About two and a half years ago when Gregg and I had been out on all of about 3 dates, he E-mailed me from friend Bob’s house in Vancouver, British Columbia. Gregg said Bob had a nice boat and had invited both of us up for a boat trip. Sounded good to me! I love boats... Bob sent pictures of the boat, the Nola Dene II, home with Gregg -- all of you who have been in my bathroom at home have seen her. Visualizing works! Every day for 2 1/2 years I’ve glanced at the boat and pictures of the waters north of Vancouver. Last week we snapped our own pictures and created real memories...

The whole trip, beginning to end, was fabulous. We flew to Seattle and spent a night there after traipsing around Pike Place Market and the wharf area for a bit and having a wonderful Korean dinner. The next morning was really exciting - the floatplane ride about 200 miles up to Desolation Sound, BC. Gregg, pilot and flight instructor himself, dreams of learning to maneuver a floatplane on the water (and found out it doesn’t take long or cost much for him to do this...). He sat up front with the pilot and we were both glued to windows for the 1.5 hour flight over gorgeous Canadian scenery. We got to make three stops for customs and other passengers de-planing before our stop at Refuge Cove in Desolation Sound. Each landing and take-off was thrilling.

Refuge Cove is a little outpost with a public dock and little grocery, gift shop, coffee bar, laundromat, and paperback book exchange. Hanging flowers and picturesque boardwalks make it just picture perfect. Bob and Bette and the Nola Dene II were right there waiting for us. What a thrill to meet them! They are most gracious hosts and had all kinds of plans to make this a memorable trip. Bob has been boating this area for 40 years and knows all the ins and outs. He and Gregg have known each other many years, having met when they both worked for Sperry around 1980. They ski together every year in February in Canada.

We took off for a little bay where Bob took us in the dinghy to a little island and taught us to pick oysters. There are literally hundreds lying in oyster beds along many of the shores. Bob knows the tides and when to be where to find shellfish and taught us a lot. We took our bucket of oysters and headed out to the bay where we would spend our first night. On the way there we stopped at a deep water spot to put down 4 prawn traps that we would bring up the next morning. Prawns live at the bottom in water about 300 feet deep! We learned to bait and set the traps then headed on to what we now call Naked Lady Bay. We entered this beautiful little bay, passed close to another boat already anchored, and were greeted by a stark naked sunbathing girl lying on the bow of her boat...Gregg was thrilled! He’d been monitoring our whole trip so far with his newest gadget, a hand-held GPS (global positioning satellites). So he set his own Waypoint with the latitude and longitude so he could find this bathing beauty again!

This first night out we enjoyed barbecued oysters for appetizers and a wonderful dinner of pork chops. Bob and Bette fix fabulous meals - we were being treated like royalty. The Nola Dene II is a 38’ trawler with a big cabin and bathroom with shower on the aft and a berth in the bow with a 2nd bathroom. In the center is a big area with dining table and kitchen. The skipper can drive from inside or up on top. We had to learn a lot of ship lingo right off the bat. It’s not map; it’s chart. Not rope, but line. Not bathroom, but head. Not "blunt end", but stern and not "pointy end", but bow!!

The first morning we were out we picked up our prawn traps and found about 60 prawns - success!! Bette taught us to prepare them and dinner that night was prawns Alfredo - Yum! We headed to a beautiful cove to anchor for lunch, then out to deep water to set prawn traps again before heading for a new cove for the night. We anchored at Melanie Cove in Prideaux Haven in Desolation Sound Marine Park. This is a spot where our floatplane had dropped off passengers the day before - no dock, so passengers are met by friends in their dinghies. It was quite a sight. In this cove there were 2 seaplanes anchored. A seaplane, unlike a floatplane, sits right on its belly in the water, not on top of the big floats. Quite a sight - Gregg and I dinghy-ed around the seaplanes to get a good look. Looked expensive to me!

The next morning we went out to pick up our prawn traps - only about 20 - so we took the traps to another spot to put down again for another night. We went out far enough to get some cell phone reception and I got to talk to Andy - got to sit right there in the sun on top of the boat and tell him I was looking right at snowcapped mountains and seeing seals in the water (we saw lots of them throughout the week) and bald eagles in the air - saw lots of them too. Bob says we Americans could do them a favor and take some of them - they have too many.

We returned for a second night in Melanie Cove, just a beautiful spot. Each of these little bays has a few to about a dozen boats anchored each night. I got a kick out of seeing what people name their boats. My favorite was the orange trimaran named Salsa. Other cute names we noted were Tinker Toy, Minnow, Title Wave, Nan Sea. People are so friendly - you can strike up a conversation with others in all kinds of places. Some just dinghy right up and tie on to your boat for a chat.

Gregg and I loved taking the dinghy out to tide pools and floating around over the abundant sea life. Crabs and fish, oysters, mussels, and unbelievable starfish. Most were purple but we also saw orange and gold. Some must have been at least a foot across. At one place we saw a group of 20 purple and one orange, all huge and all within just a few inches of each other - what a sight! At Melanie Cove we got too close to an oyster bed and punctured the dinghy, three of my fingers and my wrist. I could hear the boat losing air, found the hole and covered it and we beat it back to get Bob’s help with some patching. Gregg had slipped on seaweed that morning tying a line from boat to shore and scraped up his ankle so we took a picture of all our ow-ies so we’ll remember what a tough life it is boating! Bette provided anti-bacterial substances so we are still alive and well today, a week later...

The next day we took a long trip north and westward toward Oyster Islands Provincial Marine Park. Bob applied his expertise with the tide tables to get us through a narrow channel called Hole in the Wall at the appropriate time, called slack. To do that we anchored in a pretty little cove nearby to wait for our perfect take-off time. In this cove we had wonderful Bald Eagle viewing. Two were very near and watching us from tree and rock tops. The one at the top of the tree sat for the longest time with its wings outstretched, apparently drying them. Bob said he has seen an eagle swimming - they are too heavy to take off from water so if they land in the water while catching prey, they swim to shore to take flight again. They use their wings like oars!

On our way to this cove we had stopped for more oysters ( had to - the prawn traps yielded only 3...bummer). We spent a long time picking them - these were clumped together and stuck on to rocks and it was difficult to find ones shaped right for barbecuing. After we were back in the dinghy Bob told us that all the open oyster shells above the water line meant Grizzly bears had been there eating - he didn’t want to scare us while we were on the beach! Next we stopped at a fish farm that raises salmon for a look around and to talk to the guy working there. Lucky for us it was a hot day - salmon like cold and some die of the heat - so we were given a beauty for our dinner. Gourmet dinner shaping up here... We later determined it was a Coho Salmon when we learned they have white gums and Chinook have black gums. I like to have my facts right!

We successfully negotiated the Hole in the Wall and arrived at the Oyster Islands, had a wonderful happy hour and dinner of broiled salmon. Gregg and I were just getting ready to go out for a dinghy ride when a magnificent stag stepped out to the edge of the water on one of the tiny islands very close to us. We were most surprised to see him walk right into the water and swim over to another island. We were able to motor the dinghy over to it as it climbed out and it didn’t seem the least bit phased by us - must see people there all the time and feel perfectly safe.

The next morning we spent quite a while poking around the tide pools. We found out what clam geysers are - clams buried in the sand spit water up - sometimes a foot or more high! What a sight - it’s going on all around you on the beach and if you are real still and quiet you can hear and see all kinds of activity. Gregg dug for one and came up with a big one that Bob told us was a Butter Clam and would be poisonous. Apparently you have to really know your shellfish to be safe - like mushrooms. We saw an otter scurrying around the shore of one of the little Oyster Islands - lots of activity in this bay...

After a delicious lunch of salmon salad sandwiches we headed out to stop at Heriot Bay on Quadra Island where there is a hundred year old Inn and very nice grocery store. The Inn has a campground adjacent to it, right on the nice beach. Kayakers seem to base here - we saw several of them in nearby waters. We took our new groceries across a wide channel to Gorge Harbour on Cortes Island for another beautiful peaceful evening. Our fresh sweet corn was great with Bob’s barbecued chicken.

We had perfect weather all week long. Bette said the weather was dreadful the day before we arrived - seems people from Vancouver and Seattle are always saying their weather is terrible. I no longer believe it - I think they just want to keep everybody from wanting to move there. One thing Gregg and I both really enjoyed up there - hardly any mosquitoes! We never used insect repellent and didn’t pick up more than just a few bites. In Minnesota we would have been eaten alive - that must be a difference between being in fresh water and in salt water.

The next morning we stopped at Manson’s Landing to tromp along a great lagoon and tide pool. I had never before seen piles of sand dollars in a tide pool! Dozens of them!. Bob brought the shovel (he calls it a clam gun!) to the beach and only dug a tiny bit before we were picking up clams by the dozens. Later after we ate them, steamed, I counted the shells as I threw them over the side - to a seagull’s delight. 141 clams! And we had gathered them in about 10 minutes. What a way to live... By now we were beginning to regret that we’d have to go home again in just one more day. It was a good thing we had another float plane ride to look forward to or we might have stayed...

We spent the last night in Cortes Bay moored to a public dock. There are two yacht club private docks in the bay also - Royal Vancouver and Seattle Yacht Clubs - wow, do some gorgeous boats dock there! One yacht pulling into the Seattle Club had two dinghies on top and pulled a third that Bob said probably cost $30,000 itself. But we all thoroughly enjoyed the public dock - lots of nice people to talk to. There was a restored fishing boat across from us - all fitted out to live in - a beautiful vessel. The wharf manager was a character, 79 years old, retired for 29 years, said he’s never anchored a boat himself. Bob enjoys asking a guy like that to guess his age. Bob’s 84 but you would never be able to guess that. I enjoyed him all week, thinking about my Dad and how he would have been much like that had it not been for emphysema. This trip reminded me so much of the trip I was privileged to take in 1970 with my Dad the skipper of a sailboat in the US and British Virgin Islands. Dad would have liked the happy hours on this trip! Vine time...

On Cortes Island we took a hike on shore, about 3 miles round trip, to see Wolf Bluff Castle. 79 year old Karl Triller, a Hungarian, has been building a castle of cement blocks that he makes right there. He has a cute little dog that he can let down in a harness from the bedroom at the top of a turret - we saw that in a video he showed from a travel show about castles that was done for Canadian PBS. Karl has a dungeon too with all kinds of dummy’s chained to the walls - unusual and very friendly guy he is!!

The walk on this island was so enjoyable, shady and beautiful. All along the road there were berries and cherries galore. Raspberries, blackberries, salmonberries. Many were ripe and we helped ourselves - delicious! As Bette and I walked along we saw a female pheasant, a ground squirrel, beautiful butterfly on a clover flower and a bee and white spider together on the yellow center of a daisy. A photographer’s delight - I shot about 7 rolls of film all together by the time I got home...

Bob and Bette had a special dinner planned for our last night. After our steamed clam appetizer, we had sparkling wine, wonderful steaks, potatoes, broccoli and asparagus, with fruit salad, whipped cream and Triple Sec for dessert. We count ourselves so fortunate to have friends like this who treat us so well. Gregg and I were careful to behave really well so we might get invited back again!

It was a little hard to leave the next day. We’d motored back to Refuge Cove where we’d boarded the boat 6 days earlier - the time had both flown and drifted. It was a funny feeling - like we’d been there for weeks because it had been so serene and peaceful. Very unlike the party atmosphere of the boating we’ve done at Lake Powell. Each evening we’d been at close quarters with a dozen or so other boats and heard maybe a little laughter, a little music, but at the same time so much silence and peacefulness.

We spent a couple of hours hanging around the grocery, gift shop, coffee shop and laundromat, easing back into urban life. Lucky for us, the floatplane that came for us was a little 3 passenger Cessna 180, a new and different experience to get excited about - we had arrived on a 10 passenger deHavilland Otter. Bob would drop Bette off the next day where she could catch a bus home to Vancouver and he would be alone for a few days before a friend joins him for more days in those beautiful waters. He says they’ve seen it all up there over 40 years so they’ll spend a lot of time anchored, with long happy hours in peaceful bays. Gregg and I are hoping the good weather we took up to them sticks around for the rest of his trip.

Tips and Recommendations:

Natural beauty.
Peace and quiet.
Friendly people.
Incredible fresh seafood.
Vacation to remember....

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