Got a new toy and places to go. There was a lot of talk about new gear in the last couple of posts, and since then there was an actual purchase and a lot of shooting. I picked up the Sony 200-600 and was able to test it out on Osprey before the start of our one week trip around Vancouver Island. This is the first big trip I have done leaving my Canon gear at home and only going with Sony. On this trip I had the Sony A7RII and A7III with 16-35 f/4, 24-105 f/4, and 200-600 f/5.6-6.3. A pretty comprehensive set of focal lengths to hopefully capture anything that we came across.
One of the first days out with the new Sony 200-600 lens. A few Osprey have been hanging around the Niagara river grabbing catfish and coming back to these perches.
Our trip to the west coast had two main purposes, and the one standard side purpose which was to get out and shoot nature as much as I could. The two main reasons for the trip were a wedding in Vancouver and a tour of Vancouver Island to see if we could find some property to build on in a few years.
On our way from Ontario to Vancouver with a blanket of clouds below us.
Our first day was in Vancouver, we stayed at UBC which allowed me to see an old friend from university that has been a professor there for most of his career. This brought back a lot of memories of a time that sadly I have no photographic record of. It was a great wedding, one of Salwa’s friends from UVic had found a wonderful companion.
OK, there is a third reason to go out west….some of the best Sushi we have had in years.
The next morning we started the road trip, heading to Horseshoe Bay to take the ferry over to the Sunshine Coast. We headed to a tiny little “town” called Egmont for a hike at Skookumchuck….yes, skookumchuck or big water. This is a unique area in which the tides move in and out of a very long bay causing significant rapids that are often surfed by kayakers.
Kayaker surfing the waves at Skookumchuck
We stayed in a little lodge in Egmont that night near the mouth of the bay and just as we were about to go into the restaurant at the local marina we saw a couple of Orca hunting in the narrows. Although we only got to watch them at a long distance it was still amazing to watch these whales in action. Seeing killer whales this soon in the trip gave us some hope that we might get more time with them that week as we would be on a number of ferries and staying in good locations for more sightings….a little false hope it turned out, but this really just made us more eager to get back out there again soon.
Our one and only encounter on this trip with Killer Whales. Fascinating mammals to watch and a beautiful area to find them.
The next day took us on three ferries, up the east coast of Vancouver Island and onto Malcolm Island where another of Salwa’s university friends has a cottage.
The sun rises as we depart from Earl’s Cove on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia, just the first of three ferry rides on this day as we head to Malcolm Island.
This was the first area that we got to really see the nature on the tidal pools. On this little coastline we saw many Bald Eagles, shore birds, some river otters and a very fat looking seal resting on a rock. Although there is a small town on the island, this was a pretty sparsely populated area with plenty of space for nature.
Close up with a Bald Eagle that was perched on the evergreens right outside the cottage we stayed at.
Beautiful reflections as the tide starts to come back in on Malcolm Island looking out towards Vancouver Island.
The east side of the island has some spectacular hiking through the rainforest as well as along the coastline. There was a rather special location where Orca are known to come in close to shore, but we were not lucky enough this time to have that experience….another excuse to go back.
30 seconds with the milky way from the cottage on Malcolm Island.
Our tour next took us up to the north end of Vancouver Island, past Port Hardy and onto a logging road for another hour and a half to get out to the west coast at Cape Scott Provincial Park and probably our favorite hike of the trip out to San Josef Bay.
The sun peaks through the canopy of the rainforest along the hike into San Josef Bay on North-west coast of Vancouver Island
More Sun stars as we hit the beach at San Josef Bay
This northern part of the coast is definitely one of the most fabulous locations in Canada, the hike into San Josef Bay was through one of the best hikes I have taken. I have heard that the hike along the coast back up to Port Hardy can be one of the most challenging on the island. The bay was a photographers dream, with amazing hoodoo-like rock features on a long sandy beach.
Fabulous features along the coast both for photography and just for looking to see what was left behind by the tides.
We came in near high tide so were not able to travel far up the coastline, this is another place to come back to and camp in this area to be able to get shots at sunrise and sunset and maybe even some astro photography with those amazing features in the foreground. Next time!
Can’t wait to get back to this beach in Cape Scott Provincial Park…definitely want to see this area at dusk and dawn.
After taking our rental back down the logging road we toured our way back down the island, past Victoria and stayed the next night in Sook. A fantastic little B&B with coastal views, a little hobby farm and a black bear that ran through the yard to get the blackberries that were everywhere. That bear had some competition for those berries that day, I haven’t eaten that many blackberries in one sitting, ever.
The weather started closing in on us after a long walk along China beach.
Our last days on Vancouver Island gave us a couple of beach walks north of Sook, a quick tour of Victoria, and a couple of vertical hikes where I got to see a pretty little Barred owl before we headed to our final ferry ride to Vancouver.
This was a bit of a whirlwind trip, plenty of driving and sampling the areas. We managed to enjoy the wedding, get to see some areas that we might want to buy property in a few years and hike and photograph just about everywhere. The gear was certainly not limiting, and really seems to be the perfect combination for what we do on our trips. I was able to carry it all in one single backpack. From landscape to birds in flight, this was a great travel setup that you can take on most flights and still have an amazing focal range from 16mm to 800 with that 1.4 teleconverter in a side pocket. As for location, Vancouver Island is a place that I could stay for years and not capture everything I would like to. The Sunshine Coast is another gem and we barely got a chance to be on the water this time. We will be back, hopefully soon. That dream of a piece of property to start hosting photo tours is still deep in our dreams….it will come true.