Sunshine! Oh you don’t know how much you’ve missed the sunshine, until you wake up to glorious, glorious sunshine!
The sunshine was streaming into Newman when we opened up all of the blinds to let it come in. After so many days of not seeing the sun, what a welcome change it was today!
Richard immediately got dressed in his grubby clothes this morning and went outside to check the temperature. We had a very heavy frost overnight and the temperature was only +1C, so there was no way Richard was getting up on Newman’s roof to do the small di-cor job, until it warmed up a bit.
Richard was getting all set to do the di cor job, and in the meantime he sprayed our boots to waterproof them and let them dry outside. That waterproofing spray is kind of smelly!
Our neighbour Owen came over to help Richard and hold the ladder, while I was inside working on some other things. Its nice to get ‘caught up’ on stuff that needs to be done and this morning was a great day to do that.
This antenna on Newman’s roof better not leak anymore. Its definitely got a lot of di-cor on it now! Richard adjusted the levelling on Newman’s jacks as well, so now we aren’t tipped as much from front to back and I’m not feeling dizzy anymore from the imbalance!
While Richard was puttering around outside I managed to book a hair appointment for next week in Courtenay with Christie who did my hair 3 times when I was here last time; research and order my son Josh a Christmas present online, booked a restaurant reservation, booked a tee time and had a Facetime call with Ron Porter about an interesting project I’ve been asked to participate in with my former employer. The morning just flies by when you’re busy, but we were both getting much needed stuff done!
I was trying to do some more research for our upcoming trip down South, but I never managed to get it done. I’ll have to find some time before we leave here on December 7th, as I do want to have some spots picked out for us to stay and visit along our journey.
Richard came into Newman as I was finishing up in my ‘office’ at the dinette table. He needed me to hold onto the top of the dinette bench seat, which had come apart on our journey across Canada. Richard needed to screw in a new screw while I pressed down on the top of the seat.
This screw had gone missing, and the top of the bench was flipping up. While Richard had the bench seat disassembled, we discovered a hidden compartment in the seat which we didn’t know we had.
And in that compartment, we found a bag of Chinet dinner plates all in their original plastic! These plates must have come from the previous owner, because neither one of us even knew there was a storage area against the wall! Newman still has a few tricks up his sleeve, even after all this time owning him!
We had a quick lunch of homemade soup and a sandwich and then it was down the Inland Island Highway to Qualicum Beach for our tee time at Qualicum Beach Memorial Golf Course.
The sun was shining and the temperature had reached 8C! Higher than the forecasted 6C!
Squinting because the sun is directly in our eyes. There was a frost delay this morning at the golf club, but by the time we were ready to tee off, the tee times were almost all caught up. Our tee time was 1:44pm today. We were paired with a very nice couple (Bill and Ellen) who have just moved from Calgary to the Island, and are closing on their new home in Lantzville on December 1st. Ellen was a home stager in Calgary so it was very interesting golfing with her and talking about staging, decorating and building homes. The golf was secondary today anyway, because the course was still pretty soggy from all the rain we’ve had over the past 3 days.
A pair of deer on the 1st fairway. No fear. Just hanging out.
On the 8th hole near the green. This deer let me get this close to him with my phone. There must have been close to 20 deer on the golf course today!
I had read in a local Qualicum Beach, Parksville magazine that the Qualicum Beach Inn had a great ‘Happy Hour’ special from 3-5pm which was $4 cocktails and $1.50 oysters. Since the Inn is a ’stone’s throw’ away from the Golf Club, I thought we would give the Inn a try after golf. Golf had taken longer today for some reason - 2.5 hours instead of 2 hours, and it was now 4:30pm after we cleaned up from golf. The sun was quickly going down, the temperature was dropping and we were ready to be warmed up a bit inside.
Qualicum Beach as we finished golf today.
We headed to the Qualicum Beach Inn and Richard went inside see if we could get served. We saw quite a few cars in the parking lot so we were worried the place would be packed.
Qualicum Beach Inn directly across from the photos I just posted above.
The bar/restaurant area looks really lovely, overlooking the Salish Sea, with nothing obstructing the view of the sunset.
Richard came out and said that the Inn was closed on Mondays and Tuesdays and he had just interrupted a staff meeting to see if we could get a table at the bar! Its an ’Island’ thing to close on weird days! We found this out last year too. Our friend Ken from Q. Beach was complaining to me when I golfed with him a few weeks ago that he and his wife wanted to eat out in town on a Tuesday and they couldn’t find anything open, except for take out sushi. I guess I should have remembered what he said! Anyway, what a disappointment. We’ll have to go back to the Inn when they are open.
By now we were pretty hungry and we wanted to try somewhere new to eat. We both felt like having fish and chips so I googled fish and chips Parksville and sure enough ‘British Bobby Restaurant’ in Parksville came up with 4.4 stars out of 5 stars. The good thing about the restaurant was that it was very close to the Inland Island Highway to get home after dinner. It is very dark here in the evenings and the highway is not lit up, so we prefer to be on the Inland Island Highway after dark if possible.
This looks promising!
When we arrived at 5pm we were the only car in the parking lot. Notice the front door done up to be a Police Public Call Box.
We arrived and no one greeted us so we walked into the restaurant a bit further. Finally the person working at the restaurant greeted us. We got out our vaccine passports and she did not have a QR code reader to read our vaccine passports. Not a good sign, but there was no one else in the restaurant, so we sat down at a booth with the menus.
Island lager for Richard.
Definitely not inexpensive for fish and chips.
Cod and chips for Richard. He wondered where the rest of his fish had gone! He had ordered ‘one piece’ of cod.
Cajun halibut and chips for me. I gave Richard a piece of my fish because it looked like some of his was missing!
Mushy peas. Very English. My mom was English and we were raised on mushy vegetables! These were not good though.
The entire meal was a huge disappointment! We try not to eat in any chain restaurants on the Island, preferring to support local establishments, but this restaurant was NOT good at all. The portions were chintzy and overall we just were not happy with this spot. When I did some research on the restaurant after our meal, it looked like the previous owner ran into financial trouble with the Covid situation last December and the locals started a ‘Go Fund Me’ page to help him and his family stay in business. I’m not sure what happened after February 2021 when they announced they were going to stay in business, bit if tonight was any indication, this restaurant is doomed since there are a lot better fish and chip places in Parksville and French Creek, than this spot. I think this was our first bad experience eating out on the Island. Let’s hope what I’ve got planned for us on Thursday will make up for tonight’s bad experience!
We drove home to Fanny Bay thoroughly disappointed with our dinner and by the time we got home the temperature had dropped to +1C. While it will be another cold night this evening because the almost full moon is shining brightly off the sea, and when there are no clouds on the Island at night, we get frost and its cold. The good news is we’re expecting another nice day tomorrow, so we’re planning a hike to a new spot that I want to check out. We’ve got to get out while we have good weather because it can quickly start raining again on the Island!
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