Exploring by Kayak

June 30th (Tuesday)

Although it was mostly cloudy when we woke up, the forecast had been for sun, so we were optimistic that it would clear.  We inflated our kayaks and packed for an exploring, beach day.  

We paddled out at 09:30 and made our way out of the inner basin area and into St John Harbour.  The wind was blowing fairly strongly from the Northwest so we had to fight it at first.  

Once we were through the Back Door passage the wind was coming at us from the side and we made our way through the islands, staying on the lee sides as much as possible.  As we passed one grassy cove we saw two Sandhill Cranes, they walked up into the forest when they saw us so we wondered if they had a nest.  When Canada Geese are nesting they will walk up into the forest when they see us, it looks quite funny.  

The wind was on our backs as we sailed our way through the last passageway on our way to the beach, and as we blew along we spotted a small black bear on shore.  

It had a very brown back and it watched us as we blew past before it turned and disappeared into the woods.  As we turned the corner after the passageway and started to make our way in to the beach we saw the bear again on the shore of one of the many little coves. 

As we paddled through the crystal clear water towards the beach we were able to look down at the forests of kelp and then down to the sand that stretched way out from the beach making the water look green and tropical.  We landed on shore and pulled up our kayaks, ready to spend the day. 

Because of seeing the bear, I put on the backpack that had our lunch food in it, and we went to explore the beach.  The last thing we wanted was to get a ways down the beach and turn around to see a bear ripping apart our kayaks.  It would be a hard trip back home to our boat without them. 

As we explored the beach we encountered a very brave toad that was out on a piece of driftwood enjoying the sun. 

It decided to freeze instead of run as we went by so I got lots of different photo angle opportunities.  Shortly after seeing the toad, we saw a mink running along the shore and then up into the woods not far from us.  We saw several sets of deer tracks in the sand, one set, which went along with another one, was tiny.  The tracks were not more than 3/4” long, the tiniest little hoof prints that we had ever seen.  I bet it was very very cute, too bad that the deer were not down on the beach when we paddled in.  

We got a fire going and enjoyed the beach.  The line of clouds finally blew past and the sky became completely blue.  The wind was still blowing strong on the other side of the land, we could see the trees blowing around and some of the larger gusts made it down onto the water and they came whipping along and up onto the beach.  The wind kept it from being swimming weather, but it was a beautiful Central Coast summer beach day. 

We cooked sausages over the fire for our picnic and had them on burger buns.  It is funny, around the May long weekend, Save-On-Foods had a good sale on for hot dogs, sausages, burgers, and buns for both.  We ordered several packets of hot dogs and several of sausages for camping trips over the summer, and we also ordered a few bags of hot dog buns as a treat to have with them.  

When the order came we had gotten all of our hot dogs and sausages, but the bags of buns were all burger buns.  We shook our heads and had a good chuckle; we will be eating hot dogs and sausages on burger buns through the summer.  

At 16:30 we got ready to leave our beautiful beach.  Although we would have happily stayed there all evening, we were also quite aware that the wind seemed to have picked up and that for much of our trip back it would be against us.  We headed out, and as we expected our first stretch up through the passageway, which we had been blown through this morning, was the worst.  We fought our way up, creeping slowly along and each paddle stroke felt like I was pulling it through molasses.  I inched my way along behind Jason and since he is stronger he would slowly creep away in front of me, then he would look back and wait for me to catch up before heading off again.  There was no rest to be had along the way so we just carried on and slowly we made our way up through the passageway and across the next open stretch of water until we finally got into the lee of the land up ahead and could relax.  

We had gotten the hardest stretch out of the way and for a while we could just paddle along looking around and enjoying the scenery and watching the cat’s paws that came down over the trees and hit the water spreading out like fireworks.  

We stopped on a rocky beach area to stretch our legs, and observed that one area of the shore had clearly been cleared of all the larger rocks.  The rocks had been removed from an area about 40’ x 40’ and placed to the side in a line.  

We speculated that many years ago a first nations tribe had cleared this area for growing clams; it was at the perfect depth for a clam harvest.  When we walked up the beach to an area where the land bridged across to a small island we saw another cleared area on the other side.  There were two strips, about five feet wide that were cleared of all large rocks all the way up the beach.  We speculated that these might have been for pulling up their canoes.  Pretty neat to think of these people doing these things so many years ago, and to think about what their lives would have been like and what thoughts would have gone through their heads as they went about their day. 

We returned to our kayaks and carried on our way, paddling up through the Back Door passageway.  We checked out the small bays on Wurtele Island in the area of Louisa Cove as we figured that there must be a trail across the island somewhere.  

Eventually we found it, and we followed it through a beautiful stunted old growth forest where the trees were short, but large, across to the outer side of the island.  

Here we crawled over large driftwood logs that had been hurled up onto the bank of the forest and we made our way out through the little cove and up onto some rocks.  

We got a great view up and down the island at the black shoreline rocks periodically covered by crashing waves and continuously surrounded by frothing foam. 

It was late and we were tired, so we made our way back, and were very grateful to have the wind on our backs for the rest of the trip home.  It was 20:30 when we got home; it was a full 11-hour day of exploring, and it was time for a very late dinner.