Hornby Island

On Monday March 28th the girls and I decided to explore one of the gulf islands.  We drove south from the rental house in Courtenay, to Buckley Bay.  Here a cable ferry would take us across to Denman West.  From there we drove across Denman Island to Gravelly Bay and caught a second ferry, this one free running, to Shingle Spit on Hornby Island.  The ferry ride was not inexpensive at around $125 return for the two 10 minute crossings.  This was more expensive than a one way fare on the big ferry that came across from the mainland to Vancouver Island.  We later learned that if we bought a pre-paid ferry card and loaded it with the minimum payment, that we could get a discount of 30 to 40% on the small ferries that crossed over to the gulf islands

We decided to leave Denman Island for another day and crossed over to Hornby Island.  Our first stop was at a place called Sandpiper Bay.  This is a beautiful rocky beach just below some private homes and cottages.  Fortunately there was a community park with beach access that allowed us the opportunity to park and walk down.  We noticed that in places the shore had the stench of rotten fish, and Sandpiper Beach was like that too.  There were gulls and shorebirds everywhere.  As near as we could determine, there was a herring spawn taking place and in certain places the tide and the currents washed up billions of fish eggs.

There was an old abandoned boat in the brush nearby that I stopped to photograph with my view camera.  After that and once we had finished exploring at Sandpiper Beach, we continued a short distance down the road to Tribune Bay Provincial Park.  The beach here was a little different, with a big expanse of sand as well as some areas of eroded boulders.  Down at the low tide line we found Sand Dollars... purple colored live ones out in the water, plus a few bleached white dead ones washed up on the sand.  We spent a couple hours here beachcombing and making photographs.  As the day began to wind down, we had to pack up and make our way back to the ferry.  Along the way we found a second abandoned boat that once again I needed to stop on photograph.  As nice as the gulf islands are, I'm not sure that I could live here and be married to the ferry schedule.  Basically you have to catch the second last ferry from Hornby to Denman, and then the second last one back to Vancouver Island.  If the ferries are full and you get bumped to the last one, you're still OK.  But, if you miss the last one, you're stuck out on the islands for the night.  There are a few facilities including stores and a couple of Bed and Breakfast places... but not much.  We had no issues with the crossing this time and eventually headed back to Courtenay and made dinner at the house and relaxed into the evening.  Throughout the entire trip the girls made really good use of that hot tub...!!