Advertisement
Published: August 14th 2013
Sooke Basin
Our very own beach!August 13, 2013 – Sooke Potholes Provincial Park
In the morning Matthew and I spend a long time down on our little beach. The sun is out and the day is heating up nicely. The clear water around the rocks is teeming with beautiful purple, red and green starfish. We watch them move around in super slow motion, their tiny white tube feet propelling them over rocks, through the gentle lapping water. We very gently stroke their backs, curious to see what they feel like. They are rougher than we expected. Yesterday we gingerly transported a beached starfish back to the ocean and watched him come to life as he found a comfortable spot in the rocks and swirling water. I’m sure he would have been just fine left alone but it felt right somehow!
We select a few tiny flat pebbles and have a go at drawing simple pictures on them in the West Coast Native style. Once again, it’s very effective yet simple to do. (Which makes it a popular activity with the boys!).
And speaking of popular, a favourite local summer destination on a hot day is the Sooke Potholes Provincial Park centered around the
Madrona Cottage
Looking up at our cottage from the beach Sooke River canyon and that’s where we head that same afternoon.
During the last ice age, 15,000 years ago, moving melting ice packs carved a deep path into the bedrock to form the river; and huge boulders, carried by the river, swirled against the canyon walls to form deep potholes.
The resulting series of deep pools with clean, clear water is rather tempting on a hot day and once there it didn’t take us long to change into swimwear and take the plunge!
The cold certainly takes your breath away but surprisingly it’s not the degree of painful, numbing cold where you loose all feeling. In fact it’s very refreshing and the pools really are deep enough to properly swim in although the river, here at least, can be no more than 20 metres across.
Letting the sun dry us on the hot, smooth rock proves to be a rather nice way to pass the afternoon, especially with a good book! The boys are happy when they discover the rocks in one area are especially smooth and make a rather impressive slide down into the water!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.056s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 11; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0274s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
