Verna’s husband passed away 10 plus years ago. Since then, my good friend Verna and I have taken a road trip somewhere every year. Don, my husband, is quite happy for me to go on these trips, just as I am happy to see him go snowboarding in the winter. We do manage to get away together at some time during the year. However, this year I am not so sure because he has all those zucchinis to look after.
Back to the trip with Verna; we always take our cameras along for the ride. Halfway through the trip we decide we should really take some pictures and we do, just once. For example, I have several picture of stunted trees in Alberta and Verna has many pictures of sand formations we saw at a rest stop. That is about the extent of our picture taking. Each trip we stop and take pictures of vague, undefined and boring landscape, somewhere along the way. We don't even take pictures of each other. If we did, we would only look at them and wonder who were those two old biddies.
As you would probably tell us, we should really stop and smell the roses on our trips, instead of traveling from A to B in one mad dash to get there. I am also thinking it is about time we traded our cameras in and got a camcorder. I am sure it would make for some very interesting dialogue!
I bet we are the only two people who toured the southern and western part of Vancouver Island in two days! For those of you not familiar with Vancouver Island, that is about 4 or 5 days of touring at the pace old biddies generally tour. We planned on taking a week because we have to figure on getting lost, at least once. The first day we went south to Victoria, and then on to Sooke. The following day we traveled back up the Island again and did the west coast. Actually, we never got lost once; confused, yes, but not lost. For instance, friends told us we should go to the Wickaninnish Inn on the west coast, and have lunch. According to them it was a great place to visit. Well, we went there and didn’t think it was that hot. Added to that, we couldn’t find out where our friends had eaten.
Later we discovered there are two Wickaninnish Inns, the old and the new. Of course we went to the old which is now just an information centre and place from which you can view the Pacific Ocean. Furthermore, the two Inns are nowhere near each other.
We drove to Uculet approximately 30 kilometers down the road, where we had lunch in an old boat that was made into a restaurant. The food was really good. After lunch I asked where the rest room was and was directed to the head of some stairs. Ah, life is never that simple for us. Down I went into the bowels of the ship and at the bottom was a long hallway which I followed, right into what looked like crew quarters. At least there was a bathroom complete with toothbrushes and other grooming gear.
It was eerie and apparently I was the only one down there. I suddenly realized that if I yelled for help, nobody would hear me. Added to all this I was now beginning to doubt myself. This was not the rest room for the restaurant because those stairs were pretty steep and you have to step over a sill from room to room; there was no way it was a wheelchair friendly place. I worked my way back upstairs to where Verna was beginning to wonder if I was O.K. I suggested to her if she has to use the bathroom, I would stop at the first garage and she can use theirs.
Did I mention that this year we are planning (the only way Verna and I plan is to just get in the car and drive), a trip to the northern most part of the Island. We will just go till we run out of road. I am planning to pick Verna up at the ferry in Comox. If we are going to get lost, this would be the time, trying to get out of Comox!
I figure this is the only reason why she and I take these jaunts; so we can get together and have a lot of laughs We laugh at things other people don’t think are funny and we learn new words to call all the other drivers on the road.
Till the next time,
Biddy Jean
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