June 21 – Parks on Hornby Island

Today we headed south a bit to take two ferries to get out to Hornby Island and investigate two great provincial parks.

We first caught the 9 am ferry to Denham Island. We were right at the front.

Then we followed the of line cars cars across the island to catch the next ferry to Hornby Island. We were the third last car on and they shoehorned us in at an angle.

Just as we were about to get off, the lady in front of us comes back and says that she is not sure if her car will move and that it definitely won’t go up the ramp.

Our row was supposed to be the first off but sure enough her car was stuck. I was so jammed in that I couldn’t move to get around her, even once they had let all the other rows off. Finally she managed to move forward a few car lengths and we cold get off. In our mirror I saw her start up the ramp but she obviously got stopped. I am not sure if all the guys could push her up or they had to get a tow truck. The thing that was really crazy is that she knew her car was sick several days ago and yet still took it on the ferry.

We made our way out to the far end of Hornby Island to Helliwell Provincial Park. It has a 5 km loop trail that runs right on the edge of the shore.

We did the trail in the counter clockwise direction starting in the forest as we made our way across the point.

Then we came out onto a meadow that seemed to run along the entire edge of this shore..

Looking up the coast to our right or west.

Heading down the trail to the east.

On either side of the trail there were little cement blocks with rope between them. You had to stay between the ropes because they were trying to regenerate the meadow.

There were also signs saying not to go too close to the cliff edge because they are made up of compacted gravel and have been undercut by the waves in several places.

Here we are at an approved viewpoint.

There were even some caves for the kayakers to check out.

A photosphere from here. I managed to cut Jennie in half.

Helliwell Provincial Park Cliffs Photosphere

Here is a close up of the cliff material. It is really hard. We got closer later and you think that you could just reach down and pull the stones out but it is like they are in cement.

We could see some hikers farther down the trail.

While I was taking the picture below, I noticed something scrambling up the cliff.

It was really fast and far away. I looks like an otter. I am not sure what it was doing up on the cliff top.

Looking back at the cliffs.

You get more an idea of the size with some tiny people on them.

We could get down on the rocks at St John’s Point.

With Flora Islet just off shore.

Just past the point there was a wide beach with some rocky tide pools.

Jennie was in shell heaven here. So many brilliant white ones.

Whenever she found an interesting one she used it to build a little pyramid.

While she did that I headed out on to the tidal flats.

More green slime to be careful on. I put a red circle around Jennie.

It was near low tide so there was a sand bar out to more rocks that didn’t even rate an islet name. Flora Islet is in the background.

 

There were some kayakers exploring the area.

There were a few tide pools but nothing much interesting in them.

There were lots of water and wind sculpted rocks.

I took a closeup picture of the holes on one of the rocks but when I look at the result they look like bumps rather than holes.

 

A little hoodoo.

Back with Jennie, we sat and had lunch.

This guy must have liked what we were having because he just kept hopping closer and closer.

Moving on we got a higher view of the spit extending almost out to Flora Islet.

The rest of the trail was back in the forest as we made our way back to the car. We were both a bit startled by this deer right beside the trail.

Lots more big trees to ogle.

Our next stop was very close by. All I had read about Tribune Bay Provincial Park was that it had a huge sandy beach with unusually warm water. Some people also mentioned tide pools. What we actually found was amazing.

The beach lived up to its billing.

I tried to do a panorama but it loses too much impact. I should have done a photosphere.

This upside down tree truck was an interesting marker for the exit trail.

It was starting to cloud over and get quite windy and cool. These people were hiding from the wind behind their umbrella.

Since there wasn’t much to do on the beach we saw some small rocky cliffs at one end so we went to investigate.

Even from this close they didn’t look like much.

Once we climbed up, there was a ledge just covered in all kinds of fantastically shaped rocks.  The sandstone was very flowing and smooth while the rest of the rocks were very sharp and pitted.

A very cool place to explore.

The rocks were so sharp Jennie had to put on gloves.

I was so blown away that I did 3 photospheres from various spots. They give a much better impression of what it was like.

Tribune Bay Rocks 1 Photosphere

Tribune Bay Rocks 2 Photosphere

Tribune Bay Rocks 3 Photosphere

So unexpected and the highlight of an already great day.

It was getting quite windy and cool so we eventually pulled ourselves away and retuned to the car.

This morning the plan had been to go back to Denham Island now and do a quick 1 km each way hike through the forest to get a picture of a lighthouse on an island. As we sat at the ferry leaving Hornby Island we decided that we had had enough for today and just took the second ferry and then home.