Saturday, September 06, 2008

island hopping


miriam and i went on one last trip away before september school/work craziness kicked in. it was very relaxing. we saw nice trees, like garry oaks:


and this beautiful arbutus, reflected in the sea:


i bought these funky pants from a farmer's market outside victoria and they have a maple key on them:


we stayed one night on a very small island you can only get to by ferry. it was very peaceful and quiet, and very beautiful. there were birds of prey circling above us:


we sat by the sea and read and drank tea and watched a tern diving into the water for fish. (tern not featured in this photo.)


the shore line was partly made up of bricks, cos the island used to be owned by a brick company who had a big factory on it. you can see where the different tide lines sit by the colours of the bricks:


also in the history of the island was some dropkicks introducing deer so they could hunt them. now there's over a thousand deer on the tiny island, eating everything. they woke us up in the night ripping branches from trees and stampeding around. who knew deer were so damn noisy? all the trees on the island only have foliage to deer head height, and grow up from the bottom in weird pyramid shapes. like so:


and here is the obligatory shot of the US. that's it, all blurry and mountainous in the distance. if you click on the photo and make it big you can see the wading bird in the front left as well.


on the ferry back to vancouver we saw orcas. it was cool.

the end.

2 comments:

itchy fingers said...

aw! you got to see orcas! they must've heard you missed out in August!

see the little red whale watching boat? I bet that's the same one we were on!

gumtreefid farmer said...

yay! orcas!

the little red boat? that's so cool! we were far away from the orcas - the photo is me making friends with the zoom.

it is so exciting to see them leap up from the sea.