Day 30 ~ Sunday 20th September, 2015

BLUE BERRY PANCAKE DAY !!!! YUMMMMYYYY – I am moving in for sure now! WOW – very happy girl today!

Steve's camera is kinda working ….. some buttons are stuck, some are working, most are not. It seems to be able to take a photo but unable to focus.

Steve ate a very quick breakfast and was straight back up to the room to put my hairdryer on it full blast. He did this for a good 40mins, only stopping very 10mins or so to fiddle with the buttons.

By some miracle, he got things almost working properly – enough that he was happy enough to shoot bears!

I ate a leisurely breakfast of blueberry pancakes (THE BEST) with Canadian Maple Syrup, Fruit Compote, Yoghurt, Tea & Juice. I could have had bacon and sausages as well, but I filled up on the pancakes! :) We shared our table with a nice couple from Holland who are also holidaying & seeing the sights.

After breakfast we packed up our bags for our long day and headed on the road, firstly to the Qualicom Hatchery – which is a Pink Salmon Fishery. It has become famous because the Qualicom River runs into a dam, and when the Salmon are running – they can't go all the way up the river because of the dam wall, so they pile up – and this is where the bears have become very smart (and lazy) and they sit at the wall just picking and choosing which fish to eat.

It was amazing to see. We saw one bear only this morning and we think it was an adolescent. Quite happy to ignore us humans, and concentrate on the task at hand “which fish to eat”. To see the salmon running and in such vast quantities, it was amazing! I only wished I had a huge net to catch them all and cook them up – yum – now that would be a feast!

The river was so full of salmon you could almost walk across it without getting your feet wet!!

The bear caught 3 fish while we were there. All very calm with no thrashing about. The bear didn't eat the whole fish, but chose to take a big bite out of their backs & stomach and that was it! The rest was left to the many hundreds of gulls, all waiting for the scraps!

The rain was pouring down and in light of Steve's camera debacle we moved on. (Steve has a nice garbage bag as his lens protection today – so professional – not!!) LOL

We had 50mins to kill before we went to the Grizzly Bear excursion, so we went to Home Depot for the first time. Its just like Bunnings, only their colour is Orange. We walked up and down every isle, stopping to discuss their cheaper pricing on most things and look at products we can't get in Australia.

I spied their kitchen section and I couldn't help myself, but had to go check it out. Their displays are really well put together, but very….well, how do I say it politely? – “American”. And of course I had to ask about Corian, and found their large Corian display. Was good for me to see the different colours that aren't available in Australia (only a couple are any good for our market), and just how they market it here. Thats enough talk about work stuff – I am on holidays!

We bought a heap of microfibre cloths incase the rain doesn't stop, so we can dry off our camera's and we made our way to the Grizzly Bear excursion people. We parked at the Marina, and in the pouring rain we loaded up – so excited.

We found their office, only to be told that due to the amount of rain that has fallen in the past 24/48 hours, that the river has flooded, and there is no “river bank” for the bears to come out to to be seen. Plus the viewing platforms are under water, - so are the local roads. So no Grizzly Bears for us.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I don't know who was more disappointed – me or Steve.

We had to laugh it off – honestly, our luck with animals on this whole trip has been a bit of a joke really and this just topped it off. We just aren't meant to see animals in the wild.

So back into the pouring rain we went, back to the car, very quiet and full of disappointment.

We went back to the B&B and decided in spite of the weather, there was no use going to visit the Elk Waterfall, or anything else for that matter. Our camera's would only be put at further risk and our time would be better spent catching up on our blog and editing some photos.

Steve had a “nanna nap” for a few hours and when he woke, there was blue skies and sunshine outside!!! WTF – how can it go from non-stop rain to pure blue skies? Not to put a jinx on things, we loaded the car and headed back out onto the road around 4pm, this time in search of Bald Eagles.

Steve drove south along the 19A Ocean Route Highway, no more than 2kms when I spied way up in a pine tree, was a big eagle basking in the sunshine. We pulled over and took some photos, but he was too far away. So back in the car, we drove up many street's until we could get a bit closer.

We stopped outside a house which happened to be the owner of the tree the eagle was sitting in. Steve was getting some good shots, and the eagle flew off, just as the owner of the house came out to say Hi (so I missed the shot damn it!) lol The house owner was curious as to the huge cameras and then laughed when we mentioned the eagle – apparently get has had many tourists stop by.  So we had a chat and he told us that this eagle moved here 3 years ago.  This season there were 2 babies in the nest who successfully learnt to fly.  They are long gone out of the nest this late in the season.  It was nice to hear that story.

We still wished the eagle was closer to us.  Steve was using his 200mm lens and I had my 70-200mm on with my 2x tele - so a 400mm lens effectively and we were still too far away.  Oh well, you get that!

The eagle wasn't coming back to roost any time soon, so we headed off in search of more eagles. We only found juveniles. They are dark brown/black in colour. Their white head doesn't come in until they are 5 years old! They were all our souring in the sunshine, riding the thermals – drying out their wings from being soaked from the past days rains.

We chased a couple, and then headed south along the highway, only to find more juvenliles. Our big boy didn't come back to roost (we checked back three times).

So we called it quits, had dinner and back to our last night with Michelle & Lorrie. (Bird Photography is hard work!) We both need a lot of practice and patience. We aren't happy with any of our Eagle images - too far away and cropped to the max - yuck.  So we might put some effort into this when we get back to Melbourne (or we might stick with mountains, as they don't move about!)  ha ha ha.   Antyway, you get to see them, which is all that matters.