Day 8: Sooke to Potholes to Pedder Bay

August 28, 2014

Sunny Shores is just run down enough to give the kids lots of scope for picking up and collecting interesting objects. It also has many picnic tables, good for climbing on for storing your found treasures on. The big surrounding fence also makes a good boundary, though the kids figured out early where the holes leading to busy and dangerous Sooke Road are.

We gave Avi the chore of carrying an empty juice bottle to the garbage by the office, and he charged off quite nicely. But a 1/4" imperfection in the road sent him sprawling. It hurt, but interestingly there were no tears. Rather he picked himself up and finished the mission. Customarily when someone (i.e. Dodie) goes flying on a tour, I document the accident scene with photos. So here below is (or will soon be) the bit of road that got Avi.

Picnic tables make great play structures

Recreation of the "trip" incident, showing the offending bit of road.

We pushed our bikes up and out of Sunny Shores and along the road, until we could cross and get onto the Goose. From there we were back in heaven, with a perfectly groomed path through lovely forest. The grade was gently uphill, understandable since we were following the Sooke River up towards its canyon area.

At another of the great Goose rest stops.

A shot of the forest through one of the artistic cutouts

The kids were intrigues by Arbutus trees, once they had been pointed out. The Arbutus prefers warmer, rocky hillsides, we saw, while maple and ferns are found in the cooler, lower areas.

We arrived at the Sooke Potholes Park, which covers a length of the river where it pours through pools, over rocks, and along flat riffles. There are a number of different pools and access areas, so we asked Ranger Sharon for the best option. She directed us along the river trail, to Skipping Rock Pool. She mentioned that the way was closed to cars, but did not quite say that the barricades would be almost Weehoo proof. We had to unload the kids two or three times and drag the bikes around. We had just passed the last one, when another ranger came along, unlocked the gate, and drove through. "You should have stayed on the Goose", he said, "there is access from there to each of the pools". It turned out he was sort of right, because the access to Skipping Rock was there, but not totally simple. Anyway, we ended at an idyllic stretch of river, with shallow water running over rocks and an easy way to wade in. After an extended period of splashing, and throwing rocks we ate our picnic and declared that we had properly experienced the potholes. Just upstream, though, we heard the sounds of people jumping into deep water so clearly there are other parts to explore next time.

We were glad now for the gentle downhill slope because somehow we were already getting tired. We still had 20 km to get back to Pedder Bay, and we now knew that this included several deep gullies. Tired or not, we made good progress, until the gullies. We got both kids behind first one bike and then the next, to help with pushing them. I suspect that they may have actually been pulling, because it was tougher than I remembered.

Finally we were passing again by Matheson Lake, with the lake visible down below the path, to our right. We came out at Rocky Point Road, left the Goose, a rolled in to Pedder Bay Marina. Our good old spot, "unserviced site #1" was waiting for us, and it was a very welcome sight too. We slowly set up the tent as befitted our tired out state, and made our way over to the coffee shop.

Actually, these references to "tired" and "slowly"" mainly apply to the Grampies. The Grands, while calmly doing crafts at the picnic table for a bit, were full of (no doubt) sugar fuelled energy. After we had loaded panini and juice into them as well, they were really ready to go. They ran out 1000 meters on the boat floats, and then withdrew to race in circles on a bench surrounding a flower planting. Finally they just bounced up and down on two stacks of stored chairs. They wanted me to include the following photos in the blog (coming soon) to illustrate their exuberance at this moment.

Back from the coffee shop, we balanced along the eight long logs by the parking lot. If you are a kid, you can not pass eight logs like this and just walk beside. If you are a Grampie, one log is plenty, thank you.

We have run through eighteen of nineteen stories in "Orca's Family", and are saving the last one for in the tent. It is called "Raven and the Two Headed Salmon". After that, we are stuck with listening to Farley Mowat reading his "Never Cry Wolf" on the smartphone. Hopefully (hah!) we will be asleep soon, building up even more energy for the return to Saanich tomorrow.

The kids tend to pick up souvenirs. To help ensure tired out Grampies, they even insisted on lumps of rock up to this size.

Today's ride: 31 km (19 miles)
Total: 219 km (136 miles)

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	0
Comment on this entry	Comment	0