Roadside waterfall

I went looking for roadside waterfalls alongside Buttle Lake, and found rainbows.

As first seen. All the rock faces, with or without waterfalls, were soaked and shiny.

Face on. Dropping down the rock in a series of small steps. With a faint double rainbow.

Young evergreen having a shower.

Up top. Later, from a distance, I could see the rocks above and behind this; the waterfall came down from far above.

With my back to the sun. The second rainbow is very faint.

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Después de varios dias de lluvia, fui a buscar cataratas al lado de la carretera, y encontré arcos iris.

1. Una catarata a primera vista. Aun donde no había cataratas, todas las rocas estaban bien mojadas, y brillaban.
2. De cara a esta catarata, con arco iris doble.
3. Un arbolito se toma una ducha.
4. La catarata cae desde lo más alto de las piedras. Más tarde, a una distancia, podía ver más del cerro, atrás y arriba de lo visto desde el pie de la catarata; el agua cae desde la cima.
5. Al pie de la catarata con espaldas al sol. El segundo arco iris apenas se puede descubrir.

Barely made it

I ran out on a last-minute errand, leaving the camera behind. And on my way home there was a triple rainbow, three full bands, the entire bow showing, with two pots of gold, one behind my house, one on Quadra Island.

And me without a camera!

I got home, ran for the pocket camera, since the big one needed a lens change - no time for that!

7 minutes to sundown, and the tail end of the rainbow over the museum woods.

The rest of the rainbow had faded. And that pot seems to have moved a few blocks away. Oh, well.

Down at the pier, the crowds were settling in to wait for the fireworks; I was happy on my empty street with a rainbow and orange clouds.

Last gasp. Sunset in 6 minutes.

A Skywatch post.

It's amazing

... how a few stray rays of sunlight can perk up a rainy bit of town ...

... even with all the wires and posts.

I stopped at the first gap between the houses when the rainbow appeared. I took a few quick photos, then headed for the shore for a clear shot. By the time I'd reached it, less than 4 minutes later, the rainbows had disappeared, and it was raining again.

A Skywatch post.

Between the raindrops

If you don't like BC fall weather, wait a minute. Today it rained, changed its mind, blew a bit, rained again. A fog settled down, then lifted, then the rain came back. Just before sunset, the sun popped in for a few minutes, and made a rainbow.

6:01. Sunset was due in 18 minutes.

5 minutes later. The other end of the rainbow, over Quadra Island. It was starting to rain again.

Looking back west; for a few minutes, the sky was blue.

For the morning, they're promising us 100% chance of rain, and blustery winds. Sounds about right.

A Skywatch post.

Rainbow weighed down by gravity?

I've never seen this before.

Rainbow over Quadra Island.

At first, I thought there was a fire behind the hills of Quadra Island, before I noticed the colours. If you look closely, there's a mere hint of the rest of the rainbow above, merging into the cloud cover. There was no other end visible.

A Skywatch post.

Flunking logic class

Complaining works. Sometimes*. I grumbled about the rain yesterday, and a few hours later, the sun came out. There was even a rainbow!

I dropped everything and went to look.

Sun and shadow. With a cormorant on a rock. The sun is favouring Quadra Island, not us.

There's a pot of gold there, somewhere at the bottom of the channel. The dotted line is where the current fights with itself as the tide changes.

*Confirmation bias strikes again!**
**And post hoc ergo propter hoc, too.***
***That's ignoring all the times I grumble at the weather, and it just keeps on raining.

Footloose

The weather has changed. Every day this week, we've had at least some sunshine, and only an occasional burst of rain. And to make it even better, by Tuesday, I had crossed off almost everything on my To-Do list for the week. Time to hit the road!

So I drove north, to Woss (130 km, pop. 200, in the middle of nowhere), then home again. Then west, to Gold River and the coast beyond (100 km). Tomorrow, if the weather holds, I'll explore a road across the river, where there's another earth dam.

And so far, I've collected over 100 photos to process and post, as time permits. Mountains and snowcaps, fungi and waterfalls, tugboats and trees, coming up.

Rainbow in the next valley; it's hailing over there. Halfway home from Woss.

Next; some of the spectacular scenery on the Woss road.

Double rainbow

A rainy afternoon ended with a burst of brilliant sunshine from underneath the rainclouds. I crossed two bridges watching this display, and finally pulled off the highway where I found a half-decent shoulder so I could take some photos. The outer rainbow was already fading; it had been almost as bright as the inner one as I crossed the first bridge.

Left half of rainbow, through the open window.

Left half of the rainbow, through the windshield.

I could have taken a single photo of the whole thing, if I'd just been a little less picky about wet feet. The "half-decent shoulder" was in a deep puddle.

Blogroll surfing

I haven't been able to settle down to anything today. I've been a scatter-brain, starting tasks and dropping them, reading half a short story and abandoning it, burning my soup, sorting a few photos and giving up, idly checking random blogs. At least that was productive; I found some interesting posts on my blogrolls. Check these out:

• Adrian Thysse's new gallery: On the Head of a Pin.

My favourite, I think, is this one.

• Canada goose nesting site with a view. Rock, Paper, Lizard. 

• Robin Andrea looks at very pink rainbows. Sunset Rainbow.

• Redpoll, Osprey, and Mink, by PSYL in Peterborough.

• Blackmailing half-grown chicks. 10,000 Birds. I think I've seen something like this behaviour in crows.

• "... a sky full of poo ..." Christopher Taylor on Dung Beetles.

• And Julie Zickefoose feeds a bat. With video.

And here's one of my very tiny orange-limbed hermits:

"Punkin" in an algae-covered periwinkle shell, on a base of broken barnacles.

Welcoming committee

Some people travel sensibly, going from point to point without side trips, and arrive fresh and ready to boogie. We don't. We took a day and a half to drive almost 200 km, from Delta to Campbell River. We arrived tired out, hungry, stiff, and with over 500 new photos in the cameras.

And we'd barely unpacked, when we bundled up and limped down to "our" beach, 102 wet, rickety steps down the cliff.

Before the rain chased us back up (102 again, going up. Ouch!), we met a few interesting crabs:

A tiny, "marbled" crab. He was hiding under that piece of sea lettuce until I pulled it away.

Laurie calls this a "Panda crab". It's probably a shore crab; their colour and pattern can be varied.About 1 cm. across the carapace.

This dark shore crab was tiny; compare to the small barnacles. Look closely; one of the legs is a transparent gold, probably a replacement.

There are two crabs here. Can you see them?

And as we hurried back, to get the cameras out of the rain, the sun came out again, and gave us this rainbow:

The pot of gold is at Oyster Bay.

We felt thoroughly welcomed.

No time for a walk today, but ...

Looking up from my desk, I see:

Rhododendrons and bees.
Butterflies. A Swallow-tail, Papilo rutulus.
Just the butterfly. Who flew away when I took one step closer.
Rainbows, double.
And back to work.