Sunny Beach Days on Calvert Island

June 25th (Tuesday)
We awoke to clear blue sky! Yippee, Beach Day!! We knew this was the forecast, so we were prepared, and headed out early. After taking Kiki to the Hakai dock, we walked the trail to West Beach. We then continued on, taking a combination of the trails, beaches, and shorelines, along to 7th beach. We then decided to continue on, and we took the very old, and not well marked or trodden trail, up through the tundra area that we had partially explored previously. This trail brought us down to 8th beach, from which we were able to walk the rocks above the water, over to 9th and then 10th beach. 

Although all of these beaches were incredibly beautiful, the question always became, "what’s around the next point?" and so we hiked on. We were only able to go from 10th to 11th without a lot of bushwhacking because the tide was out fairly low. We did have to bushwhack part of the way because of a large impassable crevasse in the rock, but otherwise we made our way through the jumble of boulder-sized rocks to an area of smoother wave-pounded rock, looking at all of the amazing tide pools along the way. We watched hermit crabs, and saw one big guy with the tiniest shell. He was so big the little shell barely fit on his butt, and when I went to pick him up, he just abandoned the shell, and ran for the cover of seaweed.
Around all of these rocks and tide pools we found beach number 11. Here we enjoyed our picnic lunch, and relaxed for a bit. We did not rest for too long however, because we needed to make sure we got back at least to number 10 beach before the tide got too high, since there seemed to be no trail this far. We headed back around low tide, and then stopped again at number 10 to relax and enjoy the sun and sand before making our way all the way back to West Beach in the evening. By the time we got back we had been hiking and enjoying the beaches for 11 hours. We were tired, but very happy.

It is amazing, we are anchored in a southern arm of the anchorage, and we have only had a maximum of three boats anchored with us, but in the main part of the anchorage we have seen up to 15 boats, and yet the trails past 5th Beach are not well worn. We were the first dinghy to the tie up dock, and the last at the end of the day, and we saw no one all day. Amazing!

June 26th  (Wednesday)
We awoke to more blue sky. Yay! Once again we were mostly all ready from the day before, and headed out in Kiki to the Hakai dock. We walked to West Beach, and then on to 7th beach. 7th beach is a long sandy beach with a very gentle slope, which means that as the tide goes out it uncovers a lot more sand, and the beach gets wider and wider. 

We decided to stay there for the day, and as we were arriving the fog was also making its way in. It was a high fog, but pretty soon the heat from the sun was squelched, and we were left with the chill from the wind. 

We set up our day site in the shelter of some low lying driftwood so that we had some shelter from the wind, but also still had our view. We laid on our beach blanket to be even more out of the wind, and listened to the sound of the crashing waves and the ravens. 

We explored around the beach, and checked out the many shells and other cool items that had washed ashore. We have now seen several Skate egg pods. They are from the Pacific Great Skate. They look kind of like a giant pod from a nut. We have also been finding more abalone shells.
As we started to eat our picnic lunch the sun started to break through the fog, and by the time we were done eating Jason was feeling warm enough to go skim boarding. We had hiked our skim board out to the beach with us. He had fun skim boarding, while I had fun taking pictures. 

I tweaked my back a couple of days ago, and so I am having to be very careful how I move while it heals. I did not want to risk injuring it further by skim boarding too soon in its recovery.
The water here is quite cold. When we put our toes in before the sun came out it was painful very quickly, but after the sun was out for a while and the tide started coming in over the sand, it made a big difference. Of course it was still very cold, but much more manageable. After getting warm skim boarding, Jason even went out for a swim, and played in the waves for a bit.

We headed home around five o'clock, and decided to take the most direct route of trails, and made it back to West beach in less than an hour. It was another great beach day!!

June 27th (Thursday)
It was cloudy, and so, because we were still feeling a bit tired from our long beach days of the last couple of days, we decided to stay home. We ended up taking advantage of the day at home to clean our boat. Sand has a way of getting everywhere, and it had been a while since we gave her a good detail clean.  

We also tried a recipe for tortillas. It was just an easy, and apparently Mexican recipe, that we got off of the internet a while back. We hope to have fresh fish tortillas some day soon.