SIDNEY SPIT

Before I tell you about the last leg of our holiday, I forgot to mention one of the highlights of Wallace Island. There is an old picnic shelter there, and over the years boaters have left their 'calling cards' in it, in the form of words etched on driftwood from the beach. This is what it looks like now...


There are literally thousands of these calling cards inside and outside the little shelter -- it's incredible to see! (We didn't leave a Wind Walker souvenir there, though, because it started to rain, and we headed back to the boat to get warm and dry).

We spent our last two nights at Sidney Spit, less than two hours away by boat, and another little paradise. It's a marine park, too, so for $10 a night you can tie up to a buoy.

Here was the sunrise that greeted us after our first night there ...

This is the main access to the park:

The park dock (where you can come in by dinghy to hike the trails or access the washrooms and day-use picnic area)is over a mile from the light out at the end of the spit, and at lower tides you can walk the entire distance.

So we did. By criss-crossing the beach the whole way, we figured out that we walked over 3 miles, round-trip, by the time we got back to the inflatable. It was lovely!



Looking back toward the anchorage...

The light at the end of the tunnel.... er... spit:

And when we got back to the boat, I put my feet up and knit!

After supper we got treated to this amazing sunset -- what a gift for our last evening of holidays!

The one UFO that I finished on this trip (and I'm really happy about!) is this one:

This is a coat I knit for myself last year. It consists of 5" blocks of two different double-stranded alpaca/wool blends (one lot was a gift from my Knit'n'Cafe friend Brenda, and the other was a thrift-store sweater that I unraveled), so it's thick and heavy and WARM. I LOVED it from the moment I got all the squares sewn (basted?) together so much that I didn't even bother to weave in all the ends before I started to wear it.

Needless to say, it wasn't long before the sheer weight of the thing started pulling apart the wimpy little seams I'd thrown it together with ... plus, there was something else about it that I couldn't put my finger on, but it just wasn't 'right.'

Well. An afternoon in the sunshine later, and the ends are all tucked in nicely, the seams are sewn together much more solidly, and I 'finished' it by picking up stitches and adding a 1" ribbed collar and cuffs in black.

I love it more than ever now, and can hardly wait until it gets cold enough to wear it! (I can't even believe I just said that).