Cortes Island BC July 2019 Paddling, hiking and more

In the previous post I waxed eloquent about our airbnb and the general setting.  Another great feature of the property was that we could launch our kayaks right from place.  So once I took the kayaks off the car, I never put them on again until we left a week later.  Donna and I did 4 evening/sunset paddles and I did two solo paddles.  The evening sunset paddles were amazing...peaceful, beautiful, serene, etc.  I got some pretty nice sunset photos.  I also had dome amazing rainbow shots on my second morning solo paddle.  If/when we go back I'll get more ambitious and launch in a few more locations, particularly Cortes Bay which really looked wonderful, but we both really enjoyed the paddling right from our place.  We did have one evening sunset paddle / explore that turned int a bit of a scary adventure.  Donna had read a book about Gilean Douglas, a woman who lived on Cortes Island for much of her adult life, living on 100 plus acres in a home by the sea.  She was married four times, but none of the husbands stuck for very long.  Donna was a "bit obsessed", in a fun way about this lady after reading the book and we found out where her home was, that it was still standing, and that it was within paddling distance of our location.  So the evening before rain moved in for a day (so Tuesday evening) we paddled over to find the house, which we finally did...about three miles from our place, but we paddled almost 5 miles getting there since we didn't see it at first and paddled past it about a mile before turning around and noticing it on the way back.  As we paddled back, the front was coming through and the wind picked up, and eventually it started lightly raining,  The rain was no problem, but the wind was.  We were paddling in fairly big whitecaps and I had to turn the kayak into them to keep from capsizing, so we weren't pointed in exactly the direction we needed to go but the wind and waves pushed us that way although we were pointed at an angle to the waves.  It was  more exciting than we wanted and although we never came close to swamping, it was tense for most of the way back  - Donna had waves routinely coming over the front - it was that dicy.

We hiked three times too - for about three hours in K'Was park, and twice to Easter Bluff; both places located close to out airbnb, just a few minutes drive.  The views from Easter Bluff were really great and made for some "Don and Donna" photo ops.  We ran into a Dutch couple three different times in the first three days on the island, first on the ferry ride from Quadra, where we both watched a distant pod of orcas; then the next day at the craft store in squirrel cove, and finally on our hike in Kwas Park.  Really nice young couple.  We also visited the surprisingly nice little museum in Manson's landing, where we visited with the lady who worked there part time, and the young man, Quinn,  who worked there in the summer (he summers on the island with his parents).

A really magical first visit to Cortes Island.  We are both interested in returning next summer.  We shall see.

 Gilean Douglas home