BUSY, BUSY!

Life is just moving right along here at Cluxewe.  John and I did a couple of adventurous geocaching trails last Wednesday and Thursday evening.  The Thursday one was 8.95 kms return with 1500 feet of vertical which is an indication of how many dips and canyons we had since we probably never got more than 60 feet above sea level with the ocean in view much of the time.  We were the first people to walk in to the cache since it was placed 25 months ago!

Friday saw my brother Charlie and wife Sheila arrive for the weekend.  He brought his ATV along so he, brother in law John and I went ATVing all day Saturday.  Saturday evening, John daughter Brenda and husband Kelly arrived with his ATV.  That meant we were ATVing Sunday and then again today without Charlie who had to go home this morning.  We did have some campfire and mealtimes together with the families, of course.  This afternoon and evening was a bit of a rest for us. 

The Pink Salmon are massing off the beach here at Cluxewe and it is quite a sight as there are many jumping out of the water at the same time.  There are always a lot of fishermen lining the shore trying their best to catch some.  I have been shooting video with my SX50 and getting some pretty good results.  I will have to try to figure out how to downsize the file size so I can post one.

This guy caught his lunch.  Anyone know what it is?

John and I found this bear along the beach Wednesday evening on our way to a remote geocache

Can you see the cruise ship in the fog beyond the sailboat?

A female Blue Grouse up in the hills while we were ATVing

We took the time to sit on the beach last night to watch this Disney cruise ship go by

Commercial fishing boats at Port Hardy

Looking southeast  from Beaver Harbour near Port Hardy

Looking west from Cluxewe.  This photo is untouched except for slight sharpening and downsizing the file

These two photos were taken last night from Elephant Head Mtn looking out to the northeast.  The first photo shows Port McNeill in the center and Sointula to the left on the first island.  The BC mainland mountains are in the background

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.