Fresh...

I spent last week travelling over to the mainland to visit my nieces.

My middle niece Rachel and I then took an alternate route home.

There's nothing like having the leisure time to take the long road home.

And so we did...

From Tsawwassen on the mainland you can take the 1.5 hour ferry to points

south near Victoria or you can take a 2 hour ferry to the middle of the island

to Nanaimo. 

I've only done this route once at night so it was such a treat to be sailing

on a gorgeous clear morning...

...there was a beautiful dusting of fresh snow that lay like icing sugar across the landscape...

I've never been up into these mountains but I've looked at them from down below

for half of my life when I lived in Vancouver and the many many times I've taken these ferry rides...

...and still they catch my breath...

The two 'bumps' standing out here are called The Lions...

Sometimes from certain angles they really do look like two majestic Egyptian 

sculptures of regal beasts keeping watch...

As the sailing continued I said to my niece "people pay money to go on cruises

like this...how lucky we are to have this as part of our highway system!"

Closer to Nanaimo we passed the Entrance Island lighthouse station.

Built in 1885, one of the rare, still manned lighthouses on the coast,  it was built to

guide ships into the Nanaimo harbour from the Straight of Georgia, now renamed 

The Salish Sea by the Chemainus First Nations People who have lived here for thousands of years.

After an hour and a half drive we arrived on Denman Island to visit old friends and the mountains

up that way, the spine of Vancouver Island, looked just as lovely as ever...

There's a magic feeling of snow in December, right before the Solstice...

Winter skies travel gladly with us on our road trip...