Combing the Beaches on the Sunshine Coast
The coast of British Columbia has an infinite number of destinations that are worth visiting. One of the closest to Vancouver is what is known as the Sunshine Coast.
About a 30 minute drive from downtown Vancouver, the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal is one of the two main terminals for points headed west or north. Just a short 40 minute ferry ride north from Horseshoe Bay ends at the start of the Sunshine Coast. We exited Highway 101 right after our arrival at the Langdale ferry terminal and headed west towards the small town of Gibsons.
Perhaps best known as the place where the CBC television show The Beachcombers was filmed, the site of the Molly’s Reach restaurant (originally a sound stage for the show and now a real restaurant) is perhaps the single most famous location on the entire Sunshine Coast.
Sidebar: Entire volumes can be written on the cultural impact of the Beachcombers onto Canadian television. The Beachcombers was on for 19 years between 1972 and 1991 and was virtually an institution on Canadian television during that time. Quoted from the Internet Movie Database on the plot outline for the Beachcombers: “The adventures of a professional lumber salvager and his friends in Gibsons, British Columbia, Canada.“. The fact that they could create 19 years worth of TV on this one sentence makes me proud to be a Canadian.
We only stayed in Gibsons long enough for Barb and her mother to shop at every clothing and shoe store in town (which was a surprisingly high number given the population of Gibsons) before we headed down highway 101 towards the town of Sechelt where we stopped for lunch. We walked around the town for a few minutes before deciding on a place called the Old Boot Eatery (located at 5530 Wharf Street in Sechelt).
The Old Boot Eatery appeared to be a nice casual place to get some lunch and we weren’t disappointed. Many of the menu items in this Italian restaurant were either pasta dishes or as I ordered, toasted sandwiches. What all of the dishes had in common were the huge portions and , without exception, delicious taste. I ordered the “meat-a-ball” sandwich which came with a small side salad. As you can see from the picture, the dish was pretty big and it was all I could do just to finish eating the sandwich alone, never mind the salad.
Interestingly, while sitting at our table at the Old Boot Eatery, we noticed this old bottle of Chianti wine sitting on the shelf behind out table – the kind of bottle that had the straw “basket” weave around the bottom. What drew our attention was the maker of the wine: Melini. This happened to be the name of the vineyard just down the road from the villa that we stayed at in Tuscany last year. We happened to stop at the Melini vineyard and did some wine tasting there and also bought some of our wine from their shop.
We continued our day trip along the Sunshine Coast and stopped at our final destination of Pender Harbour where we took some time out for a coffee and pastry. They had just pulled some huge, delicious chocolate chip cookies out of the oven and those became part of our snack as well.
After catching our breath from our short rest, we returned back down highway 101 towards the ferry terminal before finally making it home for the day. While the weather today wasn’t the best for mid-July (it was cloudy and in the low 20’s) I couldn’t help but think that it would be nice to return to the Sunshine Coast and do a bike trip up the highway for a day or two. As we noticed countless Bed and Breakfasts along the highway to stay in, it would be a unique way to leisurely explore the small towns along the coast instead of by car. Maybe next time.
Baden
