Changing the Backyard

This morning my facebook status read 'It's Moving Day! We take our home with us. We just change the backyard.'

We had spent a week in Grace Harbor. It was time to move on. 

Today's destination was Squirrel Cove. We hear they are the best place for provisioning IN Desolation Sound. As we approached, there was plenty of room at the public dock, so we decided to take advantage of it rather than anchoring first and taking a 1-mile dinghy ride in our quite slow dinghy.

The General Store at Squirrel Cove has new owners. They and their staff are very friendly. We had several packages to 'post' and Al took care of that while I perused the shelves. To be honest, I was a little disappointed in the grocery selections, BUT it IS early in the season. 

The alcohol was reasonable. They are putting in a room of fishing gear. The Flying Squirrel take-out will open for weekends in about a month, before gearing up for summer a few weeks after that. There was a big freezer for meats, but it wasn't very full. There was another for frozen fruits and veggies. There was a big walk-in cooler for fresh fruits, veggies, and dairy. Locally roasted coffee beans were priced equivalent to what we're used to paying.

Most of the prices were as we expected -- it IS a rather remote island, and it costs money to get things here. 

But I had never seen a bag of potato chips with a $13 price tag before. It stayed on the shelf.

(Ed. note:  We learned later that we had visited on the last day before the new shipment. We were MUCH happier with the supply on our second visit. And now we know the best day to shop!)

A one-hour stay at the dock is complimentary. Four hours is half-rate. It would have been only $24 (Canadian) to stay the night. 

But we moved on, into Squirrel Cove.

Yes, we're going to go through that narrow opening. The chart shows the left side is a slanting shelf. The right is a more sudden drop-off, like a cliff.

The forward-looking sonar shows the 'wall' in front of us.

Yes, we're that close.

Pretty wildflowers atop the island we anchor next to. Plentiful, but poisonous, oysters crust the rocks.