Mt Washington Alpine Resort

While randomly searching on the internet one day, I came across this recommendation for pretty sights to see on Vancouver Island. It's Mt. Washington Alpine Resort, which in the winter time is a popular ski area. But during the summer, you can ride the chairlifts up the mountain for a beautiful view. We also ate at the restaurant there. It's $25 for a meal plus your chair lift ticket. This is the view from the restaurant. And here's our chairlift. There was a family at the top who'd brought food to feed the birds. They gave some to Oscar, and he was able to catch a bird on his arm.

This is just the beginning of the views that awaited us. I love this gorgeous, midnight blue lake surrounded by mountains.

This overlooks the nearby Strathcona park. I would have liked to go to the park to see Canada's tallest waterfall, but it's a full day hike. We headed down to the observation point that was set up. Unfortunately I was wearing flip flops and wasn't prepared for the snow and the rocks. At least it was still pretty. You can also see the coast from this area. You can see the long, windy road we came up to get here. But you can also see the reason why we came! I was surprised by how much snow was still there and they were already allowing mountain bikers. Those mountains surrounding Strathcona park are beautiful! But I kept being drawn back to the view of this lake, surrounded my tree covered hills and snowy mountains. Oscar and I could have stayed on this platform all day. But instead we came back down the chairlift. The view's much better going down than going up. Once we got down, we played a little mini-golf at the 9 hole course they had. It wasn't a terribly interesting course, but mini-golf is always fun, especially when we can get a view. We also played on their disc golf course. The flip flops also really impeded me here. I had no idea the terrain would be so rocky. Oscar teased me saying "how could you not know a mountain would be rocky?" But I thought they would have smoothed out the sight-seeing parts for visitors (which we later found out is exactly what they do for the most popular viewing areas on the Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains). This was a gorgeous area to visit. It was much cheaper than our Whistler/Blackcomb mountain sightseeing, and was just as pretty. While we were there it didn't seem like the place takes in a lot of summer business. I hope it picks up for them since it really is a wonderful place to go, and I'm very happy we spent most of our day here.