Cathedral Grove, Ocean Bottom & Goats on the What?

We decided we didn’t want to fill everyday with activities, so we rested a day or two in between our outings which was an excellent pace and kept us busy without getting exhausted. Trish had a couple days off in our first few days there, so she planned a fun outing for us to see Cathedral Grove, go to the beach in Parksville, and have lunch with the goats in Combs, at Goats on The Roof!

Cathedral Grove was a fascinating park with giant cedar trees. These trees were some of the most ancient trees in the country. It was a busy place, but I took my time listening to the trees as I followed the rest of the group through the twisty path.

Time for lunch at one of Trish’s favourite places to bring her visitors, Goats on the Roof. This was a fun market with a restaurant, in Coombs, that had goats living on its roof! The food was yummy and the market had many cool places to window shop. We all loved the toy area and could have spent many hours and dollars there. Outside there was a whimsical castle and patio area filled with cement statues that people could climb on. Not to mention the interesting wooden furniture... We found one very interesting wooden chair carved into a giant body part, and that’s all I’ll say about that!

We visited the beach in Parksville that afternoon. It wasn’t the best beach weather that day, but the tide was out, so there were miles of beach to explore. We found a few sand dollars and had to ask Google how to tell if they were alive or not. Most of the sand dollars we found were the skeletons, but there was one softer one with tiny moving feet that Lily picked up briefly! It was our first time finding a live one. It wasn’t the only live creature around. Many crabs skittered around our feet causing Sadie to do the “ew-ew-ew dance”. Lily won for finding the most fascinating ocean bottom item – we named it the “sea potato”, but it was actually a scrub brush that someone had either lost in the water or left there. It started to get cold and windy, so we called it a day and headed home.