Morden Mine is Vancouver Island’s most complete above ground historic coal mine remains. It’s an amazing site to be seen. The Friend’s of Morden Mine have done a lot of work to restore and preserve this site and it’s heritage.
We saw some pretty cool things today! There were some really cool bike jumps and I’m assuming the same industrious kids built the various twig and fern forts in the forest as well.
There were a number of really cool critters to be seen. Krista found a number of Red Back Salamanders and Kale was determined to hang onto a large jawed beatle despite being pinched over and over.
Worms that apparently dad was willing to try a taste of. Uh, no. Yuck.
Woodpeckers- actually Red Breasted Sapsuckers. Krista saw a pair mating (?) shortly after this video was taken! They were making a big racket and then bashing into each other falling down towards the ground. You’ll notice the pond in the video was surrounded by coal slag and it smelled awful to me! Cam was suspecting that the water logged slag was giving off some foul tarish gas. It was much stinker than the beautiful skunk cabbage we saw as well.
Something really amazing was seeing an Osprey trying to get a hold of some swimming ducks! Sadly in my rush to get the camera on I didn’t zoom before starting the video and I don’t have the option to do that after. It was amazing enough that I’m going to share what I got anyway.
The bike jumps were also fun for little kids wanting to “super run” through the course. Krista was noting how easy it was to be watching the jumping kid and not pay attention to your own feet as I experienced myself when jumping with Hillary just before. I had a shoe full of dirt the last time!
We saw these little pretty flowers Lily put in her hair, trillium, violets and Kale and Leif suffered from small encounters with stinging nettle.
It was a great time for exploring, climbing, pretending, fort building, bird watching, hearing bird sounds (“who cooks for you” owl…”), running, walking in mud……. and just generally being with good friends.
Ha ha! I love the video clip of the hill, it turned out great. That was fun! Too bad neither of us got shots of the Osprey, that was cool. Thanks for posting this, great to look back at the memories over time. I wish I got a shot of those three hand holding in the bottom photo. My god kids are the cutest things.
Oh, and I wish you’d post Lily’s commentary on her worms! THAT was cute.
I was worried it was getting to be too many videos on the already long posting but I agree that one is so cute. Here’s a link to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLtUDATrBGg
Oh, you visit some amazing places!
P.S
The seeds you sent are all growing well!
Exciting Rebecca! I hope you take a picture or two when they’ve grown more!