We had a fabulous day yesterday with some friends. We walked downtown and hopped on a little passenger ferry that takes us over to Protection Island. The ferry employee selling us our tickets could have used a lesson or two in manners but we were able to get on the ferry and forget about her. The short ten minutes sailing through the expensive yachts and cheap liveaboards was an interesting one.
Protection Island is a little island filled with cabins and many year round homes. The roads aren’t paved and there are very few cars (mostly support type vehicles for services like the telephone company). People walk or drive golf carts instead. It’s was so peaceful walking along the quiet roads. Protection Island stays busy though throughout the year with hungry patrons of the Dingy Dock Pub, famous for their fish and chips. The ferry actually drops passengers off directly at the pub.
I hadn’t been to Protection Island before but we didn’t just come to see the sites. We actually came to walk across the passage between Protection Island and the provincial park Newcastle Island at low tide. It can get lower than it was yesterday which was about 60 cm at it’s deepest.
Here’s a giant Jellyfish we saw beached on the sand. I hope it was all right when the water came back in!
This was the view left (you can see downtown Nanaimo in the distance) and right before we walked across to Newcastle Island:
Starfish:
A Chiton attached to a sand dollar:
The area was covered in oysters, alive and dead. Obviously something was hungry for the oyster with a hole in it at the top of the picture:
After having a picnic lunch on the grassy edge of Newcastle Island we head off for a walk around the island.
Things like this are the reason I love living here. My major was supposed to be marine biology and one of my favorite things I ever did was go to Bamfield for a week and work with the marine biologists there. I can’t wait until Meredith is old enough I can bring her to places like that and show her all the neat stuff the ocean has!