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The last time Gwen went to the Island was back in October, and it was kind of cold and rainy. Even though there were a few showers on Saturday, it was mostly quite warm while we were there. Gwen had a lot of fun tramping around my mom’s property, exploring the forest and the garden and especially the blackberry brambles. Once she realized you could pick & eat them right off the branches it was like GAME OVER, MAN. She spent most of the weekend with purple staining her hands and face (and clothes…).

Originally I’d planned just one post about this little getaway, but I have too many pictures and it would be obscene to cram them into one post. Like, you would all hate me & get a cramp in your scrolling finger. So while I settle back in to my regular life of cleaning the house and dishes and laundry (SO. MUCH. LAUNDY. I was so good at not overpacking this trip but between us Gwen and I had a full load of super-filthy clothes from just two and a half days away. How???) here are the pictures from Friday only.

That little white cluster on the right of the horizon is Vancouver.

The sky is so big over the water.

With no Taylor on this trip I had to be my own photographer

This past weekend Taylor and Sym were both going to be away so I decided to take Gwen over to Vancouver Island to visit my mom. Originally I’d planned a trip for the whole family later this month but my recent financial setback kind of scrapped that plan. I still really wanted to make it over there so I decided that rather than sit around my apartment alone all weekend, I’d get out of town.

Since I don’t have a car (or a driver’s license…) I had to walk on the ferry with the stroller and the little dogs, which was a super daunting prospect. I invited my sister Zoë and her boyfriend Chris to come with, to help and also because they are cool and fun. Taylor booked a zipcar and drove us out to the ferry terminal on Friday night and we were on our way! We actually almost missed the ferry because they didn’t have any sort of announcement for foot passengers with dogs boarding the ferry, so we missed our opportunity to board before the cars and had to wait until after all the big trucks and busses had loaded. It was a huge hassle because the vehicles park so close together there weren’t a lot of places where the stroller could fit through, so at times I actually had to lift the stroller, with Gwen in it and the carseat bungee-corded to the back, over people’s cars (with the help of a VERY nice BC Ferries worker, don’t think I could have lifted it by myself).

They have a creepy little pet area on the upper car deck (which is annoying since we had to walk onto the lower car deck) but it was tiny and there was a large, mean, VERY AGGRESSIVE dog in it already, so the helpful worker showed us some weird little seats on the other side of the car deck instead. Considering she’d had no real dinner and was up past her bedtime, Gwen was really well-behaved, which was a blessing (and was not repeated on the return trip).

I used to take the ferry back and forth so much, and would spend most of my time on the passenger deck, and I guess I got used to how beautiful the trip is. Being stuck on the car deck with the dogs (tbh I don’t see why they couldn’t have a pet area on the upper outdoor passenger deck, like don’t even get me started on this) kind of forced me to spend a lot of time gazing at scenery, because there wasn’t anything else to gaze at. It really is amazingly stunning here.