Homeward Bound

It was an act of real discipline to go out on the deck yesterday to snap a few hurried pictures before my hands froze. It is always beautiful sailing through the gulf islands, no matter what the weather. - Fern

Morning on the 'Hat

There are a few spots to pull over when you are driving north up the Malahat and this is the view from the first one looking across the Saanich Inlet to the Peninsula and the Gulf Islands beyond. Spectacular! - Fern

Island Living

Although Victoria is located on an island (Vancouver Island) I never really have the sense of "island living" except when I need to go somewhere. The first part of the trip is almost always a ride on a ferry to get to the mainland. That sense of island living is mostly absent because of the size of Vancouver Island. It's a big island - just over 12,000 square miles or 31,000 square kilometers - larger in area than some 50 of the world's smaller countries. It's just a little larger than Belgium, for example. It's about 285 miles (460 kilometers long) and averages about 50 miles (80 kilometers) wide. Much of it is wilderness - about half of the population of 800,000 live in Victoria, the rest in a half-dozen small towns scattered around the southern coastline. All of which may serve as a preamble to noting that I traveled to the mainland this last weekend and will be sharing some of what I saw over the next few days.

The Gulf Islands

The Gulf Islands are an archipelago formed by many small islands that lie between south-eastern Vancouver Island and the Canadian and American mainland. There is a good map and an article on Wikipedia that you can read by clicking HERE. The scene above is typical Gulf Islands scenery. The small islet in the foreground is part of Pender Island.

Pelagic Cormorant (Phalacrocorax pelagicus)

Fern mentioned that we took a small Gulf Islands tour on Sunday, island hopping a bit to get from Victoria to Galiano Island. The ferry stops at Pender and Mayne Islands on the way to Galiano. My day was made at the first stop on Pender Island when Fern drew my attention to a half dozen large blackish birds perched on the dockside. I recognized them as cormorants immediately but could see that they were not the cormorants I usually see (Double-crested Cormorants) along the West Bay and Westsong Walkways. These are Pelagic Cormorants (Phalacrocorax pelagicus), also common along this coast but not a species I have identified before.The photos nicely show off their richly irridescent plumage and bright scarlet skin. They also have striking jade-green eyes. The white patches just above the legs and the scarlet skin on their heads are marks characteristic of breeding season.

The View from Pickles' Bluff

I mentioned in yesterday's post that Fern and I visited John Dean Provincial Park in Saanich. The park consists of the summit of Mount Newton and is about a half hour's drive from Victoria. The parking lot is fairly close to the summit and we chose a trail that led to Pickles' Bluff. It overlooks the eastern side of the Saanich Peninsula. The two nearest islands are James Island and Sidney Island, both in the Canadian Gulf Islands. Further out we are looking across the Canada-USA International Border. The sandy looking island is in the USA. It is Spieden Island, one of the San Juan Islands. It is currently home to a number of exotic species of sheep and deer whose ancestors were imported during the 1970s as prey when the island was a private game preserve. Hunting is no longer allowed on the island. That is Mount Baker that can be seen in the distance. I have not been able to discover how our viewpoint, Pickles' Bluff, got its name but the apostrophe leads me to think that "Pickles" was the name of an early settler who homesteaded nearby. There are several other homestead sites on the mountain, one of which was owned by John Dean, after whom the park is named.

St. Paul's Church, Saltspring Island

Victoria is located on Vancouver Island, a very large island (460 kilometres [290 mi] in length and 80 kilometres [50 mi] in width at its widest point). However, Vancouver Island is not the only island in what is now known as the Salish Sea. There are hundreds of other much smaller islands that form the archipelago called the Gulf Islands. These islands are in Victoria's back yard, scattered over the waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland. The largest and most densely populated of these islands is Saltspring Island (pop. about 10,000). Saltspring is a fascinating place and an interesting bit of its history is that many of the early settlers were immigrants from Hawaii who intermarried with First Nations families already in residence on the island. You can find out more about these islanders in a very interesting article HERE. Many of the original Hawaiian settlers are buried in the churchyard of the the church they helped to build in the 1880s, St. Paul's, pictured above. Saltspring is a very idiosyncratic island for many other reasons and we'll have a closer look at it over the next few days.

My Summer Vacation I

I'm back from my brief holiday, having had a wonderful break from life on the coast by travelling into the semi-arid desert country of the southern interior of the province of British Columbia. While I get back into the swing of life here in Victoria, I will take the liberty of sharing with you a few vacation photos. First, I will introduce a couple of my travelling companions, grandchildren Molly (foreground) and Rosie (background) in the van.They are sampling fruit the Fraser valley is famous for: fresh-picked raspberries.However, before we could travel to the interior of the province we had to take a ferry across to the mainland since Victoria is on an island.The ferries are large car-ferries that travel hourly during the daylight hours and evening.
It takes about two hours to cross to the Vancouver ferry terminal called Tsawassen. Below is a view taken from the ferry window while passing between two of the Gulf Islands.After arriving on the mainland we travelled eastwards up the lush Fraser Valley, which provides Vancouver with much of its food (including raspberries) from the rich river delta agricultural lands.--->Next Stop: Cultus Lake Provincial Park.