The Agnew Family aboard the "Dog House"

Today Ed, Zaph and I decided to check out the trails and beaches in the Pacific Rim National Park. We started with the Rainforest Trail. The temperate rainforest is full of gigantic western red cedar, western hemlock and hanging gardens of moss. Combers trail and beach was the next stop. In the parking lot Zaph had his picture taken giving kisses to a cute little girl and her father. We had a picnic lunch and Zaph and a roar around the beach. Unfortunately, we couldn’t see much of the beach as fog was rolling in from the ocean.. We headed down the road to Schooner Trail and luckily sunshine. The trail was mostly boardwalk and lots and lots of stairs through stands of cedar-hemlock forest. The trail opened onto another beautiful beach. We wandered down the beach where we met some people from Ottawa. Ed offered to take their picture sitting on a huge piece of drift wood. They wanted to include Zaph in the photo, so I boosted him up on the log — unfortunately he jumped off before Ed could take the picture. The next beach stop was Long Beach. I think it’s a beautiful beach but you couldn’t tell because the fog was here as well. Shore pine Bog Trail was really interesting. Here we felt like the giants among the trees. The bog provides very little nutrition for plants so only certain plants and trees can grow and they grow very slowly. The Shore pine grows about 1 meter a century, the same tree in a better environment is know as Lodgepole pine. The last beach we visited was Florencia – named after a ship wreck that occurred in the bay.


Wow ... the trees hollow in the middle.


Trees growing on a "nursery log" (a fall tree) in the rainforest.


One of the beaches.


Beach at Schooner Cove.


Driftwood


The trail to Schooner Cove


Surfers on Long Beach --- even fog won't stop them.


Trees in the bog.