Victoria -- Day 3

We continued to expand our radius from the city, this time by bike.  Today we discovered that just because you're thin, you can't eat cake all the time and call that exercise. It was an awesome day, but man, were we whipped.

Victoria has a great system of bike trails, one of the main ones being the Galloping Goose Trail. It is 55 km long and connects with many other trails throughout the area. Two-thousand commuters use it to get to work every day. Amazing. So we rented bikes and checked out the Trail, heading west out of the city.

The start of our ride, on the Selkirk Trestle

 We made it to Thetis Lake, a popular swimming hole and park.  We ventured away from the beach and splashing kids, and found a quiet spot for our picnic.

Lisa eating her bahn mi (Vietnamese sandwich). She says it wasn't as good as in Oakland, but I didn't know any better. It was yummy.

We thought about going swimming (I put my feet in and was surprised at how not frigid the water was). The idea of biking in wet bathing suits didn't appeal to us, though. I guess we'd make lousy triathletes.

Picnic -- complete with Perrier.

 After our lunch we walked the trails a little, and found this cool vantage point of the lake:

Off to the right, there were about 10 high school students jumping off the cliff. They weren't as high as we were, but still...

 Back on the trail...

We overshot our next destination some, but it gave us an opportunity to visit part of Royal Roads University, and the site of Hadley Castle. We didn't spend much time here, but it was nice to see.

In an attempt to avoid a rather large uphill climb, we took the scenic route on a footpath through the woods. We had to walk our bikes and it was a little quiet and creepy, especially since this was the sign at the entrance:

Luckily, we didn't see any cougars.

Lisa looked very worried when I stopped to take this photo.  There was rustling in the bushes....

 Finally we got back on track and headed to the Fisgard Lighthouse.  See it?

It's a cute little lighthouse, although their reds don't match. It bugged me.

We knew we'd be getting into rush hour (biker rush hour) so we finally headed home. With just a quick break to enjoy the sugariest lemonade I've ever tasted from a couple of 10ish year olds parked beside the trail.

We estimated our trip was about 20 miles.  Not bad for a couple of "skinny fats." We ended the day with dinner at Red Fish Blue Fish, a converted shipping container known for its fish and chips. We waited in line for about an hour (typical).  It was good, but so much food! Then off to bed in a tired, greasy food coma....