What a difference a week makes!

Last Sunday at Lighthouse RV Park.

This Sunday at Qualicum Beach Memorial Golf Club!
Our neighbour JIm said it got up to 15C today in Fanny Bay! We only saw 10C in Jerry, but it sure felt mild outside, and we really had ‘spring fever’ exploring today!
This morning as per usual we watched CBS Sunday Morning and then headed out to enjoy our day. We wanted to visit some property we had seen in Little Qualicum River Village, so off we went in Jerry! We had thought we were going to have a rain out, but instead the sun was shining and it sure was a gorgeous day to spend outside exploring.
We drove about 20 minutes and then did a drive by on the property we had seen, which looked really promising. On the way to the property, we saw “Little Qualicum River Regional Park”, just 1km away from Little Qualicum River Village, so we decided to go back for there for a hike.

Little Qualicum River Regional Park is a 111-hectare park which runs along both sides of the Little Qualicum River, immediately downstream from Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park. We had visited Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park before when I had my old Canon camera, but now that I have the new Fuji XT-4, we wanted to have a hike, as well as try out the new camera in this Park.

The parking lot for Little Qualicum River Regional Park was not very big and despite the size of the Provincial park which connects to the Regional Park, there were not very many people in the parks today - very nice on a ‘spring-like’ Sunday!

Hiking down the trail to the River.

There was still some snow on the ground as we headed down the trail to the park.

The Little Qualicum River which leads into the waterfalls.

Shooting up the Little Qualicum River.

Fast moving River. I wanted to get closer to the Little Qualicum River, so we could have a bit more of a rugged hike.

The trail we went on was a bit less ‘established’ shall we say, than just walking around the water falls.

A bit of a challenging hike trying to climb over these slippery rocks! We walked until we saw a fence and the trail ended, which in hindsight was at the top of the Little Qualicum River Regional Park.

Enjoying our hike around the Falls.

Lots of beautiful rushing water into the River.

It is very steep going down to the Falls from the cliffs in the Provincial Park.

Stunning waterfalls everywhere we looked in the park.

Logs build up over the Falls.

Enjoying the views of the water falls.

Stunning views! We found more trails that we had not been on last time we visited this park in December, and we walked the entire distance around the water falls today.

Waterfalls everywhere!

More logs have jammed up at the end of the River.

Richard watching over me at the very rocky Viewpoint. He’s hoping I don’t slip and go crashing through the chain link fence to the cliffs below!
We hiked 17 storeys today on our hike! There definitely was a lot of steep elevation changes walking around the Falls. By now of course we were hungry! We had brought some seedless red grapes to munch on in Jerry, so we gobbled some of them up and then went to a depanneur/variety store we had seen on our drive up to the Falls, to see if they had any food we could buy for lunch.

We split a roast beef and cheese sandwich which was very good and freshly made in the store. The store sold everything for the locals including a lot of beer, wine, cider, fresh produce and frozen meats. If you didn’t want to drive the 20 minutes to town, you definitely could buy everything you wanted in this store in a pinch.

The Meadowood store had a warning sign not to feed the Sasquatch! Crazy!
We decided to drive down to Qualicum Beach to see if the golf course was open again and as you can tell from the picture at the beginning of the blog, the course was open! I immediately booked a tee time for Tuesday morning since the golf course is open! Yesterday when we had driven by the golf course, only the range was open. I guess everyone got a one week break from golf with the snow we had last week.
We started driving home to Fanny Bay and at the north end of Qualicum Beach, on the Coastal Hwy, I said to Richard “Pull over please!” I could see this very large bird sitting on a huge rock, with the Coastal Mountains on the mainland in the distance. What a great photo opportunity! I had to scramble down the side of the road onto the beach to take the shot. Of all the shots I’ve been able to get while we have been travelling out on Vancouver Island, I think this is my favourite so far!

Great Blue Heron! I tried to shoot the heron from all different angles and I almost felt like he was posing for me as he kept moving his head left and right and ruffling his feathers. The tide was going out, so as the tide went out, I was stealthily able to inch a bit closer and closer to the heron. I was even going in the water with my boots to try and get a bit closer, and then I guess I got a bit to close for comfort and the heron flew away.

My shutter speed was not fast enough to clearly catch the heron in flight. I was surprised when he flew off of I would have adjusted my shutter speed to capture him in flight.

And there goes the heron. Now if I only had my telephoto adapter which I ordered months ago! I’ve arranged to have the adaptor shipped from Vistek in Toronto back to Fort Erie, since I was worried it wouldn’t arrive here on time. Today would have been a wonderful day to tryout the telephoto 2X zoom enhancement on this beautiful heron!
As we started driving home to Fanny Bay, the rain started to fall around 3pm. What a great day and I’m glad we got out early enough to enjoy it, so we didn’t get rained on!
Unfortunately now that its pouring out like a monsoon, we won’t be able to BBQ the Lingcod, that we picked up at the Qualicum Beach Farmers Market yesterday. Oh well, it is clean out the fridge night tonight instead, and we’ll look forward to the BBQ fish tomorrow, when the weather is better.
Now that the weather is getting better we’ll have to call on St. Stephen to come up for a visit to get Newman’s door fixed with the new hinges. It is hard to believe that we will be leaving here in just over 5 weeks! Matt, the RV park owner called us yesterday to make sure we weren’t extending our stay past April 1st, because he has people who are calling about reserving for the Easter weekend, so we need to be gone, so he can take the new bookings. We’ll need to book our ferry passage too, so that is something I will have to get organized in the next day or two. Let’s hope the weather for our drive back home in April is a lot better than the crazy conditions we experienced coming across the country in November. The one thing we do know is; the days will be longer, so we will have more daylight and driving hours available to us, but it will make for a very long day sitting and concentrating for Richard.
What a breath of fresh air it was today to enjoy a ‘spring’ like day. We hope we are finished with winter now and the days will all feel as warm or warmer than the weather we enjoyed today!
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