Pender Island for the May Long Weekend
Way too many card games, lots of great food
At some point, I'm sure Mark mentioned
"I'm bored - what are we doing for the long weekend", and the May Day
Long weekend trips were born. So far, we have visited
Tofino (2000),
Salt Spring(2001), the
Sunshine coast (2002), and this
year we added Pender Island. We've been here before on a
camping trip, but this time we decided
to
rent a cabin. This
year, we managed to get nine people out, which matched the cabin well.
We took the 6:30 ferry from Vancouver, and with the weekend traffic it
was a bit of a challenge to get there on time. After the long ride
over, it was more than dark when we arrived and navigating to the house
was a bit of challenge, but we made it ok. We settled in, played
cards and figured out who was sleeping where.
The next
morning we went out to see the Saturday Market on the island. Salt
Spring is famous for it's Market, but Pender has been running a market
with local artisans for many years as well.
The last time we visited Pender, the market was held in the driftwood
center (the commercial center of the island), but the market has been
moved to the community center, about 5 minuets north of driftwood.
Now, most of the vendors are selling locally produced art, but there is
still lots of prepared food and some garden items.
Hope Bay is a government dock (you can
barely see the red hand rails), and three ships were docked, two selling
fish. We found an appropriate sized salmon, and the boat was also
selling scallops. Sean couldn't resist, so we purchased a bag of
scallops as well.
We got back to the house, fish in the back, and Mark made a great
lunch. David and I went for a walk below the house in Shingle
Bay. The bay is large and shallow and with the tide out it's all
mud. The northern edge of the bay borders on the new Pacific
Marine Heritage Legacy Park, and strolling along the beach we found lots
of interesting plants.
Back at the
house, I had a good afternoon nap, and woke up in time to see Sean
cooking dinner. Sean's dinner plans were vast - two quiches (mushroom),
salmon, and scallops. The salmon was particularly interesting -
Sean wanted to burry the fish in coarse salt, and then bake the fish in
the oven. The steam coming from the salmon would cause the salt to
form a solid crust and keep the additional heat in. When the
fish came out of the oven, we had a solid crust. The salt crust
had stuck the the skin in places, but tapping the crust with a fork made
it disintegrate.
I didn't actually eat the salmon or scallops, but everyone seemed happy
when dinner was done.
Lots of cards, lots of reading and a number of good games of ping pong
and we were done for the night.
Sunday
By Sunday morning, I was done resting and up for a little hiking. After
Jer's great crepe breakfast, David, Sean and I walked down the road to a
trail David and I spotted the night before.
The trail
turned out to be entrance to Pacific Marine Heritage Legacy Park, the
new national park in the Gulf Islands. We hiked up the steep trail
(with no map) and found a small marsh and large lake. I later found out
that lake is called Roe Lake.
The trails were of varying sizes - the trail up looks to be the remains
of a logging road, and while steep, was in good condition. Further
in, the trails narrowed to a frequently used walking trail. Signs
or a map would have been good (by the time we determined we had looped,
our stack was about 6 forks deep), but later looking at map, we really
couldn't have gotten that lost.
We came back for Lunch - Thao treated us to stuffed pears, greens and
angel hair pasta with a light oil dressing - very good. The rest
of our party was interested in hiking by this point so we took on
another challenge - Mount Norman.
Mount Norman Regional Park may become part of the new Gulf Islands
National Park Reserve - the same park system (but physically disjoint)
as the park that has Roe lake in it. Mount Norman is the highest
point on the Pender Islands, but the wide road (we could have driven to
the top if there wasn't a gate) made the hike easy.
The view is spectacular. This view
is a bit distorted (it's about 180 degrees), but it gives you a sense of
what you can see. The large bay in front is called Bedwell Harbour
- it actually separates North and South Penders. The land behind
it is part of North Pender Island. The largest island close by
(center of the frame) is Moresby Island - separated from here by the
Swanson Channel. The next island to the right is
Portland Island - we once camped
there. The higher land right of Portland is Vancouver Island.
Coming down from that, it was soon
dinner time. After dinner was cleaned up, I wanted to find some
place to get a good view of sunset. David and I spotted a place
the night before, but it turned out the sun set just out of view, so we
had to move on.
We got to Thieves bay just as the sun was dropping
below the horizon, so it was a bit rushed, but beautiful to
watch. What a great way to end a day.
Monday
All great things must come to and end, and so did our stay. We
cleaned up, packed up (Did all this gear really come with us?), and
tried to figure out what to do with the afternoon.
The first order of business was lunch. It was Stephen's turn and
he packed a picnic lunch. Figuring a good bit of Park for a lunch
only required thinking back to last night - Thieves bay has picnic
tables, beach access and a nice bit lawn for playing Frisbee.
Our ferry left at 7:30 so we got to watch the sun go down as we pulled
out of the islands. A good weekend had by all.
Tags: gulf island(20), market(6), beach(4), cooking(4), Do Not Tag(4), flower(3)
People: David(4), Sean(3), Jesse(3), Jin(3), John(1), Mark(1)
From: John Harvey Photo > Pender Island for the May Long Weekend
From: John Harvey Photo > Pender Island for the May Long Weekend
From: John Harvey Photo > John's Overnight Page > Pender Island for the May Long Weekend
Pender Island is beautiful, happen to catch any baseball games going on in the only field on the island?
Elliot Logan
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 12:48:38
Love your exquisite photography! Maybe you would submit one or two to PenderBlog (with credits of course). Glad you enjoyed your visit to the island. Come back and try kayaking - Jocko.
Jocko
Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 23:54:48
I live on Shingle Bay., rigt across from the park you enjoyed. I think your pictures are very good. Glad you enjoyed your visit, next time you should try out the disc Golf course. It's free! kayaking is great fun ,too.
Judy
Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 at 17:20:39
Last Modified Tuesday, June 9th, 2009 at 00:49:55 Edit
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