GemmaLouise: Art & Photography Blog: Tatchu Peninsula

Day 3 was our shortest hike of the trip, in fact we arrived at our camp so early that we contemplated continuing on to the next and final sight. Considering our previous surge channel experience, we had our reservations knowing we would be crossing another one on this day; Our reservations turned out to be unfounded as this one was no where near as treacherous. We reached our camp spot by early afternoon, and spotted a small black bear at the far end of the beach as we approached - he didn't notice us, and ambled off into the brush eventually. After debating walking further that day, we opted to stay considering that the tide would not be on our side by that time, and the next camp-able spot was Rugged Point, the final spot. This turned out to be a great decision! After setting up our tent, we came across the skull of a black bear; it was bleached by the sun and ocean and had barnacles growing on it. As such we dubbed our beach Bear Skull Bay. The beach was made up of perfectly smoothed and rounded pebbles that had been baking in the sun all day. We alternated between jumping in the ocean and drying ourselves on the pebble beach, and it was as good as any spa treatment you could get. During our relaxing afternoon, we were visited by a young socially awkward male deer. He hung around our camp, coming quite close to us on several occasions. We realized that considering his age, and the low number of hikers that come through the area, he had probably recently left his mother and had probably never seen humans before. We obviously named him Hank, because - who wouldn't?