The VHF radio wasn't picking up channel 71 for Roy Eaton's show, so we tuned in on Zoom. It was fun to put a face to a voice. We were the first boat he called out today, but he called us Chargermaran from Colorado. We knew it was us.
Lori wanted to find a Canadian Kit-Kat to try since she heard they were different (in a good way) than American ones and this was our last Canadian town stop.
I took Luke and Roo to the park to play for a bit. On the way there, there were a ton of seagulls on the beach. Roo asked Luke if he wanted to chase them away with her and he agreed. There were SO many of them. Soon after we got to the park, Bear and Dixie joined us. A little after that Moose came over too. There were mayflies all over everything!! Buildings, slides, light posts, etc.
I saw Lori and Sasha walking by on the road and I wanted to get some steps in and join them, but Moose didn't want to come with us and Bear wanted to put Dixie back, so Luke, Roo, and I tried to catch up to Lori and Sasha, but we lost sight of them and weren't sure which store they wound up going to. Both groups tried yelling to each other, but it was unsuccessful, no one could understand what was being said. Bear was a little ways behind us and wanted to catch up, so we waited at the Bridal Veil Falls parking lot for everyone.
Lori said she told Ben she'd be back before the kids and I came back from the park, so she walked much faster than Roo and I did to get back. This is what she was yelling to us on the way to the store that we didn't understand.
Lori did stop in an African store before we went back to the marina. Roo was making me nervous and I didn't intend to buy anything, so she and I went outside to play a short game of huge Checkers. We let the other 4 get a head start back to the boat and then joined them.
Back at the marina, I spoke with a nice local lady who commented about the number of shadflies and I asked her what she called them and she told me quite a bit about them. Shadfly is another name for mayfly! They only live for 24 hours and love to land by light. Often, people turn off all their house and porch lights at dusk to ensure they don't get as many of them on their houses and porches.
Everyone tried one KitKat bar piece, then we pushed off the dock, put lines and fenders away and were en route to the Benjamin Islands.
I pulled out a mishmash of chips, meats, crackers, dips, and snacks and realized I put together a little charcuterie lunch for us to snack on while we were underway! It was Sasha's favorite one she's ever had and that's saying something! If anyone is ever in Canada, get a bag of those President's Choice Buffalo Wings & Blue Cheese chips for me, wouldja?
Ben saw there were a few options for anchorages, so we decided to find one where we would be the only boat. The first one we pulled into had a few rocks to both sides, so Keith, Lori, and I stood out on the deck keeping watch. We cleared the rocks and Ben spun us around so we could anchor and stern tie.
We had our own little cove area. The kids jumped in right away and swam for a while. Lori and I wanted to explore the Benjamins, so we started to get into the tender and everyone except Moose and Keith joined us. Moose followed behind on the SUP and Keith wanted to take a nap.
The beach we wanted to stop at, that the kids discovered on the SUP earlier that was just around the corner had people on it and it wasn't roomy enough for our crowd to join in too, so we continued around the shore.
We found a rocky area that looked like Moab meets the Bahamas and we tied up to a ring in the rock (intended for stern tying) and got out to explore and swim.
Between the rocks, we kept hearing a noise that I compared to a homemade rubber band banjo/guitar. We heard it several times and thought it may have been a mink or some other critter warning us to stay away, but never found out.
When everyone was done exploring over the rocks, Moose picked Lori and me up on the SUP and took us, gondolier-style for a loop around another set of islands. We hit a low spot and Moose jumped out and realigned the SUP so that we could be free to complete our loop. He let me off at one if the rocks where it wasn't too slippery and he and Lori continued on for a bit longer.
I found a spot on the rock by the water that was shaped like a slide and laid there in the sun with my eyes closed for a while- no phone, no kids, no distractions from my thoughts. I thought it would be funny if while my eyes were closed a snake, mink, or spider came along.
Ben walked over and found me after about 30-45 minutes. He sat there and we chatted for a few minutes and then I sat up and was looking around at the 2 smaller boats near us that were stern tied wondering if the Cartermaran would fit back here too, but also thinking about how lovely our little spot was.
I looked down at the water by my feet and saw a snake slithering through the water and up toward the bottom of my slide rock. I jumped up, yelled snake, and managed to scrape the top of my right foot and slam my right knee into the rock in an attempt to get out of there as quickly as I could. It looked just as scared of me as I was of it. It sort of shook/shimmied/slithered backwards and went underwater. Ben got up to see it and said it was a big one, probably 3 feet long! Moose, of course, heard snake and popped over on the SUP to see if he could see it.
Lori and the other kids were at the top of the rock picking and snacking on blueberries. People were getting hungry, so we loaded back into the tender and told Moose to get a jump start back to the Cartermaran on the SUP, but to stop at the beach if no one was there. The people were still there, so we caught up to him and towed him back side-by-side with the tender.
Back at the Cartermaran, everyone swam and Keith got some drone footage of us jumping off the sides of the boat and then swimming under the tunnel of the Cartermaran. We made and ate dinner and called it a night.
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