{"id":8290,"date":"2016-06-25T22:27:47","date_gmt":"2016-06-26T05:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/an-early-fathers-day-present\/"},"modified":"2023-03-31T10:27:07","modified_gmt":"2023-03-31T17:27:07","slug":"an-early-fathers-day-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/blog\/an-early-fathers-day-present\/","title":{"rendered":"An Early Father&#8217;s Day Present &#8211; by Mike Manson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">This past weekend we booked ourselves onto a wonderful overnight trip aboard the Misty Isles, a locally owned boat that offers charters and excursions. The first day we headed to Mitlenatch Island, an 88 Acre rocky island that my grandparents homesteaded on in 1898. Today the island is owned by BC Parks and is a mecca for nesting birds, sea-lions and wildflowers. Our timing was perfect as we saw all.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3088\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3088\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3088 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/1-p1030232-1-Mittlenatch.jpg\" alt=\"1-p1030232-1-Mittlenatch\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3088\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Mittlenatch Island<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">These are a pack of young male Steller sea-lions. We estimated their numbers at over 100. They are gathered here as they have been excluded from breeding and from their midst a Beach Master or dominant male will be selected, who\u00a0will go on to have his own harem. It was clear to us why they are called sea-lions as we listened to their roaring and growling like lions. At maturity the males can reach over 2000 lbs.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3089\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3089\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3089 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/2-p1030170-2-seals.jpg\" alt=\"2-p1030170-2-seals\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3089\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Steller sea-lions<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The cormorants are nesting on cliff faces where they build a nest from seaweed and sticks and presumably their droppings (guano) to hold it all together and cement it to the rock.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3090\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3090\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3090 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/3-p1030210-cormorants.jpg\" alt=\"3-p1030210-cormorants\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3090\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cormorants<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Some of the cormorants have beautiful iridescent colours of greeny-purple.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3091\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3091\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3091 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/4-p1030205-1-cormorants.jpg\" alt=\"4-p1030205-1-cormorants\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3091\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Cormorants<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Mitlenatch is the northernmost place where Prickly Pear Cactus is found and we caught it as it is beginning to flower.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3092\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3092\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3092 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/5-p1030133-prickly-cactus.jpg\" alt=\"5-p1030133-prickly-cactus\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3092\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Prickly Pear Cactus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The second leg of our journey was to the Twin Islands, a mysterious place, privately owned, that\u00a0has always been off-limits to the public until a recent change of ownership. Queen Elizabeth stayed here in the lodge on two occasions, in 1967 and in 1994. We overnighted in the lodge and what a treat it was!<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3093\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3093\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3093 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/6-p1030254-twin-island-dining.jpg\" alt=\"6-p1030254-twin-island-dining\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3093\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Twin Islands Lodge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_3094\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3094\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-3094 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/7-p1030241-twin-island-dining.jpg\" alt=\"7-p1030241-twin-island-dining\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3094\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Twin Islands Lodge &#8211; Dining area<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We were fed very well and enjoyed many great stories. And I had a few stories of my own including the murder mystery from 1915 (posted a few years ago on blog in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/sunnybraefarm.wordpress.com\">https:\/\/sunnybraefarm.wordpress.com<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This past weekend we booked ourselves onto a wonderful overnight trip aboard the Misty Isles, a locally owned boat that offers charters and excursions. The first day we headed to Mitlenatch Island, an 88 Acre rocky island that my grandparents homesteaded on in 1898. Today the island is owned by BC Parks and is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":8307,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[14,12,30,58,59,17,26,18],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11272,"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8290\/revisions\/11272"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cortesmuseum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}