Day 67: Hornby Island

We spent two nights on Denman Island and then set off for Hornby,
just a short ferry ride away.

 Hellloooooooo Hornby!!!
We love this homemade sign!

 We got a site in a little campground near the ferry terminal.  It was perfectly located on a rocky beach point, near a liquor store, and right next door to some new friends!!!

 But, before all that, we explored the island.  There are two things about Hornby that everyone tells you about.  First: the wide sandy beach with its warm (-ish) shallow waters, and second: the free store!!!  Actually, there are free stores all over Canada, but this is the first time we'd heard about it.  It's a recycling center/dump, but it's open to the public and organized so you can just drive in and look around.  And if you see anything you like, you can just take it!   

 There are only a few rules.

This is the "old, broken-down bikes" section.  Greg's in his element.

Woops, Greg found a bike to bring back to Texas.  Actually, it's a very cool Dutch bike.  Greg stripped all the broken stuff off so we're just bringing back the frame.  It now resides on the roof of LeTigre...

Hee hee, see what they did here??

These are the roots of a cool old tree that washed up on the shore of that wide, sandy beach.  It's huge and apparently been there a while, judging from the green moss half-way up.  That's how deep the water gets at high tide.

The rocky beach by our campsite.

The "Spit".  That's Denman Island in the background.  And then Vancouver Island after that.

We walked down to the spit for the sunset, and lucky we did, because we saw some killer whales!!!  We didn't get a picture of them, but there were about 10 of us down there watching them.  The orca were really close and swam slowly around the point. We really want to see some more...they are so majestic.   

After the sunset, we went back to our campsite and were invited to join our neighbors' campfire.  We ended up hanging with them all night!  Of course we don't have pictures of that night, but I wish we did.  Brad and Jacqueline were/are super cool and have two of the coolest kids we've met.  Brad and his daughter convinced us to go swimming (in the dark ocean, eeeeek!!) because they wanted us to experience the phosphorus in the water.  Omg, so cool.  The water was soooooo dark and creepy (oh, and cold) and we were in up to our chest.  As soon as we moved the water and the phosphorus lit up, we could see our feet and our legs and everything else....all lit up, covered in little points of light.  Very cool.  And the sky was clear so all the stars were out.  So we were surrounded by stars and light!

And that was Hornby Island.