Portland Island Visit

Yesterday, we took the family and headed off to Portland Island for a visit. It is an island about 20 minutes out from the ferry terminal.

http://gulfislandsnationalpark.com/national-park/portland-island.htm

Our friend Hamar, having recently grounded his own sailboat, had rented an ecoboat... so off we went.



On the way across, we saw a bunch of seals sunning themselves, and a mother seal nursing her baby. We also saw a sea lion in the process of catching and eating a salmon. I didn't get the camera out in time, as I was enthralled by the picture. The boat driver went in a large circle around and around so we could watch. Basically, the sea lion was whacking the fish back and forth across the water, flinging it up in the air in an attempt to get more and more of it down its throat. Seagulls were hovering near in an attempt to get part of the entrails. Amazing.

We were dropped off by a little dock, and wandered up the hill to start our hike around the island. There were beautiful views of the ocean any direction you looked.

We hiked through the trees, the sun sparkling through.










The island was FULL of moss... covering the forest floor, the rocks, the trees. The trees often seemed to grow out of the ground horizontally rather than vertically, as if they were reaching out to the ocean rather than the sky.












We stopped for lunch 45 minutes in at Arbutus Cove.You can see a shell midden in the background. Shell middens are like ancient 'garbage dumps'! :-) That is, they are piles of old shells, from hundreds of meals past! They are basically the evidence of a First Nations settlement on the island long long ago (like, 1000 years or something).









If you look closer up, you can see it is a deep pile of seashells, in this case, white and purple.














We hiked to the other side of the island: shell beach. The white sand you see here is primarily sea shells. But years of being tossed by the sea has softened all the edges. It has a sort of glassy crunch when you walk on it, but Alex concluded that it was actually soft to sit on.












Steve found a log to lay on and settled down for some R&R.











Duncan, on the other hand, eventually concluded that it was a bit boring hanging out on the beach, and gave me his best "I am bored" face. I thought it was pretty impressive performance of boredom!












We sat there and looked out to the water... the ferry passes right by, so we watched ferries and sailboats pass by under the blue skies, with white clouds wandering past. We saw two whales spouting, and probably what was another sea lion making a meal of a salmon. All in all, a pretty perfect day.