Refuge Cove

When we left Herbwise, this involved a bunch of ferries.  We drove north up the coast to the town of Campbell River, and took a ferry to Quadra Island, drove across it, took a second ferry to Cortes Island, drove across it, and parked at a government dock called Squirrel Cove.

Squirrel Cove has a dock and a general store.  The general store is very general, containing a liquor store, laundromat, shower facilities, and so on.  When we parked, we went to its parking lot since the dock is not exactly something I felt I should be driving on.  We were opening up the car and looking at its contents and wondering what we should bring with us when someone walked up to us.

"I can't see your license plate," he said.

"Oh, sorry," I said without thinking, and pulled my trunk down so you could see the back license plate.

"Kylara?  I'm Jim Parker."

Oh!  That was why he wanted to know.  No-one else would have Maryland tags.  He explained that I should, in fact, drive my car down the dock and then we could unload into his sailboat and then we could be off.  We did so, and then I had an adventure trying to turn my car around in the narrow dock without killing myself or running into anything at all rather than just trying to back up very very straight for 150 feet.

Eventually we got underway.  After a few minutes, he handed the tiller to Tomko and told him to figure out how it worked.  When he did (hint:  It is opposite of how non-boat-thinking people may think), they gave it to me.  It was explained that we should know this for just in case there was an emergency, as there is no such thing as a hospital or fire department or, in fact, roads on West Redonda Island.

Actually there is one road.  Jim made it.  It goes from the beach right next to their dock up to their house.  There are trails and other things, but that is the only one that you can drive a normal vehicle on.  Jim uses it for his excavator and four-wheeler since I don't think the rest of the vehicles are workable.

The area they live in, Refuge Cove, is 183 acres owned by 18 shareholders of a co-op.  Sherry is one of them, and has lived there for pretty much her adult life.  Jim has been there more than 20 years.  They have a pretty awesome house and a number of out-buildings:  the outhouse, of course; and also the triangle-shaped barbecue hut for cooking over a fire in the rain; the hot tub and deck where Jim watches the boats and smokes cigarettes; the washhouse where the laundry, shower, and sauna live; the wood shop; the metal working shop; the bathhouse which is more like a processing place for the graywater from the house to be used for watering plants.  I am probably missing something.  But basically that is it.

While we were there, we did many things!  Mostly we pulled up infinite plants from the ground.  We cleared out the entire orchard perimeter so that a new fence could be put up, and also the ditch on the side of the road.  (The road used to be a dry river bed so it wants to flood every time it rains.)  Also some other places.  It was an impressive feat and I learned about some of the fauna but I think I destroyed a lot more than I can identify.  There are outrageous amounts of moss.  All sorts of different kinds of moss.  Fuzzy moss, spikey moss, furry moss, and so on.  Fern-like moss.  Moss that probably has its own time-share in some other appropriately wet, moss-inhabited place.

I may describe more of this later but really, I am tired from today.  Today, Jim had to go to a doctor in town (a boat ride and two ferries away) so he dropped us off at our car in Squirrel Cove before jumping into his own van and leaving.  We realize:  Tomko left our keys sitting on a nail in the bathhouse, back on Refuge Cove.

I run into a guy, Tom, that we had met a few days before while helping another resident of Refuge Cove move.  He was heading back and gave me a ride.  I walked up to the house and got my keys.  Sherry walked me over to "downtown Refuge Cove", which includes a general store and some floathouses (like, maybe five) and a dock.  I was told that some people were going around 2:30pm, tried to fiangle some other rides, then gave up and waited.  Now there is no way we can make the ferry to our next destination today.  However, if we want to make the ferry off this island, we need to leave in about ten minutes.  So I'll have some more internet later.