June 2026
And some clever quip...
Walking at Cypress
What makes this place special is the
water. There is a wide flowing stream moving from pool to
pool down the side of the mountain that drains into Yew
Lake. This slow moving water is home to water loving plants
and some alpine animals.
At the far point of the loop you get to
Yew Lake with it's picnic table. The trail loops back here
and in not very long you are back in the parking lot.
Happy Birthday Claira!
Claira's birthday at the end of month.
School lets out generally at the same time and many families go on
vacation as soon as summer starts so Claira often has her Birthday
the weekend before her Birthday. This year she picked Laser
Tag and invited some friends from her old school and some from her
new school.
Perhaps not surprising - her all girls
team is really good at Laser Tag. Her team was the smallest
of the other four teams but the cleaned up in the points - they
had 5 of the top 10 players and they had 200K more points than the
next team and nearly doubled the lowest scoring team.
Victoria for a Week
I have been to Victoria at least 100 times
(ignoring that I used to live there) and I found I often went to
the same places again and again. I'm trying to mix things up
so this time I went to Island View Beach. There is lots of
parking and a dike like trail that is the barrier between the
beach and the dry inland area. The tide was low so I was
able to walk down to the beach.
The beach shows the invasive species you expect to find in the
city.
There isn't a lot of sandy habitat in BC (we have a lot of rocky
beaches) so it was nice to see Coastal Sand Verbena growing on the
beach. Maybe you can find this on a beach further south (like
Cordova Bay), but I haven't found it.
Cordova Bay Beach
Cordova Bay Beach has a number of beach
accesses and beaches. The beach access closest to my parents
house only has sand beach when there are really low tides.
When it is low tide, there is a nice sand bar that you can walk
for at least half an hour. The tide lined up this morning so
we would have lots of time on the beach.
Claira likes picking up crabs from the tide pools, but today went
poorly. A large Red Rock Crab pinched Claira's thumb and it
wouldn't let go until I opened up it's claw. Her finger nail
was quite painful so we tuned around early and headed home for
some ice.
Tags: invasive(2), crab(1), birthday cake(1), Cypress Provincial Park(1), Lichen(1)
People: Claira(3), Helen(2), John(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Blogs for 2025 to 2005 > June 2026
Last Modified Friday, August 14th, 2026 at 21:57:10 Edit
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