Final day

Today is my last day on Vancouver Island. I had a great time and I’m hoping to return some day to see some of these sights again as well as many others.

I had my final breakfast at Captain Hardy’s restaurant. I ordered 2 pancakes which turned out to be the size of the plate and very thick. Since I knew I would be walking a lot I made sure to finish all of my breakfast.

The flight to Vancouver was uneventful, the plane was full the flight attendant was busy again with passing out snacks, drinks and candy just like on the way up to Port Hardy.

Once I Vancouver I caught a taxi to the Buchan Hotel close to Stanley Park, Vancouver’s version of Central Park in New York. From the outside the hotel looks like an apartment building. It has old wood flooring in the hallways and the rooms are quite small but comfortable. I wasn’t there for the hotel so basic hotel run locally was just fine for me. It turned out the hotel is only a block away from the park. I followed the seawall walk around the perimeter of the park. It was quite busy because it was a Sunday; there were walkers, bikers and skaters moving constantly. All in all I walked about 8 miles to/from and around the park.

That evening I walked a half block to Denman street where I had my choice of restaurants, coffee shops, galleries and almost anything you can think of. After dinner at one of the Greek restaurants I walked several blocks to English Bay and caught the sunset. The park was packed with many people of different nationalities.

Vancouver seems to be a special place. There are over 2.2 million people that live there. I visited only a small part of the city but on the rides to and from the airport the city was very clean. People seem to take pride in their city and clean up after themselves. Even at the parks there was little to no litter.

The next day I made the trip back home to NM. I had a great time on this vacation and I’m starting to think about my next one. My only hope is that Sue will be able to get away with me.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip. I really enjoyed writing about it.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Grizzly bear tour

Today I go on my grizzly bear trip. Besides the kayaking trip this is the big day trip I have been looking forward to.

The boat leaves between 6:45 and 7:00 from Telegraph Cove, 45 – 60 minutes from Port Hardy. This means that I get up around 445 to prepare, eat and drive to Telegraph Cove. I’m told there may be bears along the road so I had better drive slowly. How ironic would it be to miss my grizzly tour because of some black bears along the road. Fortunately I had planned ahead by stopping at one of the grocery stores the day before picking up something to eat and drink; there are no shops along the way for a hot chocolate and a muffin, no coffee for me.

I arrived at 6:35 along with 3 others so we took off to pick up some others along the way and would catch up with the rest of the group at the pier where we stage into flat bottom boats to go up the estuary. Once again it was mostly cloudy, no rain but windy later in the afternoon.

We rode for two hours before we arrived at the staging area. There were about 24 of us total so we split up into 2 boats for the trip up the river. The boats have one long bench along the length with a back in the center so we all faced to the sides of the boat as we travelled. We were constantly standing and sitting trying to get a better view of the wildlife, bears in particular. In all there were three boats that rotated through the river because there really isn’t room for all three to go in at once.

There are a couple of rules for those going on this trip; No perfume, aftershave or anything strong smelling. And no food!

We made the first trip in; saw bear and wolf tracks, a half eaten salmon, (I won’t show the photo), lots of bald eagles, mergansers (a type of duck), and deer, but no bears “Not to worry” said Lindsey, “I’ve never been skunked yet”. I immediately asked him how long he had been doing this “Three years”. I felt a little better but still was not convinced.

On our second trip in we went down one of the side channels of the river. As we went further up the channel it kept closing in with lots of grasses all around. Lindsey jumped out and started pulling us through the channel and I had this vision of the African Queen going through my head. I mentioned this to one of the other passengers and she had to agree, but we weren’t laughing about it. I’m happy to report we did make it back out without losing anyone. As we were going back to the main channel we had the option of either breaking for lunch or going back up the river for another look. We all agreed we can eat anytime so let’s go look some more. Well there was nothing to be seen this time either…… But on the way out we saw something moving along the shore just below the trees. It was a bear. Not only a bear, it was a grizzly mom with her cub! A silent cheer went up from all of us. We were told not to make any noise when bears were present because the sound may cause them to go back from where they came. At first we were rather far from them, but we were able to get closer and Lindsey jumped out of the boat in waist deep water to pull us a bit closer and hold us there. I think we ended up being less than 200’ from them.

They were interested in eating; they ate the grasses along the shore and used their paws to rake the crabapples off the trees. Their paws were huge! We were all just clicking away with our still and video cameras. Once in a while I put down my camera to look through my binoculars. The view through the binoculars was tremendous; it put them up close and personal. After they ate for a while they sat down and played with the cub jumping up on to mom and batting her and mom taking it and occasionally batting back. They wandered down the shore a little more and found more to eat, looked around and walked back into the woods. I think they were out there for over 30 minutes from the time we first saw them before they disappeared back into the woods. It was really moving seeing the mom and her cub.

From there we went back to the staging area for lunch. We were all talking about the sighting amongst ourselves; there were a lot of smiles that afternoon! We were advised to start heading back because of the gale force winds coming our way and we were going right into them. This turned out to be an E-ticket ride. The waves were pounding the boat the entire time we were going back; our two hour trip in the morning turned out to be closer to a three hour trip on the way back. I was starting to get worried about my arrival because I had a 700 PM meeting with the kayak guides in Port Hardy. This meeting is to find out what to do, what to pack, where to pack our personal stuff and how to pack our personal stuff. We arrived at the port at 5:15 I shot a photo or two and drove like mad to Port Hardy. On my way to make the 7:00 meeting I had to; get gas for the rental car, return the rental car and find a taxi to get back to town. I arrived at the hotel at 6:45, enough time to clean up and change my clothes.

After our meeting where we all introduced ourselves and learned the packing routine several of us met at one of the bars for dinner. After dinner we returned to our rooms to pack, repack and repack again then to bed. Tomorrow we kayak.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Port Hardy/San Josef Bay

I didn’t have anything planned for this day. While on yesterday’s orca trip I spoke with a few people to see what they were doing. No real leads there. I had decided to walk the estuary trail in Port Hardy, it’s not very long but the possibilities abound of seeing all sorts of wildlife.

I got up early and took off on the Quatse River trail. The variety of birds is amazing, all sorts of sea birds, land birds and raptors. I saw several juvenile bald eagles just sunning themselves and watching the area for food no doubt. Once you get to the edge of town the trees show up like a wall. If you go off the trail the moss becomes a thick blanket on the ground. There’s no way you can go by the wives’ tale that moss grows on the north side of the tree, they are covered with moss all the way around.

I stopped at the local visitor’s center for an idea or two for the day and was directed to Cape Scott Provincial Park, San Josef Bay in particular. It was a 70km drive, ~45 miles, on gravel roads put in place for/by the loggers. Even though it was Saturday there were still a few full logging trucks you wanted to stay away from. It took 1 ½ hours to do the 45 miles as you only averaged 30 mph. That’s where metric is good, I was doing 50 km/hr so I didn’t feel like I was going so slowly.

All along the way was a patchwork of forest. Every few miles there were signs saying when the area was logged and reforested. Only once or twice on this drive did I see a recently logged area. I couldn’t believe the devastation! I have never been in a war zone, I’ve only seen them in news clips. This looked like a war zone; tree stumps ripped out of the ground, limbs scattered in every direction with just small shrubs and grasses still growing. It hurt to look at it. It made me think of the car wreck on the side of the road, you don’t want to look but you look anyhow. Fortunately from looking at the other areas that had been previously harvested the logging companies realize that they have to ‘reforest’ to keep forests for future harvests.

Once I got to the end of the road, which got narrower as I was going along, I had another 1.5 mile hike to San Josef Bay. It was through more of the forest. The smells of the forest and mosses are very rich. Once on the beach I smelled the sea. The beach stretched for over a mile. Since it’s a hike to get there and the beach is so huge it seems empty. I saw 3 – 4 campers on the edge of the beach tucked along the forest. There were also a couple dozen day tourists like me just taking in the scene. From here the next piece of land you could see is across the Pacific Ocean about 4,000 miles away.

There are a number of sea stacks along the beach. They are the remnants of the erosion of the beach. The sand and soft rock eroded from the pounding surf and these stacks remained. There is all kinds of life on the stacks; from grasses and shrubs to full grown trees. In the low spots on the stacks are tidal pools with anemones and other sea life. When I was there at a low point in the tide these pools were about 8’ above the surf.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

The start of my trip/orcas

I posted this trip in an unusual order at first thinking I would only write about the kayaking. As I got into writing I decided to include all my trip. Read on...

This was the first real day of my trip. Yesterday I travelled from NM to Port Hardy, British Columbia through Denver and Vancouver. It’s been a while since I’ve travelled by air. United is down to a giving out a cup of something to drink. On the flight to Port Hardy from Vancouver they passed out snacks, juice and an after snack candy. This was on a small plane on a 1 hour flight.

After checking in at the hotel I walked along the waterfront and Main Street. Port Hardy is a town of about 5,000 mostly working class people, fishing, mining, logging and a bit of tourism. Any time one goes to a destination like this in the states it seems there are dozens of tourist shops selling all the usual tourist stuff, not here, there’s a shop or two otherwise the usual hardware, grocery, sporting goods stores and gas stations. Not even a McDonald’s, certainly not missed by me!

I quickly noticed the difference between the tourists and the locals. Since it was only about 65 outside the tourists were wearing the coats or sweaters and the locals were wearing T-shirts and shorts. I was one of the fleece jacket tourists. While walking along the shore line I started hearing bald eagles calling in the distance, the first time I’ve heard that in a long time. Berries seem to be growing everywhere; black, red and thimble, which is a very small version of a red raspberry. I tried one and quickly decided I prefer my blackberries. There is the scent of pine everywhere; if the pine scent isn’t there the smell of the ocean has taken its place.

I planned on a couple days of day tours then my kayaking trip, then an afternoon in Vancouver as the start of my trip back home, with the following day travelling the rest of the way.

I started with an orca trip with Mackay Whale Watching out of Port McNeill, about a 30 minute drive South of Port Hardy. My usual ‘don’t want to be there late’ personality showed up again, I got there 45 minutes early. I saw a lot of the town in about 30 minutes. Living in the big city spoils a person with all kinds of places to go to to waste time and money. Looking back on it now I realize that I was still wound up from my usual; getting up, going to work …. You know the routine. I did manage to slow down within the next day but it did take time.

Mackay’s has been around for a long time, they were one of the first companies to have orca tours. They have helped with guiding the legislation on how tourists are to behave around orcas. They are very knowledgeable about orcas and the local sea life in general.

The boat was full of tourists from many different places; the US, Canada, England, Holland and Germany. I was amazed at all the European tourists coming to this remote part of the world. You have to really want to come here because there is no direct way to get here.

The day started out nice and clear but it quickly turned cloudy and stayed that way for a good portion of the day. All along the way we saw and heard bald eagles. After an hour or so of travelling we had our first sighting, a pod of three to four orcas along the shore. They were quite far away but we all kept snapping photos with the hope they would get closer but you shoot anyway because this may be the only sighting. Nature does not operate on a clock!

Almost everybody in the area, especially locals, call in any orca sightings on the radio so if there are any orcas they probably have been seen and it has been passed along on the radio. It certainly increases the chances of finding some considering the size of the area they cover.

After following the first pod for 10 minutes or so Bill took off across the Johnstone Strait to find some other orcas. Within a few minutes more orcas appeared, much closer this time. Everybody jumped up and started photographing again. Bill identified one of the orcas as Springer who had somehow gotten lost on the south end of Vancouver Island. The northern orcas and southern orcas do not associate with each other so having Springer accepted back into its north pod is significant.

The orcas were swimming up and down the channel just feeding. It was a lot of fun to see them up close; you could see the different markings which are used to identify them. After seeing several pods over the next hour or two we stopped for a lunch of soup and a roll followed by a dessert. When Nicole brought up the dessert we were too busy photographing the sea lions on the shore to stop for dessert.

On our way back to drop some of the other tourists at a remote hotel we saw a black bear wandering along the shore. She looked over at us then just proceeded to walk along the shore not paying us any mind.

The trip was great, I highly recommend it. My only disappointment is that I did not get the ultimate orca photo. It is hard work aiming your camera with a long lens to get that close-up photo on a moving boat when you are not certain when and where your orca will make its next appearance. I will have to try again.

After the orca tour was over I continued on to Telegraph Cove another 20 minutes south of Port McNeill. I toured around the tourist shops and visited Tide Rip tours where I had made reservations to go on a Grizzly bear tour. They have been seeing bears consistently so our chances are good to see a bear or two. I can’t wait.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Kayaking day 6 - the final day

I slept remarkably well considering my 2” thermarest pad was the only thing cushioning me from the rocks. It lightly rained off and on most of the night. I woke up to the sound of a humpback whale blowing somewhere near.

We had breakfast and packed in light rain showers and cloudy skies. That was the forecast for the day. You could tell we were getting closer to Port Hardy by all the fishing boats out in the channel. Everybody was out salmon fishing because the salmon were starting to run up the rivers.

We made one brief stop on a beach to stretch our legs. The tide made its appearance again. Not more than 5 minutes after we stopped and put the kayaks on land we found ourselves up to our ankles in water! I’ve never seen such a change.

It seemed that the closer we got to town the faster we paddled. I don’t know if it’s because of the dark rain cloud coming our way or the promise of a shower once we checked back into the hotel, the latter I think.

After packing up all our stuff and another great lunch served by our guides we checked into the hotel and had a post trip coffee and visit with our guides before they went on their way to prepare for the next week’s trip.

All the guests went back to their hotels for a long hot shower, at least I did, a change of clothes, and a dinner with our fellow kayakers. We had a great time telling stories of our trip and I’m certain that I may run into them again on another kayaking trip.

Kara, on of our guides, kept records of our trip. In all we kayaked 50 miles and averaged 2 – 2.5 knots, which she said is quite good.

I had a great time on this portion of my trip. I’m certainly hoping I will be able to do it again, maybe not at this location but somewhere. I guess that’s the measure of whether you really had a good time.

Stay tuned… I will also be reporting on the other parts of my trip.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Kayaking day 5

Woke to light rain. Helped put of a rain fly over the kitchen in case the rain gets worse. As we were waiting for breakfast and starting to pack we could hear a humpback whale blowing in the distance. Once we heard it everybody came down to look. We could see the spouts of mist from the whale but not any more than that. A couple blows later we saw the tail flip as it was going for a deep dive. One of the guides said we may not hear from it again for another 20 minutes.

Once we were packed up we took of towards the Browning Wall. This area was viewed by Jacques Cousteau and is known for its great diving. The wall goes down 700’ before it hits the bottom of the channel. We are here at low tide, a great time to view all the sea life on the wall. We saw hundreds of starfish and sea anemones of all different types.

From there we went back across the Goletas channel to follow along the Vancouver island coast. Just as we were getting ready to cross the channel a pod of transient orcas were passing through the channel. There must have been 3 – 4 orcas in the pod. We paddled up the island a bit and stopped for lunch on a small beach next to a small waterfall.

We continued on to our campsite on Vancouver island. Now we have to be alert for black bears because VI is large enough to support bears. All the other islands we had been staying on up to this point were too small to support large animals such as bears. When we got to our campsite there was a kayaker already set up. He was more than happy to have company because he had to scare a couple black bears off the beach before he could set up camp. I’m sure we made more than enough noise to keep the bears away.

This was the first time we actually camped on the beach. One had to make certain to move all the round stones from under one’s tent/sleeping bag. Fortunately most of the stones were flat so I did have a comfortable night’s sleep.

The trip up to this point has been great, tomorrow we are heading back to the real world?!?!

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

British Columbia - Vancouver Island geography

Being a map nut from way back I don't know why I didn't include this at the start of the trip. I'm including a couple maps starting with the northwestern corner of the US and British Columbia getting more detailed with each map. Enjoy.

My thanks to Google Earth for their maps. Vancouver Island itself is over 200 miles in length.

Here you can see the overall locations of our lunch sites and camp sites. I grouped the days by color.

I've included our path for the trip. We took a water taxi to Hurst Island and started paddling from there. We circumnavigated Nigei Island going clockwise. We finished our trip at Port Hardy the launching point.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Kayaking day 4

The little light went on in my head today, I hadn’t included a map of the area we covered so this location is a mystery to you. Well better late than never. We actually started off in Port Hardy with a water taxi ride to Hurst island where we staged to kayaks and on to our trip.

We were told yesterday this would be our longest day on the water, somewhere around 12 nautical miles, almost 13 statute miles. Kara kept track of the details for us and it turned out it took us between 4 and 4.5 hours to cover that distance. It certainly helped having the current and wind going with us for a change!

The day started out and stayed mostly clear. During the morning there was wispy fog blowing through the trees. This was neat to see because we don’t have much fog in the desert. Once we got around to the Northeast side of the Nigei island we had the wind and current to our backs. One really needs to pay attention to what is going on when exposed to the open sea. We had 3’ swells which were going in our direction. It felt a little like the kiddie roller coaster where you are up high on the swell for a few seconds see all around you, then down to the bottom where all you can see are the swells immediately around you. Kind of like a Disney ‘C’ ticket ride. (For those of you folks that remember such things) Terry kept directing us when to stay close to shore away from the fast currents and when to go out because of the rocks just under the surface. I just kept in his tracks, or tried to since I was in command of the rudder on this day. While we are still quite far from any towns this side of Nigei island faces the Queen Charlotte Strait one of the main channels for the cruise ships going to and from Alaska and the BC ferries going from city to city.

We stopped in a little inlet to stretch our legs and lunch; fruit, Greek salad and dessert. The tide was going out by this time so we had to walk our kayaks out past shallow rocks to deeper spots in order to paddle off. At this point we stayed in the quieter water between the smaller islands for much calmer water.

We came to Bob’s Landing on Balaklava island to camp for the night. There was a very small island between the camp site and us which formed a funnel for the water, you could actually see rapids from the velocity of the water flowing through the channel! Bob’s Landing was a former logging site so we had a large area of open grass to pitch our tents. Bob’s Landing is the first site we had to share with other kayakers. Up to this point we only ran into a total of 10 or so people the entire trip. After setting up I wandered up one of the trails to an area logged sometime ago. There were lots of tree stumps still lying around but also lots of small seedling coming up. Several others got back to their hot game of Uno. I don’t know who was winning but there was a lot of Uno trash talking the next day. By the time evening came it was windy and very cool. We all put on our wind/rain gear and the heavier fleece clothing because of the wind. I managed to stay up late enough to join the Bioluminescence Club. In order to join you have to stay up late enough for it to get dark enough to see the sea animals and plankton light up when being disturbed by throwing rocks into the water or stirring the water with a stick. Sorry no photos. During the middle of the night I pulled a couple extra layers on top of my sleeping bag because of the cool and damp.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark