Saturna Island

We've been out on the boat again for a few days. My, it's beautiful out on the water. Yesterday, coming home, was a blueberry and whipped cream morning: blue, blue sky with wisps of airy, white, streaky clouds. I sat in the bow and just drank it all in, thanking God for his amazing creation.

On Monday, we ventured over to Saturna Island. Tim's guidebook highly recommended the food at a bistro run by the Saturna Island winery. We tied up to the dock at Lyall Harbour, from where the book said it was a "fair walk." We asked a local how far it was and were told, "a couple of miles." We like walking and do a lot of it, so we set off.

Well. Both the book and the local resident neglected to mention that the road took us waaaay up one side of the mountainous island and waaay down the other side. And a couple of miles turned into an hour of solid hiking. The road descending into the vineyards was the steepest I've ever seen - I'd be nervous of driving it. By the time we arrived, we were ready for lunch!

And this was the view from our table on the patio; rows of vineyards slanting down to the water, with trees and islands beyond. The only thing that marred our lunch was the thought of the walk back. Fortunately, the steepest part of the road was at the very beginning and 20 minutes of steady plodding and a few stops to catch my breath enabled us to thoroughly enjoy the rest of the walk back to the boat.

For lunch I ordered a pan-roasted sable fish in a cucumber-avocado sauce, with sea asparagus. I'd never eaten sea asparagus before and found it yummy - crunchy and salty and very good with the fish. I'm going to go searching for it in the wild. We did find it in a couple of places, in marshy tidal pools, but they were in parks and so we couldn't pick any.