October 3, 2014
Facts about Port Hardy
The earliest non-native settlement in the area was in the 1850s and by 1904 a post office and general store had been opened. The Hardy Bay Land Company enticed settlers from England with advertisements describing a prosperous town. The settlers did not expect the isolation and ruggedness of the area, so few remained. The community remained small until the opening of the Island Copper Mine in 1971.
Friendly Faces
Peter Haugan: Peter is a fisherman we met at dinner last night and then saw him again today at the coffee shop. He’s a local Prince Rupert fisherman who loves his work and it resonates through and through when he talks about it. He’s very lucky to be so passionate about his job. He shared with us several photographs of the prawns he catches, and of fishing on his brothers boat.
Today’s Highlights
Andrew writes: All the people coming up and talking with us….
Amanda writes:I really enjoyed the leisurely pace of today. We didn’t ride far and had the pleasure of diving into the blog and photo editing.
Today’s Cycling Stats
Amanda writes: Starting Point: Warmshowers host in Prince Rupert
End Point: Ferry terminal in Prince Rupert
6.1 km distance travelled
11.4 km/h average speed
36.6 km/h maximum speed
32 minutes time on bikes
Today’s Lowlights
Amanda writes: I had hoped to create a video of what life was like before we started traveling. Unfortunately it appears that all the photos I had taken before departure are gone. Sometimes it’s incredibly frustrating when Andrew does all the photo editing because he is the only one who knows where pictures are and he has in the past deleted some that he thinks are not very good or he doesn’t think are worthy of publishing. It’s times like these where I wish I had my own picture and video drive. His quick delete trigger button has also already deleted some video footage I had hoped to use from this trip. I will need to figure out a solution to this because it’s so incredibly disappointing.
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What Happened…
Andrew writes: I had such a tough time sleeping last night because of the wind and raining crashing against the window panes in our room. When I finally did get to sleep, it seemed like only a few minutes passed before Amanda was waking me up at 5:30am. Ugh. This was despite the fact that Devlin, our CouchSurfing host, said we could stay later…and also in hindsight, the ferry was delayed several hours, so rather than having to be at the terminal to check-in at 9:30am, we didn’t need to be there until 1pm.
Still, greasy spoon breakfasts are always good, and then with the extra time we had, we rode back to Cow Bay and sat in Cowpuccino;s. Judson the owner has operated the business for over 18 years. He is so friendly. He knew what I wanted (4 shot espresso) even before I got to the counter. I managed to update all of my CrazyGuyOnABike blog and upload all of my pictures to Flickr. I even managed to download a new TV show called “The Outlander”. I think I’ll watch them on the ferry.
When we got to the termini, Gottfried Esch was there. He is someone that we met at Cowpuccino’s yesterday. He also knows Joe Campbell, the cyclist we bumped into a few times in the Yukon. Small world. He is a world traveller and photographer. He has some amazing wildlife shots.
We were finally able to board at about 2pm, and the ferry left 3 hours or so late. We’re still expected to be in Port Hardy on time though, which is good I guess. Leaving later in the day means that opportunities for sight-seeing while we travel are limited. It’s been grey and raining anyways, so not a lot to see out there. In the meantime, I am exhausted from the storm last night, and also I think feeling the effects of the motion sickness patch I put behind my ear last night. Hopefully it doesn’t impact my/our ability to ride bikes to Port McNeill tomorrow.
Updated: I’m not sure what it was that kept us up so late tonight. We watched a few episodes of “Outlander”, and snacked, and read, and I think it was about 2:00am when I finally managed to doze off in my seat. Amanda stretched out on the floor in between the row of seats where we were sitting; emulating many of the other passengers. I don’t ever remember falling asleep, but I do remember being woken up from dreams a few times. The boat was rocking, rolling, and reeling in the 3-4 meter swells. So now here we are, about to dock in Port Hardy (0900hrs) and I feel like I haven’t slept in two days. The ride today should be amazing (insert sarcasm).
Amanda writes: We were up super early today to ensure our host could get to her flight. I set the alarm for 5:15 and we were ready to leave by 6:00. We found a quick greasy spoon for breakfast and it was then that we were informed the ferry was delayed by 3.5 hours. The storm that was blowing around last night prevented the ferry from getting to Prince Rupert on time. We weren’t too concerned as we knew it was a possibility and we’re not in a rush. We headed down to the coffee shop we hung out at yesterday. Andrew finished up his www.crazyguyonabike.com posts and I did some more cleanup of my emails.
We were able to board on time and we had pre-made our meals to ensure we wouldn’t get hungry. We met quite a few people that we had been seeing over the last 24 hours as they were also taking the ferry. I was somewhat looking forward to the downtime as I had planned on making a video. Before we left Vancouver I took some footage of my commute to work and some photos of where I worked. My plan was to create a fun video on how I prepped for this upcoming journey and what we were leaving behind. It was only once we were on the ferry that I realized that the pictures I had taken are gone. I was terribly frustrated because I had such a great picture in my mind of what the video would look like and what song I was going to play. I think Andrew and I need to chat about his tendency to delete items he doesn’t think are important. We have plenty of space on our hard drives so there is no reason to delete. So instead of creating a fun video for our readers I will simply go back to blogging.