Miracle Beach. Miraculous beast, too.

We've  been scrambling around rocky beaches; round rocks, barnacled rocks, big, angular rocks, slippery seaweed-coated rocks, and just plain weird rocks (more about them later). Today we decided on a sandy beach. Flat and smooth and easy to walk on,  a treat for sore backs and bruised legs.

We drove down to Miracle Beach Provincial Park.

A viewing platform and fish weir located near the BC Parks office at the entrance to the park provides an interesting opportunity to view the Black Creek, ... Miracle Beach is also a good place for bird watching, and from the beach visitors have excellent views out over the Strait of Georgia.

We crossed the bridge over Black Creek, and saw a trail entrance, so we had to stop and investigate. The trail passes the fish weir and goes down to one of the parking lots; we went only part of the way, under evergreens and mossy maples.

Miner's lettuce. Likes swampy ground, stream beds. Nice addition to salads.

False bugbane, Trautvetteria caroliniensis

High up in the trees on the far side of Black Creek, a raucous argument broke out. I thought it was an angry heron at first; the opening voice had that growly, scratchy sound of a heron's croak, but the response from another tree was more of a squawk. Other birds joined in, squalling and creaking. We peered through the branches and finally saw them; big, black birds. Ravens.

What a racket! I'd thought crows were noisy; not at all; they're soft-voiced compared to their larger cousins. The argument (or maybe it was just a quiet, happy conversation for them; maybe they were even singing) went on and on. They finally moved to trees a bit upstream and subsided into mutterings and occasional creaks.

Our photos were of black shadows behind branches, but later, we came across some of them at a picnic site:

"What? No food here? Where's the cook?"

Young deer beside the trail to the beach.

The beach is wide and sandy; fine, soft, clean sand, even far out from shore. I dug down a full hand's depth without finding even a pebble.

Miracle Beach, looking south.

Tiny live clam.

There are a few rocky spots, covered mostly with sea lettuce. And thousands upon thousands of miniature black snails.

Catching crabs.

Near the picnic area, someone had built a whole menagerie of life-size sand animals. There were fish, a huge octopus, a turtle, a small killer whale, a shark head bursting out of the sand, fully equipped with sharp broken shell teeth. And a crocodile, "floating" in sand:

Far from home.

The body stretched back a good six feet. His teeth were blue mussel shells.