We hosted thanksgiving this year which was great since last year we did not celebrate it in Africa. The Miller clan met up at Galey’s farm for some pumpkin patch fun. They have a giant corn maze and a train that goes around the property. You even get to take a tractor hay ride out to the pumpkin fields to pick out a pumpkin. It was great fun!
We then came back to our house for drinks, appies, and a yummy dinner. It really is nice living close to family again 🙂
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Rhys loves dinosaurs! The BBC ‘walking with dinosaurs’ tv show is a bit hit in our house and Rhys has watched it many many times. When we heard they had a live performance based on the show & it was coming to Victoria we just had to get tickets to surprise the kids. Show tickets were SO expensive but worth it.
Claire & Rhys were super excited to see a live show… the lights, noises, and giant dinos were a huge hit!
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Hard to believe we are at this stage but we are and it is going awesome.
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Sunday seems to be our go-to day of the week to do some fun adventures. The kids are enrolled in a sports class on Saturday mornings and after a busy work week we like to relax on Saturdays.
This past Sunday we drove to Shawnigan Lake to visit the historic Kinsol Trestle. It is a wooden railway trestle located north of Shawnigan Lake which is about a 45 minute drive from our house. A description on the parks website is:
“The Kinsol Trestle is one of eight trestles along the Cowichan Valley Trail route and by far the largest and most spectacular. The Kinsol Trestle is one of the tallest free-standing and most spectacular timber rail trestle structures in the world. At 614 feet in length and standing 145 feet above the salmon bearing Koksilah River, the Kinsol is an incredible structure and was worth preserving.”
We had to walk along a trail for 1.5km to get to the trestle from the parking area and it was amazing! The views were really pretty with a river down below. There were hiking trails that led to the river and we could see some people swimming in the river. The kids had a tonne of energy and we ran races the whole way to the start of the trestle. We had packed a lunch and snacks and sat at one of the available picnic tables and enjoyed the beautiful day. This was a great spot to take kids.
On a hot Sunday morning we decided to pack up our swimming gear and head to Elk Lake which is about a 15 minute drive from our house. Jimmy spent a lot of time at this Lake and the conjoining Beaver Lake in his youth. I ran the trails of this lake when I went to University. The trails are really nice and if you run the whole lake it is 10km. Elk Lake is the training area for Canada’s Olympic Rowing team and is a popular fishing area as they stock the lake with fish annually.
We arrived fairly early so there were not many people. We played in the sand and then quickly made our way into the warm lake water. Claire and Rhys love swimming. Particularly Claire who is a fish and once in the water does not want to come out. After a few hours we packed up and headed home to host our friends for an early evening BBQ. A great Sunday!
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Claire being a ‘baby turtle’ on her daddy turtles back 🙂
We like to adventure and spend a lot of time outdoors with the kids which is great because Victoria is home to some amazing parks. Goldstream is one of those parks. It is 477 hectares and home to small Garry oak meadows, arbutus, and Douglas fir trees – some more than 600 years old.
On a nice Sunday when we had no other plans we decided to get suited up and go hiking. We packed a lunch and drove to the park which is about 17km from town. It was a hot day so finding refuge in the old growth temperate rain forest was perfect! This park is a popular place for viewing the annual fall chum salmon spawning runs in Goldstream river. It is also popular because there are numerous trails for hiking including a rugged and steep one called Mt. Finlayson trail that goes to the top of Mt. Finlayson. We choose to hike to Niagara falls which was really more of a walk with some minor rock climbing which is a recent favorite past-time of Claire & Rhys’.
Niagara falls is 47.5m high and to reach it you have to walk through a dried up stream bed. In the winter months the stream bed is full of water and the waterfall has so much more water volume. It was still very pretty when we visited. We spent some time there climbing through a rock tunnel and skipping rocks into the water basin at the bottom of the falls. After we had our fill of the falls we walked along some paths towards the nature visitor centre. We found plenty of slugs and other critters along the way that we had to stop and watch things where we had a little picnic lunch amongst the grass reeds at the end of the Saanich Inlet.
It was a great day 🙂
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Canada just turned 147 years old on July 1st. To celebrate we hosted a BBQ at our new home with some of the Miller clan.
The weather in Victoria has been very sunny and hot lately; record setting temperatures in fact. Thankfully we have adequate backyard shade as well as two inflatable pools, so we all kept cool enough to enjoy ourselves.
Our recently purchased Weber barbeque proved its worth and it was a fun gathering with good food, laughs and splashes 🙂
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