Winging It West Archive

The Beach

It was about a 15 minute drive to the cottage, we unloaded and headed down to the shore to explore. It was high tide so there weren't many sea creature things to look at. But the kids enjoyed it just the same.

Claudia fishing with some bull kelp.

The view is to the north and east.

The cottage.

This is the ferry that goes to Sidney, BC, it goes by at 7:00 PM every night.

Marine Life

The morning started with Shanna spotting some sea otters down in the water. We all headed down to get a closer look.

There were a couple of deer lying in the bush that we woke up.

There was still some fog rolling through.

The first of our many sea stars we would see.

Of course there were lots of crabs.

Shanna found a sea star stuck to a rock, so the girls could hold it by the rock.

The girls like to stand on the rocks waiting for the boat waves to come in.

We even saw a jelly fish, not sure if it was dead or alive.

Roche Harbor

We headed into Roche Harbor on our way to Lime Kiln State Park.

We saw a Humdinger.

One of the guests of this hotel was John Wayne.

The yellow brick road in front on the hotel is made from the fire bricks which lined kilns one thru eight.

As there was no local source of brick when the kilns were built, bricks were purchased in Canada from Vancouver Island and shipped to Roche Harbor.

Many of the boats docked were ginormous.

We came across the Humdinger, modelled after the Hummer, a quick search of the internet shows that these things retail for $15,900 USD.

At one time the largest Lime works west of the Mississippi.

Not too many people take crap for a living.

There are still a couple of Lime kilns standing.

Lime Kiln State Park

We were hoping to see some of these in the water, the dorsel fins, not the girls.

The Lime Kiln State Park light house, they use this as a research station to monitor the Orca pods.

Scanning the water for Orcas.

This is Haro Straight.

We had our eyes scanning the distant waters for Orcas, but all we saw were some harbor porpoises.

While we were all looking way out, a harbor seal came swimming by really close.

There were alot of kayakers out in the water.

Along the trail to the light house.

The girls barely hanging on.

Angela lending a helping hand to Claudia.

Even though we didn't see any whales, the scenery was still beautiful and well worth the time spent there.

Another (or the same) seal.

Skipping Stones

The girls were learning how to skip stones across the water.

While we were down at the water a pair of Bald Eagles were in the area.