Exploring and Playing on the Beaches on Calvert Island

July 4th (Thursday)

It drizzled all night, which was not very motivating at all.  Around seven, however, the grey of the drizzle moved past, and a motivating patch of optimistic blue appeared. We gathered our things and headed to the beach. We had decided the day before that we wanted to be to 7th beach around 9 a.m., because that was the time for a very low tide. It was to be 0.15 metres. 
We got to the beach on time, and after dropping off our packs at our spot, we spent an enjoyable couple of hours exploring along the fronts of the rocks around past the end of 7th beach, and on to 10th beach. 
The area we were walking would have had water well above our heads with crashing waves at high tide, and we enjoyed exploring all the nooks and crannies of the rock, filled with all sorts of cool sea life. 
We were surprised to see another couple out exploring, it appeared as though they had also timed their arrival for the low tide, and they also took their time poking their way along the shoreline. It was nice to see other people taking their time and exploring.
When we came back around to 7th beach, which we carefully timed with the tide, as we did not want to be stuck around the corner without our shoes to hike the trail back, we were surprised to see a group of five people, and three of them were setting up tents. Since the morning drizzle was an ever-lurking presence, we decided to get a fire going to get warm with our lunch. One of the people wandered over to talk. He was a park ranger, and he was there with some summer student employees doing trail maintenance. After they set up their tents, they went into the forest to work on the trails, and we were left alone on our beach once again. 
We enjoyed our afternoon with our slack line setup, but we made our way back earlier than usual. Back at the trailhead to West Beach we ran into the park ranger once again and helped them with moving some lumber for their trail repairs. 
The reason we had come home earlier was that we wanted to go and pull up our traps. Our first prawn trap had zero prawns, and one fish that we let go. Our second trap had seven prawns, and one fish. Yay, we actually got a few prawns. We decided to connect our two 300' lines together to try setting our trap deeper, so we shall see.  Our crab trap was also not a great haul with only two keeper Rock crabs. We tried a whole new area, and reset that one as well, so we shall see what happens.
For dinner we had the last of our Lingcod, fresh prawns, a crab each, and mushroom fried rice. Yum yum!

July 5th (Friday) 

It was clear blue sky when we woke up, and the water was glassy calm! Very motivating, and we were at the Hakai dock by 07:30. We hiked our way out to 4th Beach, and then took our time walking the shoreline around to 7th Beach. The tide was quite low, and we enjoyed looking at the shells in the tide line, and the tide pools in the rocky areas. When we got to 7th Beach it was around 09:00, and the tide was still going out. 
It was already quite warm, and we changed into our swimsuits and grabbed our boogie boards and headed down to the water. At the trail head to West Beach there was an assortment of beach toys, and we had taken a couple of boogie boards to use for the day. The waves were bigger than we have had up until now and with the way the tide was out we were getting a beautiful break. We had quite a lot of fun in the waves before we got a chill and came up to our beach blanket to warm up.
We had a wonderful day! It remained sunny all day, and although it was breezy at times the wind stayed light. We were out into the surf of the waves to play three times.  By the time we got home around 19:30 we were ready for dinner. It was a great beach day!!! 
(Sheya's mom writing: Just heard from Sheya today (July 9th) that the weather forecast is looking poor for enjoying the beaches on Calvert Island, so they are thinking to head out toward Fish Egg Inlet and onward to Shearwater, with the hopes of maybe returning to Calvert sometime in August for better weather.)

Comments

  1. JanJuly 10, 2019 at 1:07 PM

    sounds like a great beach day. Glad to hear you might be returning.

    ReplyDelete

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