Last night was a very long night. After sleeping at 11PM in the hostel, I woke up numerous time throughout the night. At 1AM, I woke up and got out of bed for a full hour feeling like I was going to throw up. At 2AM, the feeling of nausea settled down a bit and I was able to sleep until about 6:30AM. At 6:30AM, I began packing up all my things, and left the hostel at 7AM to spend 3-4 hours working at Starbucks.
At 11AM, I returned to the hostel to pick up my backpack, and boarded the bus #50 to 6 mile road in order to meet Michel to hike the three peaks specified in the Meetup event. At 12:30PM, I checked the Meetup page and noticed that at 4AM he had posted a comment on the Meetup event page notifying me that the event would not be taking place. I was upset at the late cancellation, but it’s just part of being flexible and not expecting everything to always end up perfect.
Now that I was in the area, I decided to have lunch at Six Mile Pub, which I now know is the oldest pub in British Columbia. The pub was a very nice atmosphere, and I ordered a vegetarian wrap and poutine, which were both delicious.
From Six Mile Club, I boarded a bus to the AirBNB I would be staying at tonight. After dropping off my things and taking a shower, I boarded another bus to Mount Douglas Park and hiked up to the peak. Mt Douglas Park contains many trails which mostly lead to the observation deck and viewing area at the peak. The view from the peak has 360 degree views of the entire city of Victoria in all directions.
From Mount Douglas, I boarded another bus to Uptown Shopping Mall, where I would be meeting Michel and the rest of the group for a pre-trip meeting for the Olympic National Park Hurricane Ridge Trip. Here are my initial thoughts about the upcoming Meetup trip this weekend:
- It’s nice that Tyler/Kyle (don’t remember exactly) and Sarah are younger in age and probably more relatable
- On one hand, I would probably be able to complete the trip much cheaper (by not needing to pay for car ferries, campsites, etc.). But then again, I might have needed to pay more for campsites so it might have evened out. Also, it would be nice to have some company on the day trip
- Maybe I should extend the trip for a few more days and just take a ferry back to Victoria on my own on Monday or Tuesday
- It’s a bit frustrating that we’ll be overlapping about 10KM on the Lake Angeles Trail, which I just did a few weeks ago with Omer, Theresa, and Chloe
The Pre-trip meeting was in a starbucks at the Uptown Shopping Center. Uptown shopping center is a 1.3 million SF mixed-use development built in 2010 on the site of an outdated shopping center. The project is mixed-use retail, office, and residential. Here are some interesting thoughts about the shopping center:
- Developers did an above-average job making the shopping experience a pleasant and entertaining one. Plenty of restaurants, walkways, landscaping, beautiful facades, etc.
- The retail portion of the small is an odd-size, making it not quite a shopping mall and not quite a shopping center. It’s sort of stuck awkwardly in between. The project might have been much more successful if it was larger and contained a greater variety of stores.
- This is the first shopping mall I’ve seen where Wal-Mart was the originally-intended anchor of the shopping mall. The Wal-Mart Supercenter is at least 100,000 SF and seems to be mostly similar to their prototype store interiors
After the pre-trip meeting, I boarded the bus to the AirBNB for a relaxing night in.
