Back to Reality

After a beautiful long weekend it is only too soon that reality comes and nips me in the butt.

Aur and I went up to Port Alberni (the Salmon Capital of the world) this weekend. I had never been up island before so I was very excited about this wannabe road trip. I hardly slept Friday night and woke up early Saturday to begin packing. Like a good girl, I packed for the both of us. Bathing suits, wine, toothbrushes, did I mention wine? Yeah. So then we went over to my parents for breakfast and hit the road at around two thirty.

I drove because Aur was on crutches. (He got hurt at work on Friday and couldn't walk. We spent all of Friday evening/night at the Royal Jubilee Hospital. I could go on and on about what we saw there...) So I didn't mind driving since I have been driving so much lately anyways. The Snowracer and I get along pretty well and she hasn't let me down even though she can be quite the workout at times.

It took just under three hours to reach the Port and we only made one quick stop at a candy shop on the way. They had lots of fudge! We used their loos, bought some fudge and then on the way out, I saw it there. It was so silent and looked so alone that I had to go to it. You guessed it! A Slush Puppie Machine. I haven't had the pleasure of a Slush Puppie in a dozen years! (Slurpies just don't cut it for me, even when you put gummie candies in them) I had a hard time chosing a flavour and I thought it best not to go multi-flavour after so long, but after a few groans from Aur I went with Cherry. It was so good. Even the cup was a genuine Slush Puppie cup.

When we got into town it was hard not to notice the exorbitant number of Cold Beer and Wine stores. Just about every corner had one. As Mike pointed out, it was comparable to the number of Star$ in Vancouver...

The view was really spectacular and our hotel was nice. We were pretty lucky with that because we just called around numbers from the phone book and reserved at the first place that had availability! It was actually the nicest place in town.

Sunday we went out to Sproat Lake and chilled out on the beach reading, tanning, swimming. It was good fun and very relaxing. The water was really warm and they had the last two water bomber planes anchored there so Aur was very excited and told me lots of stories about forest fire fighting.

Before heading home yesterday we stopped at the Cod Father Fishery and got us a selection of Smoked Salmon. It is SO delicious. They had many different flavours and it was hard not to buy a lot of everything but we managed to chose four kinds and leave with very happy smiles on our faces!

Arriving back at the Shoebox yesterday was a little sad but we had a great time and I cherish that.

Salmon = saumon

Tasty = goute bon

work = travail

I will hopefully hear from all of you soon,

Deb