Day 7

After checking out we went looking for an attraction called “pot holes”. The first try was unsuccessful as we ended up in a very, very narrow winding road in the middle of a forest. We had to turn around and stopped at The Sooke museum/visitor center to get better directions. The museum is small, but interesting -- displaying artifacts of the history of the area. Then on to the pot holes, which is actually a large provincial park, very well organized , with multiple parking lots at various levels and a large camp grounds. The potholes are large rock pits on the Sooke river. Very picturesque and supposedly warmer than the ocean so people come to swim in them. We then met our friends, Pyx and Lorne, by a large recreation center where Pyx was installing her work (a beautiful sculpture of the robe of St. Francis made of paper mixed with local plants and flowers) for the annual Sooke art show. Then off to lunch. While driving we saw a street with Lorne’s surname. It is named after his grandfather who was a prominent settler of the area. After lunch we visited a very picturesque Becher beach in east Sooke. There was nice fine sand here as opposed to the previous beaches which were all rocks. Calm water but too cold for swimming. Then headed home to Victoria with a stop at Canadian Tire – large store and a Canadian institution where we bought a set of very cute camp lanterns, which we first saw in our hotel. We had a nice dinner at home and a long conversation about Canada’s First Nations and their cultural traditions. Lorne is very familiar with their culture as he had worked with indigenous people for many years.