We began September with a trip up Cobble Hill Mountain. We kept walking each day. Our neighbour's miserable 3-legged, rescue pitbull-cross bit me! I was pruning our bush because some branches have grown over the fence, so I had my hip against the fence as I walked along our side of the property line, extending the clippers out in front of me. The dog jumped up and bit my elbow over top of the chain link fence. He punctured the skin with 3 teeth (2 fairly deep) and left many more scratches from his other teeth. The entire area was bruised and swollen. The deepest puncture wound began to swell like a goose egg, but immediately came back down when I applied ice. Fortunately, my tetanus booster is still valid and the dog has had his rabies shot. I am pleasantly surprised that the wounds have mostly healed, as Lisa did an impressive job of treating them. Over the Labour Day long weekend, we explored "up island". I created a separate blog post of our local mini-vacation. The vast majority of our time continues to be spent at home, though. Terrible wild fires in the west coast states of America turned our skies into a smoky haze for two weeks. Eventually smoke blew all the way across the continent. For several days it rendered the air quality in Vancouver the worst in the world! Unfortunately, the smoke was so thick that it made it unsafe to spend too much time outdoors and it lowered temperatures dramatically by practically blocking out the sun. What would have been our last two weeks of summer enjoyment, were spent primarily indoors. We made one last summer trip to the beach at Cees & Miep Hof Park. We had the CVRD bring in Onsight Tree Services to cut down a dead tree and the dead portions of another in the ravine behind our home. I "wasted" much of a glorious first day of Autumn doing outdoor yard work and overseeing contracted maintenance of the strata's catch basins and the ravine. It poured rain for most of the following day, but we still managed to squeeze in an estuary walk before grocery shopping. Before month's end, we made a second trip up Cobble Hill Mountain. September was a great month for professional sports entertainment! The NHL Playoffs concluded with the Lightning winning the Stanley Cup. The NBA Finals begin tonight between the Lakers and the Heat. Major League Baseball wrapped up its regular season and the postseason began yesterday with the Blue Jays involved for the first time since 2016. Unfortunately, the Jays were quickly dispatched by the Rays. The NFL kicked off a new season and I'm watching more games than ever while once again enjoying fantasy football. Meanwhile, the UFC continued to produce compelling fights. We tried out several TV series we hadn't seen previously. We enjoyed "Little Fires Everywhere" and season one of "Big Little Lies", but fell in love with "Ted Lasso". Once again there were some movies to watch, but nothing compelling. We will always find the time to do some pleasure reading. Unfortunately, life seems to always involve headaches of some sort: unexpectedly massive insurance costs, expensive renovations to rental properties, stressful strata council dealings, etc. No one likes to read about these though, and I try not to dwell on them, so... We were thrilled to enjoy surprisingly great weather at the end of September, even hiking Stoney Hill on the 30th. ...so concludes another month on Vancouver Island.
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Lisa and I decided to continue our exploration of this beautiful island we call home by planning a 3-day trip "up island". Ironically, the AirBnB residence we found had availability for the Labour Day long weekend, but not earlier, so we ended up "traveling" along with many others. Our intended first stop was the Trent River Falls, but we missed where to park on the side of the highway to begin the short hike to the falls. We decided not to backtrack, instead stopping at the visitors' centre to use the facilities, have a bite to eat, and check out the plane. Most of our weekend was spent enjoying the Comox Valley area. The first beach we visited Saturday morning was Miracle Beach. Just a little further up the coast is Saratoga Beach. Armed with directions from the internet, we went in search of the Oyster River Potholes. When we arrived at the river, we found an official, permanent sign saying that the potholes were 3.2 kilometres further up the river and giving very complicated directions that involved approaching from a completely different area on unpaved roads. We decided to check out the river where we were, and still found some smaller "potholes" and some excellent swimming spots. Accessing Lower Myra Falls required driving out of the way through the lower portion of Strathcona Provincial Park along the south shore of Buttle Lake and then a short, easy hike. The falls have become very popular this summer and many people were picnicking and hanging out. Buttle Lake offers many hiking and camping options. Next, we checked out Elk Falls and suspension bridge. It was time to drive until we ran out of highway (literally) in Port Hardy at the top of the island. We checked into a private little room in the backpackers' hostel, then walked along the short Hardy Bay Seawall. We watched the sun set from Carrot Park, and then rise again from our room's ocean facing window. 63 of the 66 kilometres of the drive to Cape Scott Provincial Park are unpaved logging roads, making the drive far more difficult than the 40 minute hike to San Josef Bay passed very cool, big trees. We had read to expect fog, mist, and rain at San Josef Bay at any time of day, any time of year, so we weren't entirely surprised when that's what we experienced despite it being a warm and sunny day everywhere else. We timed our trip to coincide with low tide so we could easily explore the famous sea stacks and the expansive sandy beach. There were approximately 35 tents set up along the top of the beach. After visiting San Josef Bay, we made the fateful decision that we might as well make the "easy one hour hike" to Eric Lake while in Cape Scott Park. The old settlers' road forms most of the trail and is obviously in disrepair. We carefully picked our way around and over increasingly muddy patches and puddles, each time hoping that we'd passed the worst of it. Eventually we encountered a returning couple who informed us that the trail ahead of us would not improve and that the lake was socked in with fog anyway, so we turned around. Retracing the route back down proved even more difficult. At one point I decided to make a small jump across a mud puddle onto the boardwalk... Unfortunately, my lead leg did not gain purchase, instead sliding across the boardwalk. My trailing left leg bashed heavily into the side of the walkway, causing me to fall on my butt in the mud. This meant that in addition to my injured elbow from being bitten by the neighbour's dog two days previous, my left side now also had a giant split welt and bruise on my shin. As with the dog bite, my personal doctor, Lisa, did a fantastic job of cleaning me up, disinfecting and bandaging the wound before the long drive back down to the Comox Valley and Seal Bay Nature Park. We spent Sunday night in a basement suite in Courtenay. Our first stop on Monday morning was Goose Spit Park. Next up was Filberg Park and Garden. We strolled the Courtenay Marina park and Riverwalk. We stopped to photograph the artwork of the K'omoks First Nation. Almost nothing was open on Labour Day Monday, but the empty streets of downtown Courtenay suited us just fine as we explored 5th Street. We even learned a little about nature through Courtenay's Covid-19 physical distancing awareness signs. The main destination for the day was the Mount Washington alpine area of Paradise Meadows in Strathcona Provincial Park. We hiked the loop trail to Helen McKenzie and Battleship Lakes. Afterwards,we visited Nymph Falls and could definitely see spending some afternoons there if it was closer to home. We drove through Cumberland and then hiked to the Cumberland Potholes (aka Perseverance Potholes and China Bowls). The last "official" stop of our weekend was Cumberland Lake Park. We stopped for a Tim Horton's dark roast in Oyster Bay on the way home. The entire trip involved approximately 1350 kilometres of driving and over 43 kilometres of walking/hiking - not bad for a #staycation!
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