June 12 – Chesterman Beach

And again, another day, another …

Chesterman Beach is not in the National Park and there are no signs to it from the highway. You just have to know that there are some small parking lots along it with narrow beach access corridors between the giant houses lining the shore.

The beach is W shaped, as at anything but high tide there is a sand bar out to the Frank Island. At the far end of the beach is the world famous Wickaninnish Inn.

The forecast for today was cloudy with rain in likely the early afternoon. We just intended to to a short hike out to the island and back and didn’t even bring lunch. After we would head into town to find some where to eat and do some shopping.

Well, the rain never came and we just kept going. What was supposed to be about 2 km ended up being about 5.5 km and we didn’t get lunch until about 3 o’clock.

We got there about an hour before low tide.

I was going to stitch the next two pictures together as a panorama but the program stretched Jennie’s body to make it look much wider. For my own safety I am not posting the result.

When the tide is low the beach is so huge it is hard to judge distances. Then you see the tiny people to tell you how far it is.

The island has high sections at each end and each are marked and roped off as private with homes on them.

The center rocky section has a sign saying private but no ropes and everyone seems to ignore it.

Looking back to the shoreline you can see the water on either side of the panoramas below.

Time to explore.

There was a lighthouse off in the distance.

There were also a lot of little plants among the rocks.

Jennie found this tiny crab with a partly blue shell.

While I was resting for a while this one kept screaming at me.

 

I wonder if they were tourists or patriots.

Since it felt that we hadn’t gone far and there was no sign of rain, we continued on around the beach.

Near the water there were snail trails all over the place.

Lots of crazy patterns.

This one drew a heart.

Here was a real tunneler.

Getting close to the Inn.

We noticed that some of the surfers have cradles on their bicycles to carry their boards.

Even though we were pretty scruffy, we went up to look around the Inn.

Sunday brunch was being served and we were hungry but it didn’t feel right. We may come back for a special lunch. I think dinner is out because the mains were in the $40 to $50 range.

Starting, what felt like, the long walk back along the shore to the car.

Lots of big houses with huge windows. I think that many of them are B&Bs.

So much beach.

Almost back.

We picked a place called the Red Can Gourmet for lunch. It seemed that it was mostly takeout but had a small eat in area. Jennie had a seared tuna salad and I had dirty mac and cheese (with pulled pork). Both were really good but the portion of mine was so big that even I could only eat half.

After we got got groceries we headed home. It started to sprinkle rain as we were driving but stopped as soon as we arrived.