bella coola or bust: Half moon Bay on the Sunshine Coast

Our destination for Sunday-Halfmoon Bay, BC.

So Girl Friday here really let the team down yesterday-I got us lost not once, not twice but THREE TIMES!
It started with a very bad last sleep in Port townsend and getting up far too early to catch a ferry to Whitby island. We've discovered my Achilles heel-no coffee and no sleep makes for a very poor navigator. This didn't seem like to much of a problem though as our next destination was Halfmoon Bay just north of vancouver and really we estimated the trip woul only take several hours at the most to vancouver and then a short ferry ride to the sunshine coast and an even shorter trip by car to my cousin Sarah's house in halfmoon bay. Compared to some streches we've done this seemed like a duck walk.

So on an Island with only one major road I managed to take it in the wrong direction (it was overcast so I just went with my gut feeling as to where north was) so once we realized we were on the wrong end of the island we had to drive all the way back down to the other end to catch the ferry back to the mainland. This put us a bit behind schedule but we still had high hopes.

All was actually fine untill Vancouver then, the border crossing was one of the easiest I have ever done, but let me say a few words about Vancouver now- There are no signs! After a couple of hours of driving around I would have been happy to see even a sign to Alaska- anything that would have pointed us in the right direction to horseshoe bay, Pedestrians rule-they step out in front of traffic without hesitation, the oneway streets seem designed to always take you away from where you want to go and once I decided to give up and find a map we never saw a gas station or convenience store in which to buy one. I will say that while lost we covered most of the city so had we been in a better mind set it would have been more like a city tour- We even ended up Gas Town in front of the clock! Finally we found the road we had been looking for and headed out to horseshoe bay via Stanly Park and Lion's gate bridge. We killed a couple of hours in Horseshoe Bay waiting for the next ferry but at this point we were exhausted and had been on the road almost 12 hours again! The ferry ride over was actually pretty nice, great views of the coast and snow capped mountains but we were so tired that it was a bit lost on us

Once back on land we knew we only had about a forty minute drive to Sarah's and we managed to keep it together (we did stop at a liquor store with the anticipation of drinking heavily once we got there) with the knowledge that we would soon be near beds and showers.

So we found the ever so lovely yet badly laid out Halfmon bay, only to drive round and round this small little community with no luck. So it was almost 9pm when we staggered into Sarah and Steve's like lost sailors finding land. Sarah was a saint and gave us food and poured us brandy.

Today was a different story, After a great nights sleep and a lovely breakfast with several cups of coffee we were able to redeem ourselves as house guests and truly appreciate the area we were in.

Sarah and Steve have a lovely house with a fantastic garden of lavender, laurel, honeysuckle, grapes, cherries real english looking garden. ( Sarah says black bears often visit and each the fruit in the back yard!) and the lovely Lucia along with my uncle Lawrence gave us a tour of the "purple forest" where we tried Huckleberrys and saw evidence of the still elusive black bear (poop!)

After a lovely lunch we all headed down to Seargents cove to see meet Steve's parents Maria and Steve, who had some good travel stories of their own, and got to see the community restored shoreline which included a bog, berm and sea. The community had also built a fish ladder so that salmon could get up into the bog to spawn from the sea. It was a really nice relaxing day so welcome after the amount of time we had been on the road and got us ready for the next 800 kms. After another great meal, catching up with each other (really we need like a month) having a bounce on the trampoline with my youngest cousin Lucia, throwing a ball for the ever enthusiastic Hero while being watched by the ever so elegant Mr. Darcy we started to get ready for the next day.

Fish Ladder

Clams, Oyster and mussles on the beach!

We had an early start this morning with the hopes of catching the 8:30 ferry. It was a bit of a sad goodbye as it seemed like such a short visit when we all haven't seen each other in so long but we plan to rectify this in the future and hopefully we can see each other more often. It was short but really quite lovely.

Really we could have done with a couple more days.