Fun Trip

We sure had a great time on our mini vacation up to Telegraph Cove and Alert Bay, BC. We left on Saturday morning and were up there by noon. It was icky and raining the whole way up there. We decided to set up camp and while it was raining we just stayed in the camper and played cards. It finally stopped raining about 4pm so we wandered down to the pub and got some dinner and drinks. It was quite mild out when we got back so we lit the campfire and sat out and had a few drinks - it's just not camping if you can't have a campfire. It poured down rain through the night so I was saying my prayers and asking God to just let it not rain and not be windy the next day.

In the morning we got up about 7:30 and went off to the marina with the boat and were out on the water by 9 am. The sun decided to co-operate and came out and it ended up being pretty nice, with no wind. Not good to be on the ocean in the wind as our boat is only a 17½' Boston Whaler - they are suppose to be unsinkable but that doesn't mean we couldn't get thrown out of the boat in a big wind, lol.

We could see the small island that Alert Bay is on as soon as we pulled out of the marina. It was only about 5 or 6 miles away. We decided to do some fishing first and while on the way to the area we wanted to fish at we ran into a big group of Stellar Sea Lions - OMG those things are huge! Here is a pic of them.



As we were pulling around the other side of this little island where the sea lions were when you looked at the water there was all this splashing going on, it looked like huge raindrops or something. When we looked over the side of the boat into the water for as far down and as far out as you could see there were millions of herring - and I do mean millions! They were all about 5 or 6 inches long and if we had a net with smaller netting we could have scooped up enough herring in one swoop to can 2 dozen jars of pickled herring. It was unreal, I have never seen anything like that before. My husband said it was most likely caused by some predator lower down where the herring usually are so they've come up to the surface to get away from it. Here's a pic of what the water looked like.


So my dh didn't even have his fishing line in the water for 5 mins and he caught a rock cod. Just gets that off and in the boat and not a minute later he caught another one - talk about great fishing. While we were doing that we here this big loud noise and look out and there's a young transient grey whale. Very cool to watch. We were a little ways away from it but I did get a shot of him as he was going back under the water. It sort of looks like a big black blob on the picture but it is the whales body going under just after he came up for air.




We fished a while longer and then we took off to Alert Bay and tied up at the government wharf and wandered around town - it's pretty small so it didn't take long. Our old house had been torn down but we did find the old telegraph/customs house where my Dad worked - it was now a restaurant and B & B. We also saw the worlds tallest totem poll, which is 175 feet high. I was little disappointed though as the Indian Band had not done any upkeep on it so the paint was almost missing etc. I didn't recognize anything (not that I thought I would since I was only 3 when we moved) but it was good to finally see the place I was born. Here's a couple of pics of Alert Bay.





After our little walk about we left and went out fishing again. This time we got to see a pod of white sided dolphins and then we saw the gray whale again. We caught a whole lot more cod and then we headed back in. Now our freezer is full of salmon and cod for fish and chips - yummy.

It was a super great day and turned out sunny and warm. We got to have another campfire on Sunday night and then got up Monday morning and headed for home.