Expedition Canada

Wet Start - Mixed Week Thu Oct 7th Earl's Cove - waiting for the ferry It was a dark o'clock start to get to Vancouver Island on Tuesday morning.  We were heading up to Royston on the North East side of the Island so had booked to take the ninety minute ferry from Powell River at the top of the Sunshine Coast to Comox.  The hotel, Kingfisher Ocean Resort was OK, though the choice of rooms that would accommodate dogs was a bit limited.  The food was 5* excellent. BC Ferries network is vast,  but not always logically connected.  Powell River is reached via a 50 minute ferry sailling from Earls Cove towards in the middle of the Sunshine Coast (just over an hour from Gibsons) to Saltery Bay.  It's then a 30 minute drive up to Powell River.  The ferry time means you arrive at Powell River as the ferry departs for Comox, making it impossible to check-in 'no later than 30 minutes prior to departure' as required by BC Ferries. We had two and a half hours to w...

Lakes, Oceans and Orca  Tue Jun 22nd An early start today as we wanted to get the 0825 ferry from Earl's Cove across to Saltery Bay to spend a day exploring Powell River.  It is at the very northern end of the Sunshine Coast where the Highway 101 runs out, about 30k north of the town.  Outbound the ferry, was less than a quarter full so we had space to roam and take in the changing scenery on the fifty minute journey weaving across between the different islands. The ferry is one of the smaller ones in the BC Ferries fleet and has an open car deck, spanned by the passenger desk (coffee shop etc) and the single bridge that can steer the boat in both directions. Our first stop was at Palm Beach in Lund's Bay, just to give Jack a chance to exercise. Beautifully quiet apart from some toddlers being supervised in a swing park, nobody on the beach. We had a quick shop-stop in Powell River, to check out some furniture for the new house that we had not seen, but Fred knew they had...

Summer Solstice Mon Jun 21st Turkey Vulture - Stunning but not pretty! According to the Government of Canada Twitter account for the June 21st,  " I t'll officially be Summer in the Northern Hemisphere!  The #SummerSolstice means early sunrises, late sunsets, warm weather, and a whole lot of outdoor activities. "  I thought the whole point of a solstice, was that the days started getting shorter and the nights longer in June, or the other way around in December.    So as of today the days start getting shorter than the nights.  That said, as we are not yet Resident in Canada, I am not about to start being pedantic about the wording of their Twitter account. Yesterday and today had temperatures about 10c above normal.  An early morning dog walk was followed by a dip in Mixal. There was sighting of the rare Grey Dipper again!   It was amazingly warm.  The dockside thermometer was registering a water temp of 22c.  Five m...

And Ants Morning on Mixal Mon Jun 14th The instructions for the cabin remind us that all garbage must be kept inside because of bears and that mosquitos and ants are a fact of life in Canada, more so when you are surrounded by water.  Windows all have screens and doors are recommended to be kept shut.  They are not screened. Fine in theory, but on the warm days we have had the doors open.  So far we've only had few problems with either, other than a few night-time bites.  Outside, ants (and some are probably termites but I've not worked out the difference) are certainly  more prolific than in the UK.  Painted Turtle They even managed to discover the hummingbird feeder hanging on the  underside of the roof eaves.  Ant killer in the bowl on the top kept them off for a couple of days, but in the end the feeder had to be moved.  It was heaving with large black ants inside (drowned) and outside the feeder. We now wait to see how long it takes...