Gabriola Island

The sky was perfectly blue on thanksgiving Sunday morning, as we boarded the 9.30 ferry over to Gabriola Island, a pleaseant 25 minute ride. Our friends, Lisa and Andy who live on the island, had invited us for Thanksgiving dinner. There was a three day openhouse tour of about 37 art studios on the island and Lisa had selected about 10 for us to see. We picked up a studio tour map and drove off the ferry to start our tour.
The island, which is about 15km long by 5km wide, reminded me of several Carribean islands we have seen with one road circling the island and many tiny roads winding up steep hills into the interior. The "main" road offers many wonderful views across either the open waters of the strait or beautiful protected bays with boats at anchor floating on a sea of glass.
Gabriola, like many of the islands in the strait, are very much into arts and crafts, with a slight sixties/hippies flavour. Our friends who live there are really "layed back", as all the islanders we spoke with seem to be. Many of them came in the 60s and 70s.
We made our way through the list of studios, all of which were tucked back in the trees, generally not visible from the road. We saw; glassware, beautifully designed leather handbags, pottery, silver jewelery, clothing etc. We had a nice visit with an author and illustrator of childrens books. Many of the books she wrote and illistrated, but she has also illustrated other author's books.
We stopped and had our picnic lunch beside the waters of a long narrow bay, with the table surrounded by fallen leaves.

We made it to Lisa and Andy's in time for a delicious turkey dinner with all the trimmings. After dinner we enjoyed a long walk in the late afternoon sunshine, then made our way to the ferry back to Nanaimo. As we drove off the ferry and back to our park we saw a perfect full moon. It was a wonderful way to end a great day on beautiful Gabriola Island.