We gave the farmers market experience one more try and went over the to the Discovery Pier area of the waterfront to check it out. We knew that the parking area was small so we parked a short way away and walk along the waterfront. Crossing a bridge over an old shipyard railway we noticed this down below.
A seaman’s shrine?
We got there around 10:30 and it wasn’t very busy.
A few interesting booths. Jennie looked at this one a long time, getting ideas as to what to do with all the shells she has collected.
Funny painted rocks.
And some unique paintings. They seemed to be made up of dots and not brush strokes but at $800 a pop, no thanks.
We went out on the actual pier.
We noticed that the water was really rushing past the pilings, parallel to the shore.
Another couple explained that when the tide goes out it has to get by Vancouver Island as a whole. Just south of Quadra Island is Mid Island, which is the halfway point of Vancouver Island. South of it, the water goes south around Vancouver Island and north of it, vice versa. I had never thought about something on that large a scale happening with the tides before.
The pier is set up for fishing. You can buy bait and rent poles. There are lots of cleaning stations and the railing even has holes in it so that you can insert your rods.
As we headed back to the car, there had been a few interesting food booths in the market, especially a Lebanese one, but we weren’t really hungry yet so we continued on. Then we saw a sign at Crabby Bob’s for seafood chowder. We succumbed and had a bowl.
Farther along we wondered which parents we could torture by buying this little drum set.
Jennie had bought some cod and scallops at Crabby Bob’s so we dropped it off at the RV before driving the short distance to Elk Falls Provincial Park.
There is a dam upstream from the falls and a generating station downstream. They are in the process of decommissioning the station along with the giant penstocks between them. The normal road into the falls parking lot is closed and now you have to park a bit farther away and take a detour trail over the penstocks.
They have also just last year opened a new trail (in blue below) to a new suspension bridge across the canyon and a viewpoint across from the falls.
There was a teaser view part way down the trail that didn’t even show the main part of the falls.
I took the suspension bridge. It was way too wobbly for Jennie.
Jennie went down to the viewpoint.
It was 60 meters down to the canyon floor from the middle of the bridge which was of course see through.
The Elk River goes over the 25 meter falls and then turns towards the bridge.
I wobbled my way off the bridge and down to Jennie. That viewpoint was also see through but she overcame her nervousness to get a good look at the falls.
We got the almost front on view here.
We headed back up to the original trail around to the old viewpoint over looking the other side of the falls.
It was at the end of the canyon looking back at the falls with the new viewpoint and bridge over it.
And a not so smart person sitting on the edge of the falls.
We were at a much better angle for the rainbow to show up.
It almost looked like fire.
Finally we went down on to the rocks above the falls.
I had a tight grip on my strap and held the camera out as far as I dared.
I did a bunch of photospheres during the day but this was the only one that really added anything.
Jennie saw some kids jumping into this deep pool right near the top of the the cascades.
And then we retraced our steps back to the car. We had spent about 3 hours in the park mostly staring at the water and rainbows.
Altogether the GPS said we did just over 4 km.
Another really great day.
Great pics of the waterfalls!!
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