2005/08 Alaska Trip - The Island and home - Gabriola Island |
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Tuesday August 23rd
Sandie wanted to visit one of the gulf islands, preferably one that we hadn’t been to before. I had picked Gabriola Island as it was big enough to have three provincial parks and was relatively close. We drove over the hump to Nanaimo and found that the ferries to Gabriola go from a different terminal. It took us a while to find it, but the delay didn’t matter as the ferry had a tyre and rope wound around its prop. As soon as it arrived a pair of divers went down to check out the damage, and we eventually got to the island about 90 minutes late.
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Gabriola Island (Malaspina and Drumbeg) |
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Gabriola’s about ten miles by two, and about 5000 people live there, though we didn’t see many of them. We went to the Malaspina Galleries, small cliffs eroded into fantastic shapes, very similar to some parts of Australia, though there they’d be called the “Remarkable Galleries” or similar. Australians like the word “remarkable”.
We had enough time to take in one more park, so we drove through the dense forest along the North Road to 
Drumbeg Bay. This is a beautiful spot, with a small park around the bay, more eroded rocks, and a forest of garry oaks, douglas firs, and arbutus trees. The arbutus is a gum tree with smooth and flaky red bark, very similar to its relatives in Australia.
We took the South Road back to catch the ferry which was still running late. Back in Port Alberni, we did our usual scan of airline prices and snapped up a couple of cheap tickets to Gatwick in November. We were hoping that Northwest’s mechanics’ strike would be ended by that time.