Canada 2008  
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Road Trip 1,  Sunshine
Coast and Vancouver Island

This run involves a few ferries, the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia isn't accessible by road, so to get there the only way is by sea or by air - and as the Pontiac is a bit too large to fit in a small De Haviland float plane then a boat it will have to be!  Fortunately, BC Ferries run excellent services to the many islands and otherwise hard to reach bits of coastline of British Columbia. First stop - Horseshoe Bay to get our first ferry (there are actually four on this trip) over to Langdale. 

Crossing the Lion's Gate Bridge to get to North Vancouver where we pick up the Marine Drive to Horseshoe Bay

Our ferry to Langdale arriving across the Howe Sound to Horseshoe Bay

BC ferries use different sized ships dependent on the crossing. The bigger ones operating the are Vancouver to Vancouver Island 
services, the ships are about the same size as an English / French cross channel ferry, this one is next size down to that. 
This crossing from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale takes approx 40 mins 

Gibson's Landing

Gibson's is a funny old place, very much a working harbour but also quite picturesque in a raw kinda way, it's just a stones throw from the BC Ferries landing stage at Langdale so it would have been rude to drive past without paying a visit. There are some quite "colourful" looking characters about, which may go some way to explaining the shot below!. 

One ferry I'm glad we never caught........and yes they did actually make it to the other side in one piece. Must be one o' those fancy
 Roll On - Roll Off the side ferries!  It sort of made me wonder though, how many trucks lie at the bottom of the harbour here.

Cruising around in
Pender Harbour / Garden Bay

From Gibson's a pleasant 50k drive brings us up past Sechelt to Pender Harbour where we a have a B&B booked at a place called  "The Lodge on Gunboat Cove".  We don't make too many photo stops on the way because we've spent too long mooching about Gibson's waiting to watch some wagons fall off the makeshift ferry!!  Which means we're now running a bit late, but once there we get settled in and then join B&B owners Reg, Yvonne and Lorna on the 1st floor veranda for a drop o' Vino before heading out to find somewhere to eat. However, we wake the following morning to some pretty dire weather so we end up just sloshing about trying to see as much as possible in the very wet conditions. 

We do a bit of exploring but the weather turns gradually worse as the day goes on.

Pender Harbour, Garden Bay and Madeira Park are made up of a series of small islands within a large natural harbour system, getting around it by car is pretty damned impossible so we decide to try and get a boat to take us around.  Reg at the B&B mentions a guy he knows who has a small motorised catamaran so for the princely sum of $25 we book him to ferry us around Pender Harbour and Garden Bay tomorrow - let's hope the weather improves! ..........

A slightly better day!  I never really knew what people were on about when they talked about "Big Skies" in countries like
 the 'States and Australia. Having seen the skies in BC I now know exactly what they mean

The place is a maze of small islands - some of them inhabited - and little creeks

This handsome feathered chap glided over the back of the boat and settled
on the rocks here long enough for us to rattle off a coupe of shots. First time
we've ever seen a genuine Bald Eagle in the wild - beautiful ! It made our day.

Paul, our boat captain took us over to a small mooring at the side of the harbour to show is this ex US Navy bi-plane
Apparently it's one of only a couple of it's type left that's actually capable of flying.

Earls Cove to Saltery Bay
& Powell River to Vancouver Island.

After our couple of days spent at Pender Harbour it's time for us to move on. Today we have two ferry crossings, the first is from tiny Earls Cove to Saltery Bay. The Sunshine coast is split into two parts divided by the Jervis Inlet and this ferry allows us to get from the southern part to the north. From Saltery Bay we head up to the next ferry at Powell River which will take us over the Georgia Strait for the one and a half hour crossing over to Vancouver Island.    

This is Egmont, the nearest inhabited place to the ferry slip at Earls Cove which is about 6 miles away.

Boarding the ferry at Earls Cove. This one goes across the Jervis Inlet

This is probably one of the most scenic stretches of water I've ever crossed - it's stunning here, photos just can't do it justice

Docking at Saltery Bay

The timing here is critical if we're to make it to the next ferry which will take us over to Comox on the Island, so we run up to Powell River - about 20 miles away without stopping and arrive at the terminal just as the ferry is coming in to dock. If we hadn't caught this one then we wouldn't have arrived at our next B&B in Comox 'til very late.  The road here continues only a short way past Powell River to a place called Lund, then that's about as far as it goes before reaching Desolation Sound - there are no roads north of here for hundreds of miles, not until you reach Prince Rupert just south of the Alaskan border!

Sailing out of Powell River, headed for Comox on Vancouver Island

As we sail across the Georgia Strait we watch the storm clouds gather over Vancouver Island

Looks like we're going to be needing our brolly!

The Comox Glacier

Comox Harbour boardwalk

Dusk Comox Harbour

Tomorrow we leave Comox and head south through Victoria to the small coastal town of Sooke on the south west corner of Vancouver island. We don't know it yet but the weather is about to take a real turn for the worse and we'll be driving the 200 miles in a torrential rainstorm. I suppose the gathering storm clouds we saw from the ferry should have given us some clue as to what was in store!

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