Vancouver Island Road Trip: Boat, Bus and Butchart

The Tuesday before last, my alarm clock went off at 4:45 a.m., but I heard it from the washroom where I was brushing my teeth and had been looking over routes and ferry schedules on my iPad for a quarter of an hour. Fenya had completed her Math 30 diploma exam for Math 30-1 just the day before, we had a room booked in Victoria that very evening, but I knew in my heart that construction, wildfires, traffic accidents, road rage and traveller's tummy could all conspire and result in our checking in after 11:00 or being stranded in Vancouver overnight.

With the eldest daughter going into grade twelve next year and likely needing to find work right away to fund her post-secondary pursuits, this is likely to be the last year we can travel together as a family with any sort of ease. And while an intensive road trip around Vancouver Island might not be everyone's dream holiday, it suited us just fine, but left little in the way of flexibility, and even less in terms of margin for error.

Thankfully, the girls are both excellent travellers and seasoned road trippers, the Flex is ideally set up for such a journey, and we had recently purchased a cooler that plugs into the aft power outlet which made it even better.  Having left Nitti with my Mum the day before, we pulled away from the curb at 5:45 a.m., bleary-eyed but excited.

Many were the summers that saw my sister and I in the back seat of whatever family truckster Dad had invested in at the time (Travelall, Town & Country station wagon, Beauvista van, Suburban) as we made our way to southern Manitoba to visit Dad's family and see the old homestead, and although I have experimented with alternatives, I take more than a page or two from their book when it comes to effective road tripping.

First of all, we left without breakfast.  We had practically exhausted all the milk in the house and weren't really interested in dealing with any dishes.  Often we will grab some drive-thru on the way out of town, but frankly, it didn't feel like all that long since we'd had supper, and we were nowhere near hungry yet. 

I had put all 13 episodes of the BBC radio play of The Lord of the Rings on 3 mp3 cds, and we had listened to nearly two of them before we ended up pulling over in Hinton to gas up, use the facilities, and grab a light breakfast and some greatly appreciated coffee from Tim Hortons. We were back on the road in a manner of minutes.

We still had our annual Parks Canada pass from visiting Banff earlier in the year, and were able to pass by the Jasper gates quickly enough, and traffic was relatively light from there to Valemount, where Audrey took the wheel for a while.  With noon approaching, I got the girls to hand out the sandwiches I had prepared the night before, with cold bottles of water to drink.  Sure, we could have picked up some burgers at a drive thru in Kamloops, but something slightly lighter and non-fried was less likely to leave us loagy in the saddle, another lesson cribbed from Mum and Dad's Manitoba pilgrimages.

Now, my ladies are not the biggest fans of sandwiches, while I pride myself on them, and I took it as a challenge to make them as palatable to them as I could, so I waited gingerly to see if my smoked turkey, prosciutto and gouda on rye with lime-jalapeno aioli, lettuce, tomato and avocado (with red onion for me) would pass muster.  Thankfully, everyone seemed to enjoy them, so we were all spared some embarrassing and truculent pouting on my part.

Gassing up again in Kamloops, we prepared for the big haul down the Coquihalla to Vancouver and the Tsawassen Ferry Terminal.  Despite having driven it many times, I always forget that the speed limit on this motorway is an astonishing 120 km/h, and with 2-3 lanes throughout its length, the cruise control can be left on for almost the entirety of that leg.  

With a couple more pit stops along the way, and aided by the hour gained when we changed time zones, we very nearly made it onto the 5:00 crossing from Tsawassen, missing it by only 10 minutes. We instead settled on being nearly first in line for the 6:00 sailing, having driven over 1100 km in 12 hours and 15 minutes.  Not bad for a family of four in a glorified station wagon!

We beat most of the lineup to the cafeteria on board the Coastal Celebration, ate supper, then wandered about on the deck in the warm summer air.  A ferry is as utilitarian a vessel as one can imagine, but for us land-locked Albertans, it still carries as much of our imaginations as it does our vehicle and belongings, and it also gave Glory a chance to try out the SLR she bought back in May.

Boarding early meant disembarking early, so we got a head start on the rest of the inbound traffic to Victoria, and were safely esconced in our room at the Delta Ocean Pointe Resort (thanks Air Miles!) by 8:30, giving us all time for a quick swim before bed.

The next day we walked across the Johnstone Street bridge (a cantilevered drawbridge sadly being replaced) and got some pastries and coffee at a bakery /cafe called Willies, which I highly recommend.  

 After wandering about and looking in closed shop windows for a bit, we boarded a double-decker bus tour of British Columbia's capital city.  This was not only a great way to see the sights and get our bearings, but a welcome opportunity to let someone else do the driving for a while.

After taking the water-taxi back to downtown from Fisherman's Wharf, Audrey and Fenya did a bit more shopping while Glory and I headed back to the hotel.

When we regrouped, it was back behind the wheel for me so we could go to the famed Butchart Gardens (all the good photos are Glory's).

 The park is a beautiful space that truly lives up to both its immense reputation and century of history.

The girls were both full of helpful suggestions for creative and 'cute' photos as well...

And I am always on the lookout for a place to get a shot of all of us together, whether by racing back into frame against the camera's timer:

Or trying to cram us all into a reflection:

I wouldn't call myself a fan of flowers and the horticultural arts, per se, but I do appreciate them, and more than that, the artful way everything is presented, from the overwhelming colour of the blossoms, to the quiet serenity of the Japanese garden, there is something for just about everyone here.

We stayed well past nightfall, giving Glory a chance to try some slow shutter-speed night photography, which I think turned out magnificently.

I visited Butchart as a child of 8 or 10, and my most distinct memory is touching the nose of a bronze boar statue, so I was glad the girls and I could do so as well.

(Sorry, couldn't help myself.)

All in all, our first couple of days of vacation had gone swimmingly; but how long could our luck hold out?

The Massive Mars

On our way back from Ucluelet, I begged an indulgence from the family: let me turn off at Sproat Lake to see the mighty Martin Mars waterbomber.

They kindly agreed, and after a couple of navigational challenges, we got off the highway on Lakeshore Road, turned left on Bomber Base Road, and were soon outside the gates of Coulson Aircraft, home of two of these immense firefighting aircraft. Unfortunately, the gates were closed, and a sign on them indicated that the base was currently closed to tourists. I was crushed, but pulled into the parking lot anyhow, since one of the planes was visible from the shore. As if to underscore the point of the sign though, a uniformed security guard was making his way from the main building to the gate.

I got out to greet him. "I saw the sign saying you're closed, but hoped I could take some photos from the road; would that be okay?"

"You can come in and take them from closer if you like," he replied amiably.

Wasting no time, Glory, Audrey and I (Fenya stayed behind to nurse a headache) were soon following the friendly guard around the corner of the main building so we could better view the Hawaii Mars in its red and white colour scheme as it floated about 50 yards off shore. I asked if it had been a busy summer, what with all the wildfires, and he grinned. "Not as busy as they'd like, I think, but she's been up a few times now. Put out a fire near my home town of Nelson, as a matter of fact." (It since has been revealed that they need to train up another pilot.)

He was clearly a fan, reeling off factoids about the aircraft as we walked to a better vantage point. "2500 horsepower on each engine and she's got four of them...more wing coverage than a 747...they were originally built in 1945 as a bomber, but were too slow to avoid anti aircraft fire, so they repurposed them as naval transport aircraft." He gestured towards the Phillipine Mars in its dark blue livery up on dry land for servicing. "That's why this one has the U.S. Navy colouring; they're tuning her up for a trip to Pensacola, Florida where she will go to a museum"

Pointing to an unused nose cone, there was a measure of pride as he told us how the Mars was built to last, with 30,000 rivets used in their construction. "NASA just tested them both for airworthiness in the States, and they passed with high honours."

In her new role as a water bomber, the Mars can land, fill up, and take off again in only 5 miles of lake, carrying over 2000 22,000 litres of foam concentrate or an astonishing 27,000 litres of water that it can douse over 6 acres of target area.

Aviation buffs from all over the world drop in to Sproat lake to see the 'Mighty Mars'; so many so that when the base is not on alert, there is even a gift shop with a couple of different books on this fascinating plane. This friendly guard appreciates this, and has gotten permission to let visitors like them and myself onto the base in order to help preserve this piece of aviation history. I was certain to let him know how grateful I was for the privilege, and shook his hand as we left.

If I make it back this way, I will probably swing by yet again, in hopes of seeing it fly and of hearing those ten thousand horses pulling the massive Martin Mars into the sky.

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Exbeerimenting: Stout Latté

Last week I tried the delightful Kona Coffee Stout and quite enjoyed it, but afterwards I got to thinking: is there an opportunity to attain some sort of coffee/beer gestalt? A beverage more than the sum of its parts?

Pitchers of lager only held appeal for me during my college years due to their price. Most of my adult beer drinking has been firmly in the craft camp, and most of that in the past ten to fifteen years. I love trying different beers, and often the weirder the better, as I certainly wouldn't consider myself an iconoclast or anything, but I am definitely no purist. In fact, other beer geeks might even consider me heretical.

Like any other type of alcoholic beverage, beer's permutations can include combinations: for every wine varietal, there is somebody drinking a spritzer; for every single malt aficionado there is someone (like me!) ordering a Rusty Nail. Now billboards encourage us to (Smirnoff) 'Ice' our beer (which, to be fair, might be a good enough idea, depending on what you are drinking) and there are any number of beer cocktails to peruse. But what about combining two beers with complementary characteristics?

The Kona Imperial Stout immediately scratched both my beer and coffee itches, but I immediately starting thinking about my favourite way to drink coffee, which is a latté. Another of my favourite stouts is the Imperial Milk Stout from La Vache Folle in Quebec, which contains actual lactose, so I began to wonder: if I mixed these two beers, could I make a Latté Stout?

Well, since Kona is not espresso, perhaps it might be more apt to call it a café au lait stout, but once I mentioned it to Jim, his enthusiastic encouragement was enough to set me on the path, and when I found myself driving past Sherbrooke Liquor after picking Fenya up from her diploma exam, I was moved to action.

Given the unprecedented nature of this combination, I deployed my Dartington Tankard for the task. Filling it about halfway up with the coffee stout, then vigorously adding the milk stout. I didn't get as much head as I would have liked - after all, what's a latté without foam? - but was left with a uniformly dark pint with a small but not unreasonable amount of foam around the top.

The initial sips tended to favour the sweetness and alcohol content of the milk stout, but it is possible there was some layering at play; I didn't have the nerve to stir or fully mix the two beers. As the beer warmed, however, the aftertaste tended to equitably balance out elements of both the bitter coffee of the Kona as well as the creamy smoothness of the milk stout. The sweetness of the higher ABV milk stout added a not unpleasant dessert-like quality to the affair, also appropriate to the latté theme.

All in all, I would consider the blending a success, with one small caveat; there is enough caffeine in the Kona to make it an unwise choice (at least for me!) after 5:00, so I am left with a fairly high test beverage that must be imbibed in the afternoon (or, on very special occasions, breakfast), which means having all driving-related chores out of the way beforehand! Ah, well, there are far worse problems one could have.

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Labels and Covers

We had a chance to go down to High River this weekend to do some work on Frankentrailer, the tent trailer we bought back in July and which Audrey's brother Garrett had graciously retired for us. Before departing, we emailed Our friends Jim and Carol who finally moved into their house in Elbow River from Minnesota a couple of weeks ago.

 

I made it clear that we had made arrangements to sleep in Oma and Opa's fifth wheel, but they weren't having any of it. Despite their house still being full of moving boxes and not yet being 100% certain where everything was, they insisted on having us spend the night.

 

It's a nice neighbourhood, Elbow Ridge, and I am pretty confident that the last time I was in a house that nice, it was because K-Days was expecting to sell me a lottery ticket for it, but as with all such dwellings, it is the people within it that ultimately determine its homeliness.

 

We were not far in the door before Jim served me up a microbrew from Surly Breweries in the Twin Cities called Seviin Ale. A Belgian style beer with rye and wheat as well as barley in it, it may have been one of the smoothest 12.5% (!) ABV beers I've ever had. Unfortunately, I must be allergic to some ingredient or another as I found myself wheezing and coughing a fair bit, similar to what had happened once at Craft Beer Market in Edmonton.

 

Jim immediately offered the use of a spare inhaler he had, which did the trick. Meanwhile, Carol, who had recently arrived home from her job of being everyone's boss, was setting out olives and cheese and cutting flowers for a vase.

 

After a delicious dinner of steaks, baked potatoes and corn on the cob, Jim proferred another Surly beer called Pentagram. A sour stout, it went down much more agreeably than the sour beer I had in last year's Advent Calendar. Complex, fruity, and robust, with traces of coffee bitterness, it was an excellent way to settle the meal; liquid deserts are usually my preference anyways.

 

After chatting with a mutual friend from our time at GW together, we needed to pack it in as we required an early start. True to his promise, Jim had made setting up the guest room a priority, and a comfy bed with an adjoining bathroom awaited us downstairs. Before leaving though, he made sure to draw our attention to the frankly glorious assortment of vintage magazines had left down there for us, the covers of which I attach now for your enjoyment.

 

The next morning Audrey and I came upstairs to find Carol frying up potatoes and onions to accompany Dutch pannekoeken for breakfast, which were delicious. As we prepared to go, I told them truthfully: "if someone from out of town dropped in on me while I am still unpacking from a border-crossing move and who then had to be on the road again before 8 the next morning, I sure wouldn't be cooking them breakfast. In fact, I would probably tell them to poop in their hat. It just goes to show what awesome people you are."

 

 

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A Drinkable Cultural Mosaic - Kona Imperial Stout

On a recent trip to Sherbrooke Liquor, I was perusing the stouts section (you have to love a store where the stouts occupy a full section of shelving) when I came across a can. Since most stouts come in bottles, this variation in packaging was enough to draw my attention. Seeing a tiki figure on the can intrigued me further. Discovering that it was an imperial stout, one of my favourite styles, heightened my interest, and once I saw that it was a product of the Fort Garry Brewing Company, I was sold.

I decided to forego the proferred Popsicle for dessert this evening in favour of the Kona, and I'm glad I did. It puts a luxurious dark, dark brown, nearly black; you could be forgiven for thinking I had emptied a pint of motor oil into my glass except for the caramel coloured head that resulted. A brief sniff by even my untrained proboscis reveals much in the way of roasted, toasted malts as well as coffee, and appropriately, roasted coffee.

A strong beer at 6.5%, but eminently well behaved, with a full robust mouthfeel. The bitterness of the coffee comes through almost immediately, balanced by the sweetness of the high ABV, but without being cloying or sickly. One of the smoother imperial stouts I've had recently.

I would have to agree with the back of the can: "in-your-face goodness" is as good a descriptor as any. Best of all though, drinking a beer style founded in England, modified by Russia, fortified with Hawaiian coffee and brewed in Winnipeg feels, in a strange way, more Canadian than anything I have ever drank from Molson, y'know?

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Folk Dance and Warfries

I love the Servus Heritage Days Festival, at least, in principle.  Our city's many ethnic communities coming together to share their songs, dance, music and, most importantly, their cuisine; what's not to like?

Well, in my case, and in no particular order, crowds, heat, lineups, chaos, and direct sunlight. It's often a struggle, the decision to attend or not, but this year, Glory's dance school (Scoil Rince Mahoney) was performing there for the first time, so we all made our way down there late Saturday afternoon.

There were traces of that whole Circle of Life thing with Glory's performance, since it was at Heritage Days 10 years ago that she first saw "the dancers with the bouncy hair", and she was still on about it two years later when we signed her up.  She likes competing, but loves performing, so getting to perform during 4 different sets over four hours was both challenging and rewarding.

Auntie Tara and Jerry and Jason came to watch, as did Jeff and Heather and their son Connor, and a lady from church told us on Sunday she saw her there too.  I watched three of the four sets, and came back to watch the hard-shoe performance at the end of the 4th.  There were good sized crowds there at the Irish Sports & Social Society pavilion who were very appreciative of the young dancers, so hopefully history will repeat itself and Glory's teacher Lori might end up with a couple of new students out of it.

I had slept terribly the night before, and wasn't up to traversing the entirety of the grounds, but there was plenty to see and do at the far end of Hawrelak Park,  I had a bul-go-gi taco from the Korean pavilion, and shared some spicy Nepalese chicken and rice with Tara and her family. It was hot and a bit muggy so I had two separate fruit slushes from the Indonesian tent, fruit punch and passion fruit, and they were both delicious, but more importantly, they were cold and wet.

The most interesting thing I tried though was from the Dutch cultural society.  How, having Dutch in-laws has exposed me to a few tasty treats from the Low Countries, but I had never had the opportunity to sample patatjes oorlog.

Audrey said she and Fenya had shared a serving earlier, and although it didn't sound particularly appetizing, they both declared it to be "sooo good", so when there was very little lineup at the Nederlands site, I strode to the window.

"I'm not sure where it is on the menu," I confessed, "But I understand I can get french fries with...peanut sauce?" A nod. "...And onions?"

The hostess smiled, "That's right, patatjes oorlog."

"Oor [rhymes with boor]-lawg?" I attempted.

A bigger smile.  "More like 'oor-lauch' with a 'cchh' in there," she corrected. "It means 'war fries'."

Soon I had a cone of delicious, golden brown, perfectly cooked fries, covered with a generous serving of peanut sauce and freshly chopped onion.  Not an intuitive combination of flavours to be sure, but if prior experience has taught me anything, it is that those Dutchmen know a thing or two about serving up french-fried potatoes, the staple food of my people.

True to form, the warfries were delicious; it turns out that the peanut sauce is probably not the result of WWII meat rationing as I had assumed from the name, but more likely to be a result of the close ties between Dutch culture and Indonesia, where they once had a colony and now receive a fair bit of immigration from.  The oorlog title is probably a reference to how chaotic and messy the fries are, but this makes them no less tasty or enjoyable; the peanuts added both a savoury flavour and crunchy texture to the affair, which the crisp, pungent onions complemented nicely.

In Holland, warfries are often served with mayonnaise and a dollop of sambal, a spicy pepper sauce that I would have loved to have enhanced my serving with.  As it was though, it was a great way to end the day's snacking; just a little bit adventurous and completely delicious.