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16 SOLERA DIAMOND VALLEY | JANUARY 2017 By Berkie Harris, Resident My husband Charlie grew up near the Canadian border but never got to go there. So, when I asked him for a bucket list travel destination he said without hesitation, "Canada." I had never been to Canada either so the decision was easy. Being garden lovers we found a one week Road Scholar trip entitled "The Glorious Gardens of Vancouver and Victoria" which included 10 beautiful parks and gardens as well as other historical and scenic sites. We flew into Vancouver in late August. It was a perfect time to get out of the SoCal heat. In Vancouver we went to Stanley Park, Queen Elizabeth Park, Nitobe Japanese Gardens on the campus of the University of British Columbia, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden and Van Dusen Botanical Gardens. After an exciting BC Ferry ride over to Victoria we were welcomed to the Royal Scott Hotel by a Scottish bag piper. Victoria has that old-British charm so that was fun. In Victoria we saw Abkhazi Garden, Government House Estate Gardens, Beacon Hill Park and Lily Maxwell's Garden where the homeowner herself gave us a tour and told us how she had designed and developed her large yard overlooking a bay. Last was the famous Butchart Gardens. We had dinner in the Manor House Restaurant enjoying their vast lawns and perfectly programmed flowers of every size and color in the rainbow. Butchart is everything they say it is. Oh, but we weren't done yet. We had to get home. So we took the Victoria Clipper through the magnificent San Juan Islands down to Seattle. We spent two nights there which only gave us time to see the Space Needle and the Chihuly Glass Museum and Garden. They were well worth it. We then picked up a rental car and did our other bucket list dream trip – driving down the Oregon coast on Hwy 101. After several days of enjoying the beautiful huge trees, being in awe of the vast Pacific and a stop at the Tillamook Cheese Factory we arrived in San Francisco. We spent the last weekend of our two week trip there. A good friend who lives in the East Bay took us on a guided tour which included the requisite stop at the Beuna Vista at Fisherman's Warf for an Irish coffee. Monday morning called us back to the rental car. We booked it down the I-5 just in time to get home by dark - happy to have made our bucket list trip to the Northwest and looking at next year's calendar to see when we can go back. LIVING THE BUCKET LIST Butchart Gardens and So Much More