Grungies

It was time to re-provision our food supply and Ava couldn’t stop talking about apple pie, so it was off to Ganges on Saltspring Island.  Ganges is a small town with a nice grocery store, a marine supply store and many other small shops.

We took off from Portland Island at 10:55am for about a 2 hour run and 12.7 nautical miles arriving at the Ganges Marina at 12:50pm.

We have a love hate relationship with this town.  It has so much potential with great retail shops, close to town marina and the landscape is really nice.  However, our nickname for the town is “Grungies”.  Take downtown Olympia times 10!  Half the people walking around haven’t taken a shower in months and the smell that follows them around makes you want to run and hide.  Go to the park and you will find full on boobs hanging out, used to feed their children so it’s OK.  The sailboat next to us had a 3+ year-old boy running around naked and the mom talking about how kids need to be allowed to express themselves.

The Ganges Marina is not very nice either.  At $70 for one night moorage and $3 per bag of garbage it’s a rip off.   However, they are working on improvements and have made some since the last time we were there.  With all that said the people all over town, are all very nice.

Lunch was first on the list when we arrived so we headed over to the Tree House restaurant.  We have never been there before but it was highly recommended by a guy on the dock.  The food was great but the environment was a little dirty.  The staff was awesome and very accommodating.

After browsing through some shops it was off to the bakery all the way on the other side of town for Ava’s apple pie she has been asking about for days.  We were in luck, but she had to wait until after dinner.

We filled up the cart at the grocery store (even got some free salmon carcass for crabbing!)  then had to get it all back to the boat about ½ mile away.  We all felt like pack mules but we made it in one trip.  Julie was especially a trooper because she is still in a lot of pain from her butt injury.  We had a great dinner at the boat then it was time for Ava’s apple pie.  She took about 2 bites then said, “I’m done”.

Trip Log – 167.27 nautical miles