The first weekend of October Justine and I decided to book our first weekend on Galiano. The last trip over we had taken down the tent for the season, so now when we go over for more than the day, we need to book a cabin at Driftwood Village. While it means we get less work done on the property, it does afford us a bit more time to relax and explore the south end of the island.

This trip was focused on clearing broome and generally trying to keep ahead of everything that is growing faster than we could beat it back.

It’s not very often that the DeltaPort terminal looks nice, but in the morning light on the way to the ferry it certainly did.

We decided to just stay the one night, so caught the ferry on Saturday morning and planned to come home on Sunday night. It gave us time to get work done and maybe explore a little bit. After heading up to the property we spent the day working on splitting wood, clearing broome and other little projects that were on the list. It was a productive day, but we cut it reasonably short so there would be some daylight left once we got down to the cabins.

I’ll bet we’ve walked past these trees a hundred times, but I have never noticed the way the Arbutus was growing into the softer fir.

After getting settled in, we decided to walk down to Maryanne Point to see what might be happening on the water. We’ve not had a lot of luck with whales lately, so we were hoping…

Sadly it was not to be. It was pretty quite out on the water, with not a lot going on. But it was a nice afternoon, and nice to sit down by the water and wait to see what might show up.

We did end up seeing seals (they are almost always in that spot) as well as sea lions (less common, but fairly often in the winter). But no whales.

After sitting for a while, it started to get dark and the temperature was dropping, so we headed back to the cottage to make dinner and get settled for the night.

We were lucky enough to see a varied thrush on the walk up to the water.

A spider building its web over the water.

While we were there, a float plane took off from Mayne Island. Always cool to see.

The seals and the sea gulls were happy to hang out together.

Sea lion passing through.

A huge car ferry heading out to sea.

After hanging out down by the water for a bit, we headed back to the cabin. One of the great things about Driftwood is that you can always count on a flock of chestnut chickadees hanging about. They’re quick and hard to get pics of, but it’s fun trying!

While we were up at the property, we noticed that a banana slug had decided the wall of the shed was interesting. YOu can see all the slime trails from it’s exploration.

Fall is the time for mushrooms - and we have so many different ones on the island!

Once we got back home, the next week or two were pretty nice, from a weather perspective. One morning, we had interesting low-lying clouds hanging over the city.