PORT McNEILL AND SOINTULA

 Monday, July 21, 2025 

Today we took the ferry (20 min) over to Malcolm Island to a little town called Sointula. Sointula was founded by the Finnish in the early 1900s. I’ve attached a picture that describes the history of Sointula so I won’t repeat it all here. It’s quite interesting. It is a peaceful little town where people take pride in their homes and everything, mostly, is quite tidy. We rented E-Bikes and embarked on a ride that would take us to the other side of the island to Bere Point and Beautiful Bay Beach, where a group of Northern Resident Orca Whales are known to frequent to rub their bodies on the smooth stones very close to shore. It’s worth googling and watching the YouTube Videos. The road was paved 2/3 of the way then turned into gravel and dirt with potholes and exposed stones and it was the most teeth-jarring ride of my life! Our bikes didn’t have great shocks but I am sure they were street bikes not off roading. Anyway, it was a bit grueling there for awhile. Eventually we arrived at this most beautiful campground at Bere Point which faces the Queen Charlotte straits. We parked our bikes and then took off on a trail carved out of 10’ high salal, which was so pretty, about a ½ mile out to a lookout platform where you can watch the whales -- when they are there. The beach was also stunning and one could walk for miles, it is known as Beautiful Bay. The trail continues all along the waterfront for several miles and we were told it’s about a 3 hour round trip to do the whole thing, which is time we did not have. It was already noon when we arrived, an hour into our two hour bike rental, so we pretty much had to turn around and leave right away. As we were getting onto our bikes to begin the trek back to town, a car pulled up and said “you’re not leaving now are you? the orcas are 2km away and incoming!” NO!!! can’t be true that we are going to miss them by being ½ hour early but we had no choice, we had to get the bikes back! In hindsight I wish we’d have just stayed but will have to save that experience for another day. After a quick pit stop at the “Burger Barn” for some chow, we took the ferry back to Port McNeill and set about doing our afternoon chores, the biggest one for me being the reprovisioning trip to the grocery store. It will be another two weeks before we have another major reprovisioning stop so it’s a big job to figure everything out. After two nights of eating out for dinner we both wanted to stay put on the boat tonight so I whipped up simple dinner of roasted bone-in chicken thighs, rice and salad. Today we logged only 10,500 steps which was still good activity considering my app told me I averaged 2500 steps/day for the past 5 weeks!! Boat life.

Not sure why Apple maps says it's 39 minutes when it's a 25 minute ferry ride

Our bike route

Map of Beautiful Bay

Video of Beautiful Bay, so serene!

Trail to the beach carved out of salal, never seen salal that tall!

Orca Info

Warehouses built over the water

Scenes from the working docks at Sointula, big fishing town

History of Sointula

Lastly, my latest flower creation. Not a huge fan of the pink medley but kind of limited as to what IGA  grocery store carries which isn't much! Not doing carnations unless I have to, not my fave.