Winging It West Archive

Long Beach Part 2

We took the trail out to South Beach, the trails are short, good for the kids. The description of this trail is "South Beach offers spectacular, but potentially dangerous, wave watching. Very large waves and strong currents form at this pebble beach." Along the trail there was a totem pole, it is the first totem pole the Ucluelet First Nation raised in over one hundred years.

There were notices up about bears and wolves in the area.

Angela checking to see if there were any bears home.

The girls had climbed up on the huge rocks at South Beach.

Some of the rocks they were climbing on, they were on the one to the left in the previous photo.

The waves weren't that large today.

We found a dead starfish washed up on the beach.

More climbing and exploring.

Angela and Claudia holding on for dear life.

One last look back to the beach.

We certainly lucked out with the weather today. We really enjoyed this spot, the girls even spotted to live starfish clinging to some of the rocks in the water. The pebbles and rocks were smooth and lots of shells that were intact.

Long Beach Part 3

After Second Beach it was off to Radar Hill, it was a Pinetree Line Radar installation back during the Cold War.

We saw a pair of bald eagles while we were there. If you look closely you can see them, they came right over top of us and kept going.

In case of Tsunami go this way.

Our last stop for the day was at Combers Beach, we hit it at low tide. This is the view as we came out of the trail.

Way out on the rocks you can see the outline of sea lions.

Even though it was kind of a long weekend, the beaches certainly were not busy, although all the campgrounds had no vancancy signs up.

That's the amazing thing about tides, it can make the same beach look so different. Gillian had scratched her name in the sand, only to have the incoming tides wash it away.

Low Tide at Parksville Beach

Today we are heading to Victoria for a few days. Our day started with a stop at the Parksville Beach. It was low tide compared to Thursday when it was high tide.

There is a whole different world of creatures with low tide.

The girls were in 7th heaven catching the little crabs.

A little hermit crab.

Claudia's crab.

A live sand dollar in the sand.

Claudia with a dead sand dollar.

Looking back towards the beach.

Finally we hit the water.

Sand dollars.

The girls really enjoyed low tide and couldn't believe this was the same place they waded in on Thursday.

Coombs Country Market

After the beach we headed over to the Coombs Old Country Market. First we stopped at the Thrifty Foods to take a picture with the giant shopping cart.

The cart next to our car.

This is the place where they have the goats on the roof.

Claudia and Angela watching our for goat poop.

A green roof.

There are a lot of little shops as well as the main market store.

We went next door to the market where there were more shops.

Claudia bought a new hat.

It's always a fun place to visit.