Nice cool night, but Jonathan and I had lousy sleeps. Woke up around 7:30am and made coffee and put on cozy clothes. I sat out front of our camper in one of our chairs to drink coffee and watch for whales. I could see porpoises (a mama and baby) and some grey seals through the binoculars. We realized that the blinking red lights we could see across the river last night were from the wind farm over there.
Our lovely neighbours left that morning and Jonathan and Ollie managed to say bye as they drove off... Adeth blowing them kisses as they left.
We all walked down to the shore line rocks again to look for whales and explore the tide pools again. Kids quite fascinated with the anemones and were “feeding” them tiny shrimp. We saw more harbour porpoises, and a Minke whale. Jonathan and Oliver had gone up to the rig for some food, and Meems and I followed not too long after. We had snacks and some lunch and split up. Amelia and I took our sketchbooks back down to the rocks, while Ollie and Jonathan hopped on their bikes to investigate the possibility of renting Oliver a wetsuit as he was very keen to try and get into the frigid water to snorkel. They found out some intel from the kayak tour place and could return around 2pm when the tour came back in to get a wetsuit. We hung out a bit and then walked back up while Jay and Ollie went back to the cove to get a wetsuit rented for $15 for the full day. We went back up to get him kitted out and get Jonathan’s wetsuit and their snorkel equipment. The guy at the rental place said, “It will be a short swim” and we knew he’d be right. The water temperature here is 4degrees celsius! VERY COLD!!
Ollie made the smart choice to wear the full wetsuit and put his own shortie wetsuit (thank you, Coccus for the loan) on overtop.
Around 2:30pm we were all down at the little cove by the kayak rental/tour place and we walked out onto some big rocks for the boys to get their masks on (Jay work Ollie’s youth sized mask and Ollie wore Amelia’s). In they went and it was indeed FREEZING. Their little hands and feet were like ice and they splashed in and out again within a few seconds. I’m super impressed they even went in! We saw that the rental place also had booties (all this stuff was kitted out for the kayakers on the tours… full wetsuits and booties, plus the dry suits over top). I got each of them a pair of booties and that helped them stay in a tiny bit longer. Painfully cold, Ollie went in again with Jonathan for a splash and quick look around. We noticed the tide was coming in and we had to evacuate our rock and wade a bit through the frigid water the couple metres to the shore. I’d say the snorkelling in the St. Lawrence was a success!! Ollie was so pumped about the idea and we are super impressed he pressed on to follow through. Xo
Cozy back at the RV, Jonathan worked on fixing some loose storage cover/flaps on the rig and I sat at the picnic table overlooking the water writing some postcards. We enjoyed a delicious salmon dinner (salmon taken out of the freezer that Leslie had purchased for Amelia’s bday dinner back in Kanata and had to cut a chunk off because it was too much for that particular evening). As we sat at our picnic table, we saw a Minke Whale off in the distance! Through the binoculars I spied a white shape come out of the water... a BELUGA! very exciting. We think there were two of them because of how they came up out of the water at different times but close together. Pretty cool. They were so white against the dark blue water.
We walked back down to the water’s edge for the sunset and saw another 5 or so harbour porpoises. The kids were getting rangy and tired, so they walked back up to the RV, and Jonathan followed a short while later just as it was getting dark. Put the kids to bed with a bedtime story from Silly Stories From Around the World, and Jonathan had lit a propane fire and relaxed for a bit.
No comments:
Post a Comment