Back to Ocean Falls

May 21, 2025 

After two weeks spent visiting family, and many shopping trips to stock up on groceries and other items that are more challenging and expensive to get delivered to Ocean Falls, it was time to load up our truck and head back to Ocean Falls. 

On Saturday morning, May 10^th, at around 06:30 we left my parents' place in Victoria and drove all the way up the island to Port Hardy.  Then, at around 17:30 we drove onto the ferry and went upstairs to pick our seats.  After the ferry left dock, we went to the cafeteria where we reheated our delicious lasagne dinner with homemade French bread and garlic butter.  It was a delicious meal, and we had a beautiful window view looking out at the passing islands as we made our way northward. 

After dinner we inflated our air mattress and tried to get some sleep, but because they had not yet turned the lights down, and of course the environment was totally different, Falcon was wired right up and not ready to sleep at all.  Finally at 21:15 we walked to the Chief Steward's office to ask about them turning down the lights.  Apparently they do not usually do so until 22:00, but the man nicely said that he would come to the area that we were in and do it then.  Once the lights were dimmed, Falcon started to settle and he was asleep by 22:30.   

Shortly after midnight we were arriving on schedule into Bella Bella.  We packed up our bed and got ready to disembark.  Falcon woke up of course, as we had to walk into the fully lit areas of the vessel, down onto the noisy car deck, and then wait to drive off. We waited in the rain in our truck in Bella Bella for approximately two hours.  Normally we take a second ferry to Ocean Falls, but the regular ferry was in dry dock for its yearly service, so instead they had a tug and barge for the vehicles, and a water taxi for the passengers.  We walked down the ramp, onto the dock, and boarded the water taxi.  Once we were finally underway Falcon began to settle once again and we were all able to catch a couple of hours of sleep before we arrived into Ocean Falls at around 06:00 on May 11th, almost 24 hours since leaving my parents' place in Victoria.  Our truck would arrive about four hours later on the barge. 

A friend of ours in Ocean Falls picked us up at the dock and with only a total of 4.5 hours sleep for Falcon and less than that for Jason and I, we headed to our house in a sleepy daze.  Our first priority was to turn on the water and check everything, second priority was to uncover the chimney and get a fire going.  Although Jason and I probably could have climbed into bed and fell asleep, Falcon got a full second wind as we arrived at our house and he remembered and recognized everything. 

He was definitely not going to go back to sleep right away, so we didn’t even try.  We got the water going, fire on, Starlink internet up and running so that we could tell family that we had arrived safe and sound at home, and then made some breakfast. 

The four hours until our truck arrived passed quickly and we went back into Ocean Falls to pick up our truck.  Then, the hard work began as we had to unload our many boxes and miscellaneous stuff down our 29 stairs to our house. 

We also had two coolers that we had brought back filled with frozen meat which had to be unloaded into our freezer.  Because we still had some stuff from last year in our freezer, and we did not want the new meat on the top, we also had to empty out our freezer and organize and inventory it as we put everything back in. 

Falcon did amazingly well throughout the day dealing with being tired as there was a lot to keep him preoccupied, but by 17:00, when we were having an early dinner, he was struggling to stay awake.  Needless to say he was asleep early and slept very soundly for 14.5 hours straight that night.