Goats and parrots - Coombs, August 24, 2011

What fantastic marketing. This is a better idea than the invention of the ploughman's lunch by the British Milk Marketing Board in the 1960's.  Take a few goats - fairly innocuous so far.  Take a roof - boring is the word that springs to mind, although make the roof grass and it becomes a little more interesting. However put a few goats on the roof and you have an explosion of excitement.  Good on Coombs for juxtaposing two simple components to create a fusion of pure marketing power.  Enter our competition to put two simple items like this together to produce a maelstrom of interest around our upcoming showcase of the arts!

We called into Chemainus for a pit stop en route to Coombs.  The market was in operation, but with a trip arranged for Chemainus for next week (August 31, 2011 - some tickets still available), and with a fair way still to go to Coombs, we restricted our stop to 10 minutes.

Coombs is great!

the rustic shops with great import bargains, produce, statuary etc., etc.

 some great imported hand carving .. this guy was huge

 novelty buildings...

good food available ...

and - of course goats on a roof - that's right - goats on a roof!! We could have browsed longer at Coombs, but we'll visit again soon.  At 1:30 it was off to the world parrot refuge to meet some delightful avian friends. According to the guides, trading in wild parrots and other exotic birds is second in profitability only to the international illegal drugs trade.  The greed around this business inevitable leaves casualties such as these two beauties.

The refuge is a great place to see parrots up close and handle them.  It's very noisy, but the birds seem to be well looked after, and their food and accommodation looked excellent.  On reflection, having a conversation about Hitchcock's movie The Birds on the journey up to Coombs wasn't the soundest idea, but some of these parrots were just so friendly!!

Back on the bus, we had birthday wishes for Noreen and very special fiftieth wedding anniversary greetings for our driver, John.  Many congratulations and best wishes to you both.

A quick pit stop at Russels completed our Coombs visit.

It was an eye-opening trip.  We'll definitely be going back to Coombs soon, and remember to pick up your ticket for next week's Chemainus visit.

Don't forget to enter our great juxtaposition contest - just reply with your idea- the winner will win a great prize! (Well - a prize at any rate)

Eco cruising is great, August 17, 2011

What a great day driving to Canoe Cove for an eco cruise. FIrstly, though, just getting out the camera for our trip I managed to get some shots of California Quail in our back yard.

This was the first time to Canoe Cove for many of us despite the number of times we've used the ferry and gone right past the entrance.

The boats are excellent, it was like being in a living room, and, almost immediately we'd spotted a couple of eagles.

This was a young one, and

this one was more mature.  We saw around 60 or 70 seals including pregnant females and several young ones.

An obliging heron flew in for a photo-op.

Then we saw even more cute-looking seals.

This was our sister vessel for the cruise; it carried half of our party.

Our skipper gave an extremely interesting commentary throughout the two hour cruise. We pulled into Dock Cove, a natural dry dock for botton scraping.  We decided our bottom was fine but took in a view of the erosion etched larva...

...bull kelp, and a sea star. 

We took samples and learned about kelp propagation and growth in the ocean, the several uses of kelp by First Nations people in history, the interesting but rather disgusting way that sea stars eat barnacles, and the use of this small cove in the past. We also picked up a small crab that was clinging to the kelp. (Clinging to the Kelp - Wasn't that the title of an AC/DC album in the eighties?) Our sister ship passengers got to taste the kelp, but we held on for lunch.

Our final wildlife view was of cormorants happily drying their wings near to their accompanying seagulls.  The gulls keep an eye out for winged and other predators in exchange for fish the cormorants provide to them inadvertently.

As always, lunch was a feature of our trip, and we went to the Stonehouse Pub for a good meal set up on the patio. The weather cooperated; it was a glorious day for the whole trip. We took the scenic route back to the centre, calling in at the Red Barn. This was an excellent trip.  The cruise was fantastic and very interesting.  This could become an annual Let's Do It Day Trip.