A Visit To Beautiful Maple Bay, B.C.

When I took the garbage out early Wednesday morning, I saw that it was time, once again, to empty the green bags into my truck and head off to the Waste Transfer Station just north of Duncan. It was another beautiful day here, so after getting rid of the garbage, I decided to take the fifteen minute drive down to Maple Bay.

Maple Bay is one of the finest natural harbours on the West Coast and separates Vancouver Island from Saltspring Island, the largest and nearest of the southern Gulf Islands. It is just one harbor north of Cowichan Bay, so it’s only twenty minutes from our house and just 10 minutes from the city of Duncan.

Diving in the protected narrow inlet of Maple Bay is so good and so close to shore that the late Jacques Costeau considered it one of his favourite diving spots in the world!

Maple Bay Marina, in Bird’s Eye Cove at the extreme south end of Maple Bay, features a full chandlery, a restaurant and a pub. For years, Maple Bay Marina has established a well-deserved reputation for providing excellent service, value, and friendly atmosphere second to none.

At Maple Bay, I took a walk along one of the wharfs housing several ‘floating homes’. These are pretty unique places to live and the houses do actually float on rafts or pontoons. Most are 2 story structures and seem to have a lot of rooms. I just wonder if they would feel damp in the winter. They sure looked great on a nice day though.

The leaves on the trees are slowly beginning to change color now as we approach the middle of October. This makes it an ideal time to practice a little amateur photography – like trying to get that perfect shot of all the various colors. I think we’re still a few weeks away though from the full cascade of fall colors here on the Island. Things are still surprisingly green for this time of year.

How about a quick Picasa 3 tip? Have you ever found yourself browsing the Internet and suddenly there is a page that you would just love to insert into your blog, an album or save for any other purpose? Picasa makes it ridiculously simple to do it.

Whenever you are looking at a website you want an image of, just hit the “print screen” key on your computer keyboard. Picasa will immediately copy the screen image to a folder on your computer in My Pictures called Picasa/Screen Captures.(note: Picasa must be open for this to work as per Al's comment below). Then, you can use Picasa to edit the picture and crop it to take out any parts of the screen image you may not want to keep. There are other methods for doing this kind of thing, but Picasa is the simplest I’ve found.