The Islands of B.C.

In which Moominmama visits the north end of Vancouver Island and ferries to Malcolm Island in search of Orcas before meeting up with fellow Altoistes...

Moominmama has been jumping from place to place, proving how exhausting that can be. Normally my travel plans allow for stays of at least a week. This has served as a reminder that fast-paced travel is too much!

Moominmama's arrival on Vancouver Island was by ferry into Nanaimo and from there, my reservations required a long drive to Port Hardy in the far north! My campground was along the Gwa'dzi or Quatse river estuary, where this small totem pole, featuring a bear holding a salmon stood, a gift of the indingenous people of the area.

This estuary (low tide here) supports the salmon runs of the Coho, Pink and endangered Chinook salmon. It's also home to many bald eagles. I was awoken daily by the bald eagle chirps and whistles, even though I rarely saw them high up in the trees. I had no idea they made so much noise!

Moominmama also walked the grey sand and stone beach facing the Queen Charlotte Strait, where small shore birds congregated, taking wing to head a few more yards up the beach when I got too close.

The island is teeming with wildlife, and the temperate rainforest is full of ferns and mosses - muddy, damp and wild with greenery erecting solid walls in some places. 

Port Hardy is less of a tourist town than most, but it has a small, local museum and a couple shops catering to visitors. 

Moominmama learned that logging was (and is) a big industry here. In the early days, though, rather than bother with logging roads, they built floating camps: kitchen, bunk houses and equipment all on a 100-foot by 100-foot floating platform. Some floating camps were basic and some were more lavish, with family homes, a school for the children and gardens on the water. 

But they were practical because very little is flat on the island. It was easier to drag or push logs down the hills into the water and prepare them for transport from the floating camps. When the logging was finished in one area, they could tow the floats somewhere new and start over.

From Port Hardy, Moominmama also did a day trip to Port Alice, on the Neroutsos Inlet, which connects to the Quatsino Sound on the Pacific Ocean. Moominmama was astonished how waterways connect to the ocean with inlets that penetrate halfway into the island. 

It was at Port Alice that I got this close up of a regular denizen of Vancouver Island: the banana slug. From head to tail, it stretches roughly the distance of thumb to pinkie on my outstretched hand, and I watched it cross a sidewalk along the seawalk trail and enter the grass.

Eating lunch at the marina, pictured above, I also watched a black bear lope across the road and cross into the woods near a, fortunately unoccupied, playground. He's reportedly a neighborhood regular and a reason all the garbage bins here are locked tight.

One other outing took me to Bear Falls in Marble River Provincial Park, where I saw salmon leap the falls! It proved impossible to get a decent photo with a cell phone but it was beautiful to watch. Not all the fish were equally graceful: one did a powerful leap up the foaming falls only to smack on exposed rock and fall back. Ouch.

From the northern part of the island, Moominmama took a ferry to Malcolm Island, having learned it has a pebbly inlet that is a favored by a pod of Orcas, who apparently like to rub their bellies along the rounded stones.

Here's the path to that beach, which had to be carved out of the overwhelming brush to create access at this spot.

Moominmama enjoyed many hours on the beach looking out over the water, but the Orcas never did come during her brief stay. From Malcolm Island, I returned to Vancouver Island and headed south to meet up with friends who all share my same brand of trailer: Altos!

This is my fourth year at the Pacific Northwest "Altogather." There are other similar gatherings in other parts of the country, but our group includes Canadians. And out of respect for their desire not to visit and spend money in the United States, we've met on Vancouver Island for the last two years.

Suddenly, I had a tribe and a busy social life! I went on a couple hikes with old and new friends, also a whale watch, where I did finally see Orcas as well as humpback whales. For the first time, I saw a whale (a humpback) breach, leaping and twisting out of the water to create a magnificent splash! My camera was in my pocket at the time, of course.

I had a lovely, if busy, four days then took the ferry back to the U.S. and into Port Angeles, where I will spend a day hiking in Olympic National Park before I head south to meet with a friend on the Oregon coast and then stop for a visit with my brother in Portland.

This travel season is starting to come to a close. The days are shorter and the nights are cooler. I'll spend a little time in Nevada and Utah if all goes to plan before I head east to see some of you in Rochester and New Hampshire. I'm already reminding myself to plan my time more carefully (and slowly) for 2027. But for now I leave you with a shot of seaweed against the backdrop of Neroutsos Inlet in Port Alice.