Rain, Rain and More Rain!!! Long Beach & Cox Bay

Long Beach, Pacific Rim National Park

Long Beach

Bed of Kelp

Root Burl

Structures made on beach

Now I wish we would have some ponchos like this, rained everyday except the first day.

Wood path to Cox Beach, everything is so green

Trillium

Path through the rainforest

Cox Bay

Cox Bay, tide is down, usually comes up over the rocks

Sand Art

Rain Forest

Sitting and sifting through a bed of seashells

Kim in a bed of seashells

Seashells

Shawn picking seashells

Cox Bay

One of Kim's friends, Banana Slug

I'm holding the Banana Slug.

I'm holding the slug

Sharon & Shawn walking through rainforest at Cox Bay

Cox Bay

Jelly fish somebody put in a puddle on the path or fell of a surf board that had died,
it was about 7-8" across, biggest one we saw

Frank's Island on Chesterman Beach

Pink Kelp

Fog on Chesterman Beach

Thursday morning, we woke up to pouring rain, really pouring! The forecast was for RAIN, not scattered or isolated showers, but rain and we got it! :( We wanted to go for a drive to Long Beach in the Pacific Rim National Park and walk around on the unspoiled beach. It was very different from Chesterman Beach, ours has kelp, shells, driftwood, kelp, kelp and more kelp, and beautiful smooth sand that goes on forever. Long Beach has tons of large or even huge pieces of driftwood, whole trees type of driftwood. The beach is a lot rougher, with all kinds of kelp and plants growing on it. Along the top of the beach, there are all kinds of square structures that are built from the driftwood,  with long pieces across the top or lean to's on the side of them. I'm not sure if these are built for animals to nest in or if people are building forts/shelters for themselves. Even with these structures, it really is untouched and left to nature. We still managed to pick a few shells and some driftwood, even though we're not sure if we're allowed to because it's a National Park. We were walking in the pouring rain with rain coats, ponchos, and umbrellas, so there weren't too many pictures taken and nothing to take pictures of since scenery was non-existent! We weren't even able to do a really good scouring of seashells, I think we have got that covered though, we have tons of shells!! After we were soaked to the bone, we drove to Cox Bay which is the beach next to our beach with Rosie Bay in between us, the rain had slowed down a lot by now. There are a lot of resorts at Cox Bay, so they had beautiful wood paths to walk on through the rainforest to get to the beach. Cox Bay beach was beautiful, really clean, not as much kelp laying around, some driftwood. The tide was low while we were there, so it looked like the beach went on forever. The waves were pretty high with lots of surf boarders enjoying them. I think it's funny when you come across surfers going to the beach, they look like they are always rushing towards the water. Surfers are usually pretty laid back, but once they have their wetsuit on, they are practically running to the beach, thinking they are missing the ultimate wave and they're all going to be gone if I don't make it there. Just something I've noticed while on holidays. We walked the beach, then went down another wooden path that Kim & Brian knew about from staying here before. The path was for GUESTS ONLY, well they were guests at one time, and we don't always listen. The wooden raised path lead us through the rainforest for about a 15-20 minute walk with beautiful, lush greenery and trees with moss hanging from them and the odd slug on the path. When we got to the other end, we came into an area with some grass and rocky area that the water comes into, Kim had showed me this area when we came to see Rosie Bay the first time. Since the tide was out, we went into this rocky area that they knew about where you literally could sit down in a bed of shells and pick through, using your  fingers like a rake to dig through the many layers of shell, crushed, broken and whole shells. All this time while we're raking for shells, Brian's keeping his eye on the opening watching for the tide to come up and water coming over the rocks where we were picking. This was fun digging through the shells. :)

When we got home, we decided to pack our suitcases up, starting to get ready for home on Saturday morning. We'll be busy tomorrow and don't want to have to come and rush to get things together. Had supper, a walk on the beach and gathered our seashells and driftwood together. We don't need any more of either!! It's going to be fun transporting it and cleaning it all when we get home. I don't think there will be any spare room in the car on the way home, thought with getting rid of food there would be room, BUT NOT!!

Going Whale Watching tomorrow, Friday!! :)

Talk to you tomorrow!!