April 23, 2005

April 23, 2005

Sechelt, Roberts Creek, & Gibsons, B.C.

DAY 310

 

Another sunny, warm day.

We had a long, tiring, but exciting day of exploring the Lower Sunshine Coast. We unhitched this morning, then started our day of exploring by driving over to the day use area of Porpoise Bay Provincial Park, to see the nice beach. The best part of the beach, for me, was watching float planes land. I miss flying. We were fantasizing about settling down in this area. I could become a float plane pilot. Joanne could become a brownie baking hippie. I guess that's better than her last fantasy which was to settle down in the back woods of the Ozark Mountains in Missouri and become a survivalist.

We drove into Sechelt, looking for the House of Hewhiwus, the "House Of Chiefs" of the Shishalh Nation, the self governing band of Sechelt natives, and the adjacent Tems Swiya Museum, chronicling their heritage. Out front, the parking lot was filled with a weekend outdoor market. While Joanne browsed, and bought some excellent blackberry jelly, I sat and chatted with a native sculptor who was filing a chunk of alabaster into a bear shape. He explained his work to me, and the differences between sculpting alabaster and soapstone, both of which he uses. He told me that the Olympic logo had just been announced yesterday. It is an Inukshuk. He and his native artist colleagues are still eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Olympic mascot. He's hoping for it to be a bear, and that is why he is currently sculpting an inventory of bear pieces. We went into the Tsain-Ko Gallery, and bought some gifts. I'm a big fan of Aboriginal art. We went next door to see the Tems Swiya Museum. From there we drove over to the Information Centre in town to get some information on local sights to see. We drove south on Hwy. 101 to the village of Wilsons Creek, and then up on the mountain, back into the bush, looking for the Chapman Creek Salmon Hatchery. We found it, and wandered around the hatchery, looking into the huge outdoor tanks, each containing different size / age of salmon fry. After we had been wandering around for awhile, the one employee working there came out of a building, and seeing visitors, came over and explained a bit about how the salmon hatchery operates. He took us into the spawning building, and showed us how the salmon are spawned, and hatched, and reared until they are ready for the outdoor tanks. It was pretty interesting. Using a small net, I took a small fry out of the water, and looked at it for a very brief period of time. When I returned it to the tank ... uh-oh ... it was dead. My, they sure are delicate !

From there we drove over to the little village of Roberts Creek, noted for its "hippie" ambience. It's like a village frozen in time about 40 years ago. There are now 3 generations of hippies populating Roberts Creek. The originals, about 50 to 60 years old, their children, 25 to 35 years old, and their grandchildren, little barefoot kids in halter tops and flowered sun dresses. What a great, laid back place. While Joanne browsed in the small collection of shops ( like the organic health food store ) I chatted with a gentleman who was constructing an addition to the little mall that was the centre of town. What they were constructing was to be a woodworking school, to teach how to make fine hand crafted furniture products out of local woods like Western Red Cedar and Douglas Fir. We went into the one restaurant in town, an organic vegetarian restaurant called The Gumboot, to have lunch. It took quite a long time for our lunch to be prepared, but it was worth waiting for, and this village didn't seem to have much of a sense of "hurry up". I did not know that there was such a thing as organic root beer ! After lunch, we walked across the street, and had some ice cream in the little general store. Joanne thought that Roberts Creek was the kind of place that she could be happy settling down in, after we're finished this travel adventure, and maybe make a living as a brownie baking, happy, old hippie. We drove along the waterfront out of Roberts Creek, following Lower Road about 5 km. back to Hwy. 101.

We drove south to Gibsons, the town made famous by the Canadian television series of the 80's, the Beachcombers. Only in Canada would television use a real restaurant, in a real town, as the set for a TV series. Molly's Reach, the main setting of The Beachcombers, still functions as a restaurant, overlooking the harbour and wharf, looking exactly as it did for those 19 years it served as the set for the series. You can't help but look inside, and expect to see Nick, Jessie, and Relic sitting at the counter arguing. We walked out onto the long wharf, to the public gazebo at the end, then down onto the docks, walking around all the boats, many of them log salvage boats looking pretty much the same as Nick Adonis's Persephone. In behind Molly's Reach is a short street of tourist shops called Molly's Lane. I bought a CD of Aboriginal Blues. What a great album. Aboriginal music blended with blues. There is a song about a red man, singing the black man's blues, living in the white man's world. Another song is entitled "I caught you white handed". I love native humour.

Driving back out of Gibsons Landing Harbour, we stopped in Upper Gibsons, at an art gallery called Gift Of The Eagle. We walked around, viewing the great First Nations art, chatting with the owner, and petting her dog Daisy the Yellow Labrador Retriever who roams freely around the gallery. After admiring the artworks in the gallery, we walked across the street to the Blueberry Bakery, where I bought a small Ganache Cheesecake that we had as dessert tonight. MMMMM ! We drove back up Hwy. 101 to Wilsons Creek, stopping at the IGA to buy some groceries, then went to fill Dee-Dee with diesel. Just at the turn off to Porpoise Bay Provincial Park, I decided to detour for one last stop, the Porpoise Bay public wharf and docks. We parked, and walked out onto the wharf in this lovely setting, so I could watch float planes landing. We returned to the trailer, made and ate supper, ate our cheesecake, and went to bed exhausted, at 9:30 P.M., about 3 hours earlier than we usually do.

DSK