Beautiful British Columbia

15.10.2013 16 °C

Most visitors to British Columbia start in Vancouver and travel by ferry to Vancouver Island from the picturesque port of Horseshoe Bay - a cove surrounded by steep sided mountains just north of Vancouver...

The coastline of British Columbia offers some of the most picturesque scenes in the world. This is the view of the Coastal Mountain Range across the Strait of Georgia, (also known as the Salish Sea), from our home on Gabriola Island...

The seascapes from our windows change constantly as vessels of all kinds enter and leave the ports and harbours around Vancouver and the many islands in the Salish Sea. Giant cruise liners pass us on their way to Alaska and Seattle in the summer while ferries constantly ply back and forth across the Strait year round. Freighters, trawlers, crabbers and commercial ships of all kind sail these waters along with vast numbers of pleasure boats like this...

Looking north from our home we see the lighthouse on Entrance Island. It is always a colourful sight with its red-roofed buildings but sometimes nature takes a hand at brightening it up...

We are surrounded by nature's colours from the blue Pacific and the distant snow capped mountains to the evergreens of the surrounding forest. The colour of sunrises and sunsets over the ocean are often so intense that we cannot trust our eyes, while sometimes they just delicately brush the sky...

There is nothing delicate about the colour of the starfish on our island's beaches...

Seen in the shallows the starfish create nature's true watercolours...

Wildlife abound on our island and in the surrounding sea and we have often written of the whales, sea lions, dolphins, raccoons, eagles and deer. The humming birds are always a delight as are the majestic blue herons...

Life on a small island revolves around the ocean, and everywhere we look we see the ocean's hand. The rocky shores are daily washed by the tides and pile pebbles on the beaches, but when wintry storms smash the waves into the sandstone cliffs the resultant sculptures are truly amazing...