Denman Island and Hornby Island

I'm slowly catching up on writing posts for some of the things I have been up to lately.  I still haven't finished with all the activities of the trip out to Vancouver Island at the beginning of May... so here goes...

On the third day Margarit and I headed out from our hotel room in our rental car, south along the Island Highway Scenic Route, to the nearby ferry terminal.  We paid our 80 dollar round trip fare for the short ferry ride across to Denman Island.  This ticket allowed us to continue from Denman over to Hornby Island, and eventually back.  We had to wait about 20 minutes for the next ferry, but in a short time we were on Denman Island.  We drove around sight seeing for a little while, admiring this gorgeous flowering dogwood.

We drove a circuitous route around the island, and eventually found ourselves at the southern tip, at Boyle Point Provincial Park.  We parked our car at the end of the road and set off for a hike through the coastal forest.  Eventually we got to an overlook called Eagle Point.

It was quite a steep slope down to the shore but despite the warning signs, we decided to give it a try.  Mostly because the beach just down the coast looked very intriguing with its tide pool and large boulders.  We could even see the Chrome Island Lighthouse from here, which had been our original intended destination.

We spent the entire afternoon on the beach just exploring, with the barking of sea lions in the distance, and the occasional boat motoring by.  By about 4:00PM we realized that the day was slipping away, and we still had another island to explore.  So, we quickly climbed back up to the forest and hiked back out to our car.  We drove over to the nearby ferry terminal and almost immediately caught the next ferry over to Hornby Island.  We wanted to check out the bluffs at Helliwell Provincial Park but weren't sure we would have time. It was already almost 5:00PM, and the last ferry back to Denman was at 6:00PM.  We quickly drove out to the park and started the hike out to the bluffs.  Again this was on a wooded trail through the forest.  We got about half way to our destination, and realized we had run out of time.  We turned back and hiked back out to our car.

We raced back across the island to the ferry terminal and made it with about 10 minutes to spare, to catch the last ferry back to Denman.  The last ferry from Denman back to Vancouver Island was quite a bit later so we had a little more time to drive across Denman and eventually back to the other ferry terminal.  By this time we were getting quite hungry and it had been a busy day, with a lot of activity and not much for lunch.  So we headed back to our hotel and had a late dinner together.