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Saltspring Island Safari
We had to get started at an unwholesome hour of the morning, and that was to catch the 10:00 ferry. Happily we had been able to talk my mom out of wanting to take the 8:00 ferry.
While we were waiting for the ferry we looked at hippy supplies, but we didn’t buy anything. It was a beautiful day - the sky was clear, the water was calm, etc. etc.
By the time we got to Saltspring, it was actually pretty parked up already, but we managed to find a parking stall by an Anglican church where they were doing yoga. We had had some coffee before we got on the ferry, so now we needed to find a ladies’ room, except that the general rule is that you have to buy a drink in order to use a washroom, so we ended up going to Barb’s Buns.
Then we went into a rich lady vacation clothes store where my mom tried on a white berber fleece-lined jacket that the clerk assured her would not shed on her nice black sweater, which of course it did, and I found a lovely orange and yellow shot silk gown which I will be taking bribes not to inflict on my bridesmaids.
We looked in a bookstore, then at the hippy market, where we tried all manner of very strange preserves like lilac ginger and hot pepper honey. My mom bought us some nice curry spices. We didn’t buy any tie-dyed undies, hemp coffee filters, or aromatherapy tarot readings. We did buy some potstickers. We looked in another bookstore called Starbooks where my mom found a Latin-language edition of Winnie the Pooh (Winni ille Pu) and I found a Chelsea Quinn Yarbro book that I already have.
We had our picture taken in front of a gazebo, then went on a little hike past some extremely expensive waterfront condos and a bathtub-turned-planter-box that had been christened Titanic to a little lookout over the water where I scrambled across the rocks because it was low tide and Manmeet somehow twisted her ankle or something.
Then we went in yet another bookstore where I got a book of medieval music with a picture of a man playing the bagpipes on the front and my mom got a book about teddy bears.
We were a little bit dehydrated when we got back to the car (from trying all the strange preserves with salty crackers), so we had big drinks of water and then headed back down the highway to go up Mount Maxwell. My mom actually wanted to drive up the island, see this beach that’s supposed to be really fabulous, and take a different ferry back, but we outvoted her because we wanted to see Mount Maxwell again, but I don’t think she was very pleased with our choice because it was kind of steep and potholey on a gravel road and we were in a rental car.
Anyway, the view from Mount Maxwell was spectacular, but then it was time to drive back to the ferry terminal, where we looked in a thing store, a bead store, a vintage clothing store, and the Salt Spring Island Roasting Company before taking the ferry home.
Score:  -- a very fun day.
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