We arrived on Salt Spring Island after a beautiful 35-minute ferry ride between the land formations known as the Gulf Islands. It was spectacular. We rode with about 50 cars, a school bus and a truck loaded with food supplies. Salt Spring and the other islands are dependent upon the reliable ferry schedule to deliver necessities, fuel, building supplies, boating materials, linens — virtually everything that can’t be grown here on this lush island — and they do it with seven to eight trips a day.
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| Fulford Harbor on Salt Spring Island, where we landed |
We are staying at Hastings House in Ganges, which is a serene and elegant property located about 14 miles from the harbor in which we landed. We enjoyed an interesting ride with Ben, who was very knowledgeable about the island, having grown up here. I asked him about the flowers and trees that grow here, and he launched into a really good overview — a tree here is highly prized and highly protected, with very hard wood, is sought by artists (and I wish I could remember the name of it!), while the yellow flowers known as Scotch broom are very invasive and were brought here from Europe.
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| This isn’t actually scotch broom, but it is yellow!! |
We took the short walk into Ganges to pick up a couple of things, then stopped back by a great little restaurant with a deck overlooking the town harbor. Moby’s had great service and delicious food.
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| View from our table of Ganges Harbor |
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| Our deck at Hastings House |
We relaxed and went to bed early, ready for an exciting day of new vistas and new challenges. We started our day with a sumptuous breakfast of smoked salmon frittata, bacon, eggs, toast and jelly. Scenes of what morning looks like at Hastings House are below.
We set off on our trip to the other side of the island with Gabrielle, our driver, to Ruckle Provincial Park, which boasts an rich array of trails, water views, moss-covered trees and rocks, Hobbit-like woods and challenges.
Now THIS is what I call a campground! Check out the views.
We did get lost and made the same circle three times, which added somewhere around 3 miles to our already long day. Trails are on a hit-or-miss wayfinding mark, and we were relieved to know it wasn’t just us — another walking pair made the same mistake we did. We had a “rugged” area at King’s Cove, which required us to literally pull ourselves up over scary, rocky points and then down again, which was even scarier. We walked out of the park, onto pavement for a while and then onto an Indian reservation filled with more huge trees, moss, rocks and nature-laden trails. Finally — FINALLY — we made it back to Fulford Harbor, which we gratefully entered a restaurant and enjoyed a couple of well-deserved drinks while waiting on our cab to take us on the 14-mile journey back to the welcoming Hastings House.
Kim & Betsy 