We had originally been planning to go to Vancouver this weekend but plans changed when Kiddo got a birthday invite for Saturday afternoon. A quick look at other options put the Saltspring Island Apple Festival on our radar (something I have been wanting to attend for some time but since it falls so close to our anniversary, we are usually doing other things). We’ve also been saying we need to get over to Saltspring to see friends so when we found a little cabin on a farm with a vacancy, we decided it was fate telling us to get our butts over there!
As trips-on-a-whim go, this one went off amazingly well. We had a nice long visit with our friends (Kiddo was a little bored but she was a trooper), the bed in the cabin was crummy so our sleep was similarly crummy but we made it through the night, headed out for breakfast, and took in the apple festival:
Along with the display in Fulford Hall, there were a dozen farms to visit but we knew better than to attempt the full tour. Instead we picked a few spots to visit, picked up some lovely apples, fresh cheese (and even saw the cows that helped to produce it), and bought a little apple tree which I will plant this week. The tree is a Melrose and should start producing fruit in about 4 years — and then at least I will know for sure what one of the varieties on our property is!
We returned to Vancouver Island via the Vesuvius-Crofton route, a nice short ferry ride that happily avoided angry traffic at Swartz Bay. Up over the Malahat, a stop for groceries and we were home before the dinner hour.