Click on images below to enlarge:
|
 |
| Duncan Farmers Market
|
|
|
| One vendor sold a wide variety of pilafs and pre-mixed soups. Their
colorful nature made them pretty.
| A close-up of some of the soup mixes.
|
|
| Lunch at Merridale Cidery
|
|
|
|
|
| Merridale
Cidery's restaurant-and-tasting-room building.
| Di Yin by the cidery's funky fountain/pond.
| We had lunch outdoors in the restaurant attached to Merridale Cidery: La Pommeraie
Bistro. You can see Di Yin sitting at our table with its painted
tabletop.
| "Home cured salmon: winter apple, and fennel cured salmon with tzatziki."
A sweet (candied?) salmon with good tzatziki sauce. Very good overall.
|
|
|
| "Open sandwich: pan seared salmon on brick oven bread with tossed
organic greens and tapenade." The salmon had a nice crispiness from
being seared. Sorry you can't see the bread under it. Like the other
dish, this was very good.
|
|
| Tour of Merridale Cidery
|
|
|
| Rows of apple trees.
| The polished, presentation distillery. The distillery we saw in the
back room, in actual use, certainly didn't look this new and shiny.
|
|
| Cowichan Bay
|
|
|
|
|
True Grain Bread
bakes organic breads, often made from heritage grains (analogous to
heirloom tomatoes).
Someone told us that until the bakery and other artisanal producers
opened in the last few years, the town was a small, shrinking town
that one paid any attention to, not even people the next town over. The
bakery hosts discussions on organics and other local community issues.
It sounds like they helped bring the town to life. In short, I have much
respect for the bakery's philosophy and how it displays it through its
website and its actions.
I really like the style and content of the bakery's website, even as I
hate its use of images, often containing text, for layout.
Incidentally, it's easy to miss the bicycle above the bakery's entrance.
| True Grain's selection of breads. Although not pictured, they make a
20-mile bread bread: the grain is grown nearby, ground just a few miles
away, and baked here.
| Hilary's
Cheese. Its selection isn't as large as other cheese shops.
| Udder Guy's
Ice Cream. We tried samples and learned they make potently flavored
ice cream.
|
|
|
|
|
Cowichan Bay Seafoods.
It has a small, fresh, expensive
selection of seafood, all of which were caught locally.
| Cowichan Bay, as seen from between two buildings.
| A panoramic movie of the bay and the marina.
|
|
| Chemainus
|
|
|
|
|
"Welcome to Chemainus: World Famous Murals."
Chemainus has a large number of murals. I tried to take a picture of every one.
| "The mural is dedicated to the many volunteers who made the Chemainus mural project a success."
Sorry about the sharp contrast in this and later pictures. It was a sunny day.
| | The twenty-plus-foot mural near where we parked.
Also, the first
of the murals we saw that involved logging.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Another huge mural.
| Cute.
| A collage.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| A mural commemorating the lumber barons, an industry which was "the
lifeblood of the community for 60 years."
| An impressionist mural. I like it.
| Besides timber, railroads were also a recurring image on the town's
murals.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| For a sense of scale, notice the lamppost at left.
| | Another piece that reflects Chemainus's lumberworking past.
| For a sense of scale, notice the man and tree at left.
|
