Fred Leavitt: The Shaws

With many of our friends and family dying recently, Lisa has been thinking a lot about her dad and Carol. We decided to make a trip up to Nanaimo to pay them a visit. We flew out on Wednesday, July 26. While the trip was mostly for Lisa, I did enjoy it and we made the most of our time there.

On our first night, we went to a beach and watched the sun set. It was chilly and windy but quite spectacular.

The next morning I started the day out with a run. Nanaimo seems to be a city friendly to bikes and runners. They have two main trails going through the city, the more inland path is called the E&N trail because it parallels the E&N railroad and the path closer to the straight is called the Parkway trail. It is much prettier. Carol had to go to Walmart so she dropped me off there and I started down the trail.

It was a beautiful run, but I saw right away I was going to have a problem, there were black berries all along the trail. I had to keep stopping to eat black berries. I was worried I’d eat too much and I don’t run well on a full stomach.

At one point I saw a pretty lake off in the distance so I left the main trail to check out the lake. I couldn’t get close enough to Brannen lake to enjoy it but when I headed back toward the trail I ened up on Parkview trail. It was a beautiful trail. At one point I saw a small trail head off into the trees on the side so I ran through the trees for a bit and then came back to the trail and shortly after that I headed into a tunnel to cross back to the other side of the freeway. I was a wonderful run and I really enjoyed it. I eventually called Carol and had her come pick me up.

After lunch we headed downtown to a street market. The church that Boyd & Carol attend is close to the street market and all the shops (and churches) open up their doors hoping to attract people in to check them out.

Boyd gave me a tour of his beautiful church and then Lisa and I and her Dad checked out the street market while Carol sat out in front of the church.

The market was great and we ate some good food from the food trucks but we didn’t buy anthing. One facinating thing that we did do was tour the masonic hall. Boyd is a mason and while this wasn’t his hall, he was excited to give us a tour. It was quite fascinating.

We ended the day with dipped icecream cones at the local Dairy Queen. It was deliciouis.

Most of Friday was supposed to be spent in the Cathedral Grove. We never got there. This is a picture of the Cathedral Grove that I pulled off the internet. It looks like I really missed out.

Canada has had a lot of wild fires recently and one of them went right through north of Nanaimo. It burned off the side of the mountain and loosened the boulders there.

Without the trees and with the heat damage, the rocks are unstable and randomly fall down onto the road. The roads are closed for most of the day as they work on the side of the mountain. After waiting for an hour in a line of cars we realized that we weren’t going to get through. The only good thing is that while we waited for that hour we were next to beautiful Cameron Lake.

We turned the car around and headed back towards Nanaimo but stopped at a place called Coombs. Coombs is a cool place, some guy figured out a good way to make a fortune on his farm. They had an old general store that they put their on the roof of the store. Restaraunts and other shops have grown up around the “Goats On Roof” store.

One of the shops is this cool book store. It was a mess but the workers know exactly how to find anything you might want. I wish we had a bookstore like this close to home.

There was also this Dutch store. It was interesting to see all the different foods they carried but they didn’t have anything I would really want to buy. The best part about the store was the mural in the parking lot.

From there we headed to a sand castle contest at Parksville Beach. They had some amazing sand castles and think this one may be my favorite.

We finished the day off with dinner at this beautiful restaurant in Qualicomm called “Shady Rest” that was right on the water.

Saturday was Boyds birthday and they were expecting company so we just hung out around the house. I went for another run in the morning and started out on the E&N trail. While this picture is gorgeous, most of the trail was boring and ugly but it was a good run anyway. I ran about nine miles. Lisa and I went for a walk in the evening.

There is a short but beautiful trail near Boyd & Carols house.

Sunday we checked out the Buchart Gardens. I can’t possibly do the Butchart Gardens justice in a single journal entry, it would take a book. I don’t want to write a book about the Gardens so just let me say, they were amazing.

On the way into Victoria we stopped in the small town of Chamainus. The town was built around a saw mill that went through hard times during the depression, so the town decided to make themselves into a tourist attraction by painting murals all over town. Apparantly it was quite successful. There are dozens of murals. Pretty much every store has a mural depticing some part of the stores history. It was quite amazing.

Early last century Mr Butchart had a quarry and as the quarries became depleted they left deep ugly holes in the ground that filled with water and became stinky cesspools. Mrs Butchart decided to take these old depleted holes in the ground and turn them into beautiful gardens. It took years but by the time she passed on they had become famous and I believe they have been declared a Canadian Heritage Site. The gardens are still in the hands of the orginal Butchart family.