Kayaking at Crescent Beach

This is old news, but since it was our favourite kayaking trip of the year, I want to share it.  I think we did 6 or 7 kayaking outings this past summer.  We picked a new spot every time, except for one time it was just Larry and I on Tuc-el-nuit Lake in Oliver, which we've kayaked around before.

Anyway, lets talk about this trip.  It was the labour Day weekend.  The Monday.  Too busy with the market on Saturday and Sunday at that time of the year.  We knew we needed to get off to an early start, as being a holiday the parking lot would fill up quickly, and we needed to be able to park along the ocean front so we didn't have to carry the kayaks too far.  Meredith has a very cool little cart that comes apart and fits in her kayak, for her bigger, heavier boat.  Larry and I can carry our shorter ones together, one holding a bow handle in each hand, and the other holding the two stern handles.

We set off and there was still some sea mist hanging over the water.  That's the pier at Crescent Beach.  The tide was in.  That motor boat is following the marked channel out to the open strait.

Past the pier and paddling past the old summer cottages, many of which have been renovated into million dollar plus homes.  The water is shallow here, you can see rocks on the bottom if you look closely.

Once were were past the village, we were able to get quite close into shore.  We certainly didn't know that there was a clothing optional beach along that stretch.  Just something inherently funny about a fellow walking along wearing nothing but a backpack!

The sea mist couldn't make up it's mind as to wether is should burn off or not.  Herons on rocks were plentiful, but the zoom on my phone couldn't do them justice.

We kept saying 'just to that next point' and then of course there was another point, and another.  We did get far enough around that we could see White Rock in the misty distance.

That hazy, low lying piece of land in the left background is Cherry Point in the USA, near the border town of Blaine

And then the mist was gone, and it was beautiful.

Look at that clear water, it was fascinating to paddle quietly over it, looking for fish and sea creatures.

We could even pretend we were in Hawaii, just so beautiful!

Me.  I loved this so much.

Larry and Meredith

After we turned around we picked a spot to stop for lunch.  Of course we waved at the train engineer, as you are supposed to, and as kids have done for years from these beaches.

Fascinating rocks abounded.  Notice the big pumice type rock my collection is sitting on.  Maybe it's a relic from the eruption of Mt. Baker in Washington State?

On the way back, as the tide was rapidly retreating, we ran into sandbars, many sandbars.  I didn't take any pictures then, as we were too busy trying to push ourselves over the sand bars, often just a couple of inches below the surface.  The challenge was to not have to actually get out of our kayaks and pull them, but none of us were successful at that.  We did a lot of hysterical laughing as we pushed with our hands to try get past the sand and we kept heading out into the bay to find some deeper water.  It was mind boggling how far we had to go out.  We were almost at the dredged channel for the bigger boats.

Finally water deep enough to paddle in.

It was just the perfect day, honestly, I can't stop smiling when I think about it.  We vowed to go again, but hopefully pick a day when the tide didn't keep trying to strand us on a sand bar.


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