CHANGE OF PLANS

Ah yes, a change of plans.  That isn't all that unusual with us, is it?  We had loosely been planning to go to a wilderness lake today but now that is off the table.  We were up to Cluxewe last night for supper with the family when the ladies decided to check with the office to see why the site we had to leave last Thursday was still vacant.  Well, it seems the people who were going to occupy the site either went to a different site or didn't even show up.  When pressed, the office called the people and found out what had happened, suddenly we could have the site again.  So the decision was made to return to Cluxewe.  After some discussion it was decided we'd stay here for the duration of our stay here in the North Island.  We moved up from Alder Bay Campsite this morning and we will be moving sites three more times here in Cluxewe getting us through to August 14th when we will likely head down island.

                                                                     

Looking down toward the Broughton Archipelago

Sun shining through a piece of floating kelp

Looking across from Alder Bay

A curious mink I saw one morning

The old man and the sea, across the street from my Cousin Chris'

The eagles are all taken in my Cousin Chris' backyard

All three eagle shots are as taken by the camera, no cropping

Lesser Yellowlegs

Lots of these snails attached to the rocks at low tide

All of the above shots were taken with the Canon SX50

The two below are from my Canon 6D

Loading out sand and gravel bound for the US west coast

NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY part 1

The beavers flooded our road

A couple of guys fishing for Pink Salmon, note the black lab dog sitting patiently off to the left

Last shot of the evening

John and Bryony tackling an overgrown road

An old Douglas Fir tree above Nimpkish Lake

Common Harebells along the Nimpkish Lake shore

Nimpkish Lake

Neat weathering lines on a tree root

The above photo was in the middle of this shot

John and Bryony

Took this out the window of John and Anne's trailer in the rain last night

This was taken this morning in an old mature forest along Nimpkish Lake

This nearly translucent fungus on a tree was taken this afternoon along a trail in second growth timber near Port Hardy

Along the same trail as above, I spotted this good example of Slime Mold, it is about a foot across.

Scroll down to the next section to read the rest of today's blog post

NOT ENOUGH HOURS IN THE DAY

I think most retired people have the same problem I do in that there are way more things to do than there is time to do them.   That’s my excuse for the lateness of this blog since I have had lots of photos to share but with geocaching, ATVing, walking, campfire sitting and photo opportunities I kept running out of day.  I finally took my computer to Cluxewe tonight and did some photo editing from the last few days.

We moved out of Cluxewe on Thursday as they told us the site was booked for Thursday afternoon.  All they could offer were three sites over in what I call the slums.  There is no view and you’re jammed in tight with lots of others.  However, our site along with two others in the good section where we were, are still vacant tonight.  So much for the site rental they could have continued to collect from us.  Apparently this is not an unusual happening at Cluxewe and perhaps we should have just stayed put until they actually booted us out.  Of course if we had done that, maybe we couldn’t have gotten a decent site here at Alder Bay.   We moved down toward Beaver Cove yesterday to Alder Bay Resort where we have an ocean view lot (when it’s not foggy) right across from Alert Bay.  We’ve been continuing to go up to John and Anne’s at Cluxewe for suppers.  John and I have been doing lots of geocaching and even did some on the ATVs yesterday.  We walked two nice trails today while geocaching.

We’re hoping to move out to a forestry site on one of the lakes on Tuesday where we hope to spend most of two weeks.   We’re hoping for some dryer weather and nobody else beating us to the site.  

Looks like this couple could be having a pretty serious discussion

We went up to Port Hardy last Saturday to see the Filomi Days parade.  This off highway log truck came from an outlying logging camp at Holberg

It can be exciting meeting one of these monsters on a narrow logging road

I was ATVing with Nephew Dennis and his daughter last Sunday when we spotted this bear and her two cubs.  All three of the bears went up a tree.  Momma didn't go far up but the cubs went way up.

Two cubs

Dennis and Niki

A juvenile Willow Grouse

Cedar Waxwing

Cluxewe sunset one night

John and I took the ATVs up the Merry Widow Mtn logging road the other day.  This was looking down from where we had our lunch at 3400 feet elevation. 

Another view from our lunch spot

This male Blue Grouse didn't want to yield the road to me.  Note the yellow slashes above the eyes.

You can see here what those yellow slashes are for.  He's all slicked up for the ladies now.

  

NORTHERN VANCOUVER ISLAND ONCE MORE

After staying a couple of days longer at Cousin Bill’s than originally planned, we moved up to Cluxewe Campsite near Port McNeill this past Wednesday.  We had a great time at Bill’s and had many shared tasty meals on the patio (sorry Charlie) with the nice warm weather.  Bill hosted a barbeque last Sunday and there were nine of us present.  There were three large and very yummy desserts so it took a couple of hard days for Bill and me to diminish the leftover desserts. 

I did a bit of geocaching on my bike from Bill’s and on Tuesday, I took the car and went north of town and had a pretty good day.  I cached and did lots of walking until about 2 pm when it just got too warm so I went up to Robert’s Lake and had a refreshing dip in a quiet section of the lake.

We had a good trip up to Cluxewe on Wednesday with Aileen bringing the car while I towed the ATV trailer.  With the sunny weather, the scenery looked very nice.  The forecast was for rain to begin today and it did so the temperature is much lower which makes some of our team happy.  One of us would still prefer to be in tee shirt and shorts, though.  I did a bit of caching on my bike yesterday then last night and the night before, brother in law John and I were out caching late, needing to use flashlights both nights before finishing.   Today has been a quiet day other than going to town this morning.   We did a load of laundry at Aileen’s sister Anne’s then played a game of Fish with John and the two grand kids.  We picked up a few groceries and I stopped to chat with my Cousin Donna at her workplace.

We are probably not staying here too long as the campsite is fairly booked for the summer months and not having a fixed plan in place didn’t allow us to make prior reservations.  We got a site next to John and Anne’s trailer the first night but it was booked starting tonight.  When I found another site close by that would allow us to stay until next Thursday, we moved yesterday rather than waiting for today, not wanting want to move in the rain if we didn’t have to.   We’ll see what the weather is doing next week to decide on whether to find another spot here or move elsewhere. 

This was the Super Moon handheld with my Canon SX50

This is the moon after putting the SX50 on the tripod and using a two second self timer

Sunrise at Storries Beach south of Campbell River

I popped into Kelsey Bey on Tuesday and it was quite windy.  This is a crew boat making its way back to port. 

This does not look like fun to me

Almost home

Cruise ship heading to Alaska from Storries Beach

Morning contemplation at Storries Beach

Beaver Pond

The ring around the sun yesterday announcing today's rain

It was windy here yesterday

Feeding frenzy, if you look close you can see minnows in their beaks

Yep, rainy today

Peek a boo