Hornby Island Vacation 2010: Day 1 & 2

The summer here in Vancouver has been pretty good, even if it had a bit of a late start. Glad the weather is cooperating though as we have gone on vacation for 7 days to the beautiful little island of Hornby. Hornby Island is located north of Naniamo, just off the east coast of Vancouver Island. The journey here is typically a whole day event as you might need to take multiple ferries (like we do).

Day 1

We first take the Horseshoe Bay ferry to Naniamo and drive up the old highway. Stopped for gas in Parksville and noted how far the tide was out. Too bad we didn’t have more time, we would have hung out at the community beach for a little while. We then headed into Qualicum where we stopped off for some soft-serve ice-cream at the Beach Hut, played around on the beach for a while and stopped off at the Shady Rest Pub for some food.

Yes, the weather was a bit overcast with it threatening to rain. Though eventually later in the day the clouds parted a little bit and gave us some the sunshine we requested.

We arrived at Buckley Bay just in time to see the ferry leaving for Denman Island. It’s only about a 45 minute wait for the ferry to come back so the wait wasn’t that bad. The sun by this time was out and shinning down on us though.

If you have not been on the Denman to Hornby journey you’ll find yourself in a race with other cars across Denman Island to get to the Hornby Island ferry. It’s weird since the ferry typically waits for the people from the previous ferry. There are two ways to get to the Hornby Island ferry, but typically everyone takes the same road. You do need to drive a bit careful along it though as there is often deer on it, or next to it.

The silly thing about Ford’s Cove is that you can see it from the Hornby Island Ferry, but you have to drive ALL the way around the island to actually get to tit. Once we did arrive, we quickly unloaded and got into vacation mode.

Day 2

I typically wake up fairly early and let Robyn sleep in as much as possible. When I got up I heard the cry of an eagle. I grabbed my camera and headed down to the water to see if I could get a better look. It seems there is a resident eagle perch about 100 feet away from the cabin, though with my big lens, it still isn’t big enough to do the job properly.

There he is, just sitting perched on a branch. The funny thing is his body is actually facing the area where they (owner’s of Ford’s Cove) keep chickens.  As I type this, the eagle is there right now on the same perch watching over them, well at least I think the eagle is watching over the chickens. The photos above is heavily cropped so it might look like I am fairly close, I’m not.

Later that day Robyn and I headed over to Helliwell Provincial Park. I’ve written about this park before and have taken many a photo of it. We still highly enjoy walking around the high bluffs overloading the ocean. Instead of seeing eagles soaring on the thermals we did see many turkey vultures, just not close enough to get a good photo though. We also saw what we might have thought was a whale in the water near the shore. Something large and grey was moving along just off the shoreline below us in the water.

When we got back to the cabin it was time to go for a walk towards Heron Rocks. The walk consists of walking along sandstone as the water gentle laps against it.

The sandstone is pretty cool as the ocean’s water has worn it away over time. At lower tides you can check out the little critters that inhabit the sub-tidal area; starfish, sunstars, spider crabs and more.

When we got closer to Heron Rocks a juvenile bald eagle kept chirping away on in a tree. I did notice that there was an adult bald eagle in the area a few trees down from him, perhaps the juvenile was telling the adult he was still there? The adult just hung out on his perch and preened himself.

We headed back to the cabin and started dinner.

We enjoyed chicken and corn on the cob on the little habatchi (sp?) we brought along with us. We sat on the porch eating our bbq’d food and watching the sun set behind Denman Island. As usual, this place is not only beautiful, but also very relaxing. We also enjoyed a fun game of Crib too. Yup, Robyn was the red pegs and in the lead.

Today: We’ll be hitting up V0R1Z0′s for some coffee and their delicious cookies before we head over to Whaling Station Bay, Big Trib (Tribune Bay Park), the Co-op for some lunch meats, Small Trib for some beach action and whatever else we can think of. We’re also planning on heading to Helliwell again, but this evening to watch the sunset. We also noticed that local resident artist Graham Herbert had painted one of the nearby water towers, which I’ll definitively get a photo of today.

On a side note: The internet is pretty flaky and barely managed to upload my photos to Flickr on the local WiFi here. I had to switch over to my iPhone and tether off of it to write this blog post though. Yes, I am someone who enjoys being connected even when on vacation. It’s not work so it’s still enjoyable.