Vancouver Island Trip - Island Highway Drive

On October 25th Arturo was once again occupied with some work related stuff.  Chris and I set out for a drive down the island.  Initially we wanted to check out an area with some old wharfs.  

Our first stop was down by the jetty in Royston.  It was low tide at this point in the morning, and we wanted to see if access was possible.  It quickly became evident that it was not, so we moved on to the south.  

We slowed down a little and explored in the area of Mud Bay, Fanny Bay and Deep Bay.  We wasted a bunch of time driving into residential subdivisions only to find that there was no access to the water.  This is what prevented us from gaining access to the old wharf that we had previously located.  In coming days, once we got across to the mainland, we quickly discovered that the presence of a large population made access to anything near the water, nearly impossible.

We managed to get out onto the tidal flats at one location and found a bunch of nets spread out below the high tide line.  Apparently these are clam beds.  I'm not sure what the benefit of the nets is...?  Perhaps to prevent marine and bird life from harvesting the clams.  In any event it looked pretty interesting so I took a few photographs.  

We also found an old cedar rail fence with a gate amongst the fall leaves, as well as an old railway bridge over Rosewall Creek, and photographed these.

On our way back out of the area we also discovered an old wood boat abandoned at the edge of a private property, and managed to shoot it from an adjacent community hall.  Later still we discovered a small tavern that proved to be suitable for the Beer Parlour Project, but I will save that for another post.

By late afternoon we made our way back to the rental house and met up with Arturo.  He was just finishing up his work for the day so we settled in for the evening and prepared our evening meal.

Vancouver Island Trip - Englishman River Falls

It was wet and rainy on Tuesday October 24th.  Arturo had to do some work online, so he stayed behind at the guest house.  Chris and I ventured out in the rain.  We took a drive down the island and went inland to explore at Englishman River Falls.  The thought was we might get out of the rain in the forest.  It was a good thought, but it didn't work very well.  We still got pretty wet even though we weren't right out in the open.  

The forest along the Englishman River is very dense and lush.  We wandered around the provincial park for a while and took quite a number of photographs.  The camera gear got very wet and needed to be thoroughly dried out when we got back to the guest house in the evening.

We also stopped at a roadhouse along the way and scouted it for the Beer Parlour Project.  Although it was not affiliated with a hotel, it probably would have worked.  But we never did find time to get back to it, and there were only a handful of patrons there in the afternoon when we stopped in.

Earlier in the day Arturo had texted us and advised that he had forgotten his wallet in the truck, and hoped that we still had it.  We played a bit of a joke on him and told him we were in the bar, and sent him a picture of his credit card.

By mid afternoon the temperature dropped off and the rain began to turn to snow.  The islanders were all rather dismayed, not only at the fact that they were getting snow, but also that it was this early in the season.  We learned that back home in Alberta there was snow pretty much province wide, and that in some places there was as much as six inches.  Temperatures in Alberta plummeted to -13 and colder.  What we were experiencing out on the island, was pretty tame for us.  The snow tapered off as we got closer to Courtenay and the guest house.  Pretty much just some slush, which was gone when we got up in the morning.

Vancouver Island Trip - Union Bay Again

On October 23rd Arturo, Chris and I headed back to Union Bay.  We photographed along the remains of the old coal dump.  There were some old piles left at the edge of the water, and a long narrow mound of earth, mostly coal, on which the trestle was once constructed.  This once extended way out into the bay and steam trains were used to transport coal from the nearby Cumberland mine, to be loaded onto ships.  We also found some old bricks that were once part of the Coke ovens that were also here.

There was a beached small boat on the shore nearby and we also photographed that.  Once we were done down by the water we crossed over the road to the Highwayman Inn.  This old hotel was once called the Willis.  It has not re-opened since Covid, and we were told that the own also had some health issues and is now recovering.

After we photographed here we continued down the coast to the south for a few more miles and came to the location of the Baines Sound Oyster Company.  We asked permission and were allowed to enter the property to photograph a few old oyster boats... one up on shore and one anchored just off shore.

The day was winding down at this point but we took a drive up to Comox and wandered around the marina for a while.  There were some interesting fishing boats here, and we decided we would come back at another time for some better light.

We called it a day and headed back to the rental house in Comox and prepared our evening meal.

Vancouver Island Trip - Gulf Islands

On Sunday October 23rd we were up before dawn, and headed for the ferry terminal at Buckley Bay.  We caught one of the earlier ferries across to Denman Island.  Then we drove across Denman and caught the next ferry across to Hornby Island.  Sadly we didn't research the ferry schedule well enough, and had to wait for quite a while.  But the tide was down a bit, and there were some interesting rocks near the ferry terminal, so we shot there while waiting.  Eventually we got across to Hornby Island.  

I immediately took Chris and Arturo over to Ford Cove.  We wanted to shoot the sandstone formations on the beach, before the tide came up any higher.  After shooting there for a while, in some rather cool and breezy conditions, we moved over to the adjacent marina and photographed a few of the older boats.

Once we were done at Ford Cove we stopped up on the hillside and photographed some of the old split cedar rail fences among the Garry Oaks.  From there we moved on to Tribune Bay.  Not finding anything there that was particularly interesting, we headed back toward the ferry terminal.  On the way we found an old abandoned boat that I had photographed years ago when I was out with Margarit and the girls.  In the seven or so years since I last photographed it, it has badly deteriorated and collapsed.

Later still we made our way back to Denman Island.  We stopped and visited a couple of old cemeteries.  We went looking for an old sandstone quarry, but never did locate it.  We did find an old International Travelall with a sign on it for the Ruby Slippers Ranch, and photographed that.

By this time it was getting late in the afternoon so we caught the ferry back to Vancouver Island.  We got back to the rental house in Courtenay by early evening and made ourselves some dinne.