September 19, 2014

September 19, 2014

The next day we got up and headed back to the airport to fly up to Bella Coola. This section of the airport was very tiny. We got there early so we had time to sit down and relax. We got a delcious breakfast since we had the time. Once again we had no security check, probably because the plane up to Bella Coola was very tiny. It held about 18 people. You had to duck, to walk down the aisle. It was a fun flight as we watched the glacier covered mountain tops going by out the window. The landing was really wild as the plane lowered down into the mountain lined valley. You could look out the windows on each side of the plane and see rock cliffs. Finally we had gotten to our destination. We were at Bella Coola. The airport was no bigger than an average home. We waited to get our rental car. The man at the airport did EVERTHING. He was the reception, the ticket guy, the luggage guy, the rental guy, the information booth, the . . . well, you get it. Sue stared at a set of keys on the counter with her name on them until she heard him yell, “If you see keys on the counter with your name on them, take them”. Whoosh – we were off to the Lodge. It was a short ride over to there. We checked in and it was time to start exploring.

We unloaded our luggage and got settled into our room. It was time to start looking around. We need to get supplies, but we also wanted to look around a bit. To keep it simple, we headed down to the harbor, which was just down the road. It was very scenic as we drove down there. We crossed many bridges carrying glacier waters off the steep mountains slope. We stopped here and there so I could take some photos. Next, we stopped at the marina to check that out. Pretty quiet down here this time of the year. Various boats here and there and some very old rickety looking docks. Then we went to a park that was farther down, west of our current location and closer to the ocean. This was about as far as the road traveled along the water. We parked and headed out to check out the waters. We heard some strange sounds. We quickly realized that the water breaks out in the bay were full of seals. There was quite a few of them. Some were swimming about, bobby up and down in the water, while others were fighting for real estate above water on the water break. All of them seemed to be aware of our presence and the ones closer to us never took their huge dark somber eyes off us. I would have never guessed that we would be seeing seals on this trip. Wildlife everywhere and we just got here. We saw some bald eagles also as we stood there, but none were very close to us. After we felt we'd taken a little bit of our surroundings in, we decided that quenching our hunger was next on the list. We also had to do some shopping. Sue would be cooking many of our meals on this trip to keep costs reasonable. Also, we were in a very remote place. Restaurant options were very low. There was a total of three restaurants close by. That was it. We stopped in the burger, greasy spoon place for some food. There were many locals hanging in this place. More people were hanging than eating. We filled out bellies with some tasty grub and moved on over to the grocery store. We were fortunate enough to have two grocery stores nearby. This one was farther from the lodge, so we figured we get what we could here and hit the other one on the way home. We got back to the lodge around 8:30pm and were just plain whooped. Traveling is exhausting. We had a few relaxing drinks out on the deck and called it a night. We had lots planned for tomorrow, so we needed our rest.