Opposite our hotel is a obelisk that marks to 50th Parallel. To put this into percespective it is on the same latitude as The Lizard down near Penzance, Cornwall.
Today we went for a short drive. A short drive here is a long way and turned out to be a good 300+ km along the main highway on either side of which were forests lakes and snow capped mountains. Our intention was to visit a place called Zeballos, a forming gold mining community. Apparently there wasa tour of historical buildings where tales of the gold rush were brought to life. However, whilst the main highway is an exellent road drive on the road to Zebellos was nothing more than a logging track and was better suited for 4 x 4's. Not wishing to harm the car we did an about turn and headed on to Port McNeil.
Port McNeil; turned out to be a quiet out of the way 
fishing/logging community. After a bit of research at the local information centre we found the tree with the biggest burr in the world. This was quickly followed by finding the quietest museum that I have come across. The guide said that we were his first visitors that day and indeed looking at his visitors book we were the first visitors for several days, and the ones before that were a fortnight ago. Still our time there was very interesting and our museum curator talked about his family - how his grandparents had escaped persecution in Russia - how they escaped to China hidden in a logging ship - how his grandmother's daughter started crying when the ship was being searched and how she was muffled to ensure the 360 passengers hidden in the boat were not captured. He told us about his time working as a logger as well as telling us about the different artefacts linked mostly with the logging community.
We then moved on to another out of the way fishing/logging village called Telegraph Cove. This village was built on stilts at the water's edge and had boardwalks as pavements. As we walked alon the boardwalks to the harbour entrance sailing over our heads were 3 Bald Eagles. We had seen bald eagles at Port McNeil but these circled so closely over head we could not help but gaze at wonder at such an extrodinary sight. And just to add to the excitement I later saw one of them scoop up a fish at the harbour entrance. Simply awesome. The links to whales here are very close with many excursions to see them being available. There was also a whale museum where the skeletons of some whales that had died were on exhibit.
fishing/logging community. After a bit of research at the local information centre we found the tree with the biggest burr in the world. This was quickly followed by finding the quietest museum that I have come across. The guide said that we were his first visitors that day and indeed looking at his visitors book we were the first visitors for several days, and the ones before that were a fortnight ago. Still our time there was very interesting and our museum curator talked about his family - how his grandparents had escaped persecution in Russia - how they escaped to China hidden in a logging ship - how his grandmother's daughter started crying when the ship was being searched and how she was muffled to ensure the 360 passengers hidden in the boat were not captured. He told us about his time working as a logger as well as telling us about the different artefacts linked mostly with the logging community.
We then moved on to another out of the way fishing/logging village called Telegraph Cove. This village was built on stilts at the water's edge and had boardwalks as pavements. As we walked alon the boardwalks to the harbour entrance sailing over our heads were 3 Bald Eagles. We had seen bald eagles at Port McNeil but these circled so closely over head we could not help but gaze at wonder at such an extrodinary sight. And just to add to the excitement I later saw one of them scoop up a fish at the harbour entrance. Simply awesome. The links to whales here are very close with many excursions to see them being available. There was also a whale museum where the skeletons of some whales that had died were on exhibit.
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