Vancouver Island, a ferry & stuck in Prince Rupert (not necessarily a bad thing..yet)

What better time to update your blog than when you're stuck in Prince Rupert because the floods have washed away the road and covered the railway tracks.

A bigger than normal snow fall this year, than a pretty hot spring meant huge amounts of snow melting. Add to that some heavy rain last week and you have a flood near Terrace. This is a town inland from Prince Rupert but the only road in and out of this town. The train won't be running all week and it's unknown whether it will go next week either!!! That wouldn't be a problem if we weren't running out of money... ah well - if worse comes to worse we can always try and get some work on the salmon canneries for a week or so :)

It was pretty funny at the shops yesterday. We went in to buy some groceries forgetting that everyone else who's been listening to the news is about 3 days ahead of us. There were a lot of empty shelves. No bread, no eggs, no bananas, no milk (except for soy which was fine for us) etc etc. Apparently we're not actually going to run out of food here. but everyone switches onto hoard mode and goes a little overboard on their shopping in times like these apparently.

You can't get on a plane, the ferry has a waiting list and who knows if we'll even make it on the train when the tracks open!! I love this stuff!!

So, we're just hanging out in Prince Rupert seeing what happens. Luckily for us, they have a big festival happening here this weekend called the SeaFest and if the locals we met last night are anything to go by, it's going to be a crazy weekend. Highlights will include arm wrestling competitions and knit offs!! As well as lots and lots of beer drinking (if they don't run out!!).

Our Ferry Trip up here via the Inside passage (a 15 hr trip) was really fun. We set up at a table and chairs in the cafe at a window and basically based ourselves there for the day while we whizzed past looming mountains, misty skies, another couple of whales, waterfalls cascading down and the passage narrowing and widening. We made some friends, drank some red wine, played lots of cards and actually passed 15hrs quite easily.

Anyway - the reason for this update is to try and capture our trip up Vancouver Island with Fiona. The island was pretty amazing and we have had an absolute ball. This is a snapshot of what we did!

Vancouver Island - What an amazing place!

We had the best time and the best weather the whole time we were there - which was so lucky when it rains over 200 days of the year there. However, we're catching up on that now in Prince Rupert...

We saw our first bear - which was so exciting. It was a little black bear about 3 years old according to a local. Just munching grass and not caring that we were there at all (we were in the car).

The sea life around the island is amazing. This is an example of some of the things we were seeing in rock pools and around rocks at the beach on low tide. These are photos we took at Botanical Beach just near Port Renfrew and the star fish were at Rosie Bay on low tide just near Tofino.

This was one of those moments when I wished I had Weesie or Kezza with us as we spent a lot of time going "OOOoohhhh... what is it??"

There is a lot of old growth forest on the island with 800 yr old trees towering above you on walks. The big difference here to Australia is the undergrowth. Because it's so wet and cold trees don't decompose as fast so you end up with metres of undergrowth piled up on the ground. You see a lot of trees growing off old fallen down trees (we learnt that that's called a 'nurse' tree) and piles and piles of fallen down logs. There was also a lot of storms through this area in Winter so more trees were down than usual. As much as we got caught up in the romance of the island - it's tempered by the sobering sights of very active logging still continueing.. and they're not just logging plantation forest either!

We've done a couple of cool walks around the island. We did a part of the Juan de Fuca Trail down to Mystic Beach, and a steep walk in Strathcona National Park called Crest Peak trail. We walked straight up this steep valley and as we neared the top we hit snow and consequently lost the path. We managed to make it to an opening close to the peak and were met with the most spectacular view!! Ah.. the rewards of a tough walk are definitely worth it sometimes. and the descent was just as memorable as we slipped and slid down the path before we hit solid ground. Each one of us took a spill and as you can see Fiona got a big creative with her descent...

That big tree I'm sitting was the path!! It was this massive tree that they'd decided to cut steps into.

Beaches around here are so different to ours. Usually they're pebbly or rocky and ALL of them are covered with logs. However, the Canadians love the logs as they're perfect for wind protection and sitting on. Give us soft sand and a towel any day!!

Most people would be happy to receive a new 4WD as their rental car for the week. But when you're sneakily going to drive it up a logging road to cut off some time and save us from backtracking it's not so good - that meant we had to really look after it!. However, check out our sun roof!! and that's Josh inspecting the results after making it to the end of the logging road. We only had a one close shave with a logging truck but other than that it was just dusty..

Josh's 31st, Tofino, Vancouver Island 2007: Bacon and Eggs for breakfast, a boat trip past mist covered islands, bald eagles, seals and otters to hot springs. A soak in the hot springs (much more enjoyable when we outlasted most of the other tourists), boat trip back via the open ocean and 4 sightings of humpbacks, wild salmon and martinis by the water for dinner, a few more martinis, a trip down to the beach at midnight for a full moon party (it wasn't as exciting as it sounds but still fun) and then back to sleep in our bunk beds!! I think Fiona and I enjoyed it as much as he did (we just didn't wear a funny party hat all day)..