Paddling In The Back Yard

What a morning! Brilliant sunshine and almost no wind so it was a quick breakfast and into the yaks for a paddle right outside base camp. Our plan was to head south towards the Comox to Powell River ferry terminal playing in the rock gardens along the way.

Bates Beach RV Resort from the water. Our site will be the furthest one on the right on Monday.

Orange Sea Slug photo taken with my
GoPro mounted on the submersible wand.

The first place to explore was Seal Bay and living up to its name there were lots of seals sunning themselves on the rocks as we glided between massive boulders just below the surface. 

Paddling very close to the shoreline we were able to paddle in a couple feet of water. The Intertidal Paddle that we took a few weeks back really helped in identifying the various seaweed and kelp species as well as a number of different types of crabs and even an orange sea slug.  

The perfect day to sight our first California Sea Lion (see the ears) or should I say hear them. In either case they were very vocal and by the way they were sunning themselves from a distance they almost looked "whale like". This one in particular didn't mind us one bit at all even when the slight breeze brought us closer together. 

No it's not a periscope (LOL) but my GoPro mounted on the under water wand that I made
and was testing on this paddle. The sea lion didn't seem to mind my handiwork and best of all it floats. 

With the low tide bald eagles were "working" the tide pools. They easily out numbered he gulls on this paddle and it was good to see all of the juvenile birds as well. A couple of quiet kayaks are no problem at all to these majestic birds.

What will tomorrow's paddle be?? Who knows .... we're on vacation :-)