didn’t make reservations for this ferry ride, so we’ll have to see how that works out.
After we got settled and had lunch yesterday we decided to go to “Wild Play Park” which is basically a large ropes course with courses for kids and adults. Since Patty has asked to go on a ropes course for her birthday for the past 10 years (and I haven’t delivered), I figured this was a good way to get a birthday present for her 6 days early. It was a really neat place. Patty did the entire adult course and I watched and coached the girls on the kids course. The minimum age was 7, but they were willing to look the other way for Jessie even though she just turned 6. It was a challenge for her, but she did great. Not surprisingly, Patty had a blast flying through the course.
Since before we left, Kelly has had her heart set on going Salmon fishing here in Nanaimo. Last night after dinner I called a guy who does Salmon charters. He’s based on the west coast of Vancouver Island, because that’s where the good salmon fishing is. It would have been an incredible day if we had tried it: 1.5 hours drive each way, 1 hour boat ride out to the good fishing spot each way and then 5-6 hours of fishing. I decided that wouldn’t work for us, so he recommended a guy who’s local here (well actually he’s out of Gabriola Island which is nearby). After talking to him on the phone and much consternation, we decided that Kelly, Kate, Jessie and I would leave at 7:30, drive to the local ferry, take it to the island, drive to the other side of the island and then go fishing for 3 hours. So we did. It worked out surprisingly well. Bob, the owner of the boat, was originally from Los Altos(!) but moved up here 34 years ago when he was 20 to become a fisherman. He’s never left. Gabriola Island is beautiful. We went out on his 24 foot boat and he started by having us “jig” on the bottom to catch some bottom fish because he knew it would be more entertaining for the girls than trolling for an unlikely salmon. Although the conditions were far from ideal (it was quite windy which posed some challenges), we caught about 8 fish, 7 of which we threw back. The ling cod we kept was about 10 pounds and fed us all a great meal tonight. We trolled for salmon for the last 45 minutes but came up empty.
We made it back to Nanaimo at 2:00, picked up Patty from the campground and went out to checkout the town. We came back, cooked our fish, rice and green beans for dinner and then walked to the campground office and got ice cream cones.
Tomorrow we’ll pack up reasonably early and drive to Nanaimo to catch the ferry to Vancouver. Unfortunately we didn’t make reservations for this ferry ride, so we’ll have to see how that works out.
# posted by Craig @ 10:00 PM 
