Back "home" in Von Donop

We've been in Von Donop inlet for a week, enjoying glorious 80 degree weather with several hikes and swimming every day--not to mention two beach potlucks with live music from musician friends. It took the first three days to dry everything out and to give Millie a varnish job. To get here we traveled from Port McNeill down Johnstone Strait to an anchorage called Forward Harbour, then through the Whirlpool, Green Point, Dent and Yuculta rapids to Shoal Bay, where the weather suddenly turned to summer. This entry will wrap up the blog. We'll return home through familiar territory over the next two weeks, hoping for continued good weather, or at least nothing too severe! By the way, I'm sorry for the typos, lack of paragraph breaks and other annoying features of doing most of this writing with the iPad--a great little device for many tasks, but not so much for this! We feel very fortunate to have had this opportunity, despite the uncooperative weather. The intellectual and physical challenges and a smidgen of peril made this a true adventure, not just a vacation. I particularly enjoyed the way our experiences each day made it easy (often necessary!) to focus on NOW and not much on yesterday or tomorrow. We look forward to seeing you all in August or September.

Port McNeill, B.C.

We've made our way down the "Central Coast" of British Columbia and got to visit two new anchorages on the way: Codville Lagoon and Fury Cove. Codville has a hike to a large lake which, in the sunLight, is pink--due to The reddish sand in the area. Unfortunately, we only saw it on a very rainy day, too rainy and cold to take a swim, but we could IMAGINE how pretty it would be. We staged our second crossing of Cape Caution from Fury. We were there three days waiting for the proper winds and wave heights. One of the days it actually stopped raining long enough for us to row into the beautiful white shell beach and take a walk. We were joined by two rambunctious young dogs who delighted in stealing our possessions (an empty plastic sack and then an empty paper sack) and racing away down the beach. Their owner was with a large extended Canadian family, picnicking there for Candada Day. She told us that last year the brown lab ran off with some beach camper's socks! We plan to stay here at Port McNeill for a couple days and ferry over to the communities of Sointula and Alert Bay. The latter has a native cultural center/museum that I've been wanting to visit for years. Many of the anchorages we've visited in BC were once native settlements and we've delighted in discovering the clever fish traps and clam farms still in evidence. I am at the laundromat (of course) and later today Kurt and I will have our first shower in two weeks (!) and then explore the town and do some reprovisioning. Later this week we'll begin making our way to Desolation Sound in the hope of a few days of good varnishing and swimming weather. We'll return home near the 1st of August, a little earlier than planned, since it will be our only chance to see our daughter, Sarah. She's just moved to Lakewood Colorado (very near Denver) to manage a Sur La Table store and she'll be in Seattle that week for a company conference. I suspect our next trip will be by air --to Colorado! Kurt and I both have lots of pictures to share when we return home, sorry we can't post them here. Happy fourth of July to you all.