May 25 – Piper’s Lagoon

Last night I was thinking about our little detour yesterday when we went off on the wrong trail. I can sort of see how someone can blindly follow a GPS even though they know it may be wrong. As we got farther and farther down the path it actually got harder to turn back. We had invested so much time and energy in climbing over all those rocks that we just kept hoping that just around the next corner there would be the path to the top to rescue us. Sanity finally returned when the cliff looked completely unclimbable and the rocks on shore got much bigger. We should have turned around much sooner or I should have at least looked at the map sooner.

Meanwhile, today turned out to have the best weather of our stay here. Clear blue sky all day. Unfortunately we were not really in the mood to take advantage of it. We needed a break day. The construction guys next door graciously started up their earth movers at precisely 7 am to try to get us going but I just put in some ear plugs and went back to sleep.

After a relaxing but somewhat noisy morning we decided that we couldn’t completely waste the day so we went to do the short hike out to explore Piper’s Lagoon. Of course the construction noise stopped almost as soon as we decided to leave.

Piper’s Lagoon was created when a man made causeway was built out to a small island. At low tide you can also reach three other small islands called the Shack Islands because they have a bunch of shacks built on them. Since low tide was at 2:40 pm today out timing was good. With all our usual wandering, the GPS said we did about 3 km.

 

Now we could have taken the easy path on the causeway but …

The ferries always seem to photobomb the background of our pictures.

There was not much of interest on this beach.

Some nice swirls.

We had to carefully climb over the logs to get back to the path.

 

A few tiny flowers to look at.

The island is covered in these twisted Gary Oaks.

Looking across the lagoon at all the house perched on the hill. The whole of the shoreline was like this.

To get onto the island we had climbed up this bit of rock before we realized that we could have just walked around it on the now dry shoreline.

There was a stream of water still in the lagoon that we couldn’t cross so we took the shore trail for a very short while.

Back out onto the tidal flats. There was not a lot to look at on the lagoon side.

The other side, looking out to the Shack Islands were much more interesting.

I quickly worked my way across while Jennie took her time examining all the shells.

The shacks were originally fisherman’s shelters but are now just used as weekend cabins by the original owner’s descendants.

Working may way around the corner.

Piper's Lagoon Photosphere 1

The pool in between the islands had much more going on.

Did this one lose an arm or is it just deformed?

Piper's Lagoon Photosphere 2

I just have to go around to the end.

We eventually worked our way back to continue the loop around the main island.

We could see a bit more of mainland BC but not much.

Someone built a door for this hole in a tree.

There were lots of log constructions at various places on the trail.

This time we went around the hump of rock.

Taking the easy way along the causeway.

I  forgot to take a picture of this kid when we were close but he was very excited to show us his catch.

He called it an eel.

And this a sucker fish.

Back at the parking lot there was a cute shower to wash off the salt water.

I turned it on but unfortunately the wind was blowing towards me so I got wet.

A great short hike to get outside on a nice day.