Jellyfish Jellyfest

On this moderately sunny Sunday, Louise and I headed up to Brentwood Bay for paddle.

We hadn't been out this way since the fall of 2009, but there's been little change. The one thing we did notice was the work being done on the ferry dock beside where we put in.

That's because the long-serving MV Mill Bay, which has serviced this route since being built in 1956, was retired at the beginning of this month to be replaced by the larger MV Klitsa, necessitating renovations to the dock. (And from the Useless Movie Trivia File, the Mill Bay terminal was used for a scene during the filming of the 1970 movie Five Easy Pieces that starred Jack Nicholson and Karen Black.) So with the ferry out of service for the moment, that's one less bit of marine traffic we needed to look out for.
Clearly this heron wasn't worried about other traffic as he groomed himself.


We crossed over to 15 Minute Island. It's actually called Senanus Island, but we refer to is as 15 Minute Island because the first time we approached the island from the north, Bernie kept saying it looked only 15 minutes away. And after we'd paddled for an hour, his opinion had not changed -- it still looked 15 minutes away.

Today we were approaching from the south, and for the record it was a 20 minute crossing.

Once at the island, we found a lot of geese honking up a storm...

...probably because eagles were around and undoubtedly hunting for goslings.

Fortunately for this guy, oysercatchers didn't seem to be on the eagles' menu.


After we paddled around the island, we crossed back to the shore went into Tod Inlet, and Gowlland Tod Provincial Park.


Tod Inlet is a gorgeous place to paddle, very sheltered and usually brimming with aquatic life, and today was no exception, although we were a bit surprised to find the inlet full of jellyfish.

It was a jellyfish jellyfest! Although the heron didn't seem particularly impressed.


Trip Length: 10.67 km
YTD: 70.90 km
More pictures are here.