Last September, we spent a wonderful week on Salt Spring Island, where we encountered lovely sunny weather, a charming log cabin by a lake with free paddle boats and other non-motorized water craft, and reassuringly active COVID-19 protocols everywhere. We discovered Salt Spring Wild Cider (which has totally supplanted the soda-pop-tasting-with-added-alcohol type of cider I used to drink). We hiked (every day), cycled (only once, because hills), paddle-boated on St. Mary’s Lake, dined on patios and in an orchard, read, and relaxed. Soon after that trip, we researched other Gulf Islands and decided Hornby would be our next — and my first post-retirement — destination.
Mr. Fluffster is a Planner. He likes to map all aspects of life out well in advance and thoroughly research options, to avoid surprises. Me, I’m more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants kinda person, and I’m good with the unexpected.
We each approached this trip in our own way. Mr. Fluffster booked a cottage in early August after discovering that Thanksgiving was the earliest date one was available. Last day of shoulder season, and the day before official off-season starts. Ok, so we wouldn’t have sunny September weather, but hey, October still has pleasant days, right? Six days of brightly coloured leaves and crisp cool mornings turning into semi-warm afternoons? Perhaps we’d even see some more of this splendour (below, encountered on Salt Spring):
My only prep task besides packing was to book the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo (ferries from Vancouver Island to Denman and Denman to Hornby can’t be booked in advance). So, in keeping with my general philosophy of just-in-time planning, I sat down the Thursday before to do this. Piece of cake, right? Well, no. Who knew that everyone and their entire extended clan wanted that ferry on that day?
The only sailings available were at 6:30 am (Mr. Fluffster is a morning person, but even he drew the line at getting up early enough to arrive at a ferry the requisite 30 to 120 minutes in advance) and 10 pm (too late to get to any secondary ferries, let alone two of them, plus driving between).
This was where I kicked into oh-my-god-salvage-this-thing-for-the-sake-of-our-marriage mode. Research into Sunday ferry options revealed there was still space on the 8 pm sailing (as well as the two untenable times aforementioned). But first I had to find a place to stay in Nanaimo for Sunday night (because we still wouldn’t make it to Hornby that day and taking an evening ferry without knowing where we would sleep was just a bit too fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants even for me). I got lucky; the Best Western just off the highway north of Nanaimo had one room left. It cost as much as three nights at the cottage, but at least it came with breakfast. So we added another day to our six-day trip. Definite perk to being retired; no need to consult anyone or alter work schedules.
We’d planned to bring our bicycles along, just in case Hornby turned out to be more cycle friendly than Salt Spring (not so fond of hills anymore). However, the weather report out on Saturday looked a bit like this for the week:
Day -1: Overcast and not-so-terribly-warm
Day 1: Rain and gale-force winds
Day 2: Cloudy and somewhat rainy
Day 3: Cloudy with a bit of sun peeking through here and there
Day 4: More rain
Day 5: Even more rain, with some more of those gale-force winds in the evening
Day 6: Torrential downpours all day long
Given the possibility that any or all of this could be accurate, we decided in the interests of not letting our poor bicycles rust on the back of the car for a week, we’d leave them at home. Turned out the weather report was surprisingly accurate, and this was a wise choice. The pictures at the top of this post reflect some of what Hornby weather was like. Our bicycles are thankful.
More about Hornby Island to come in my next post.
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