Breathing Space: French Beach -- west coast of Vancouver Island British Columbia

Every summer Ruthie and I go camping for a week and have a wonderful time just being in nature and doing a few things such as:

rock collecting

sending out a message in a bottle

rock art

campfires

hikes

beach days

sand castles

writing in the sand

wave jumping

ocean swimming

Here are some photos of our Breathing Space week in nature at French Beach, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia last July 2012. 

 Ruthie took this photo looking up a Douglas Fir tree. Always love adding her photos into this 'Breathing Space' blog. :)

 The trail from out campside down to the beach.

 Wonderful contrast of a leaf floating in a dark stream.

 We could not just sit and be with these rocks. We had to stack them and make art with them!!!

 God always makes the best art and inspires me every time. 

 Huge sea  anenomies (sp?) and barnacles the size of a child's hand - huge! So much richness of sea life on the west coast to see in the tide pools. Hours of looking into these worlds!

 We decied to make a line of rocks from the top of the beach to the shore this day.

 Endless fun by the fire. Especially on the last night when we burned all the remaining fire wood! The park ranger stopped by to make sure "everything was OK". !!! Everything was fine. We just had a super big fire!!!!

My current fav picture of us! We took five pictures to get this. All of the first five, I held the camera and half of my face is cut out of all of them, then Ruthie told me she could do it better and took this one first try!!!

 Beach art, making inukshucks on logs. Little stone status. Can be challenging balancing them!

 Ruthie joined forces with another familiy and made the sand casttle of a a life time. Here she is with the little boy building a barrier to stop the ocean from coming in and destroying their wonderful creation!

 Sand Casttle extravaganza closer up!

 OK, we got a bit obsessed with the rock art! What can I say. I had to make some art that week!!!

 Just in love with how the west coast rainforest meets the beach. So much beauty in the details.

 I love how when yoiu are in nature and camping you don't have to do  anything.  Just be there and the earth, air, water, nature around  you supports you, embraces you, calms you, heals you, gives you exactly what you need just by being there.

 These last two pictures are  from a day trip we took a little further north up the west coast from French beach. It's called Mystic beach and for about a 40 minute hike we got there and enjoyed amazing weather, sand, a rope swing, picnic by the sea and...

this beautiful fresh water waterfall falling straight from above onto the beach and then flowing into the ocean. Yes we stood under it and had a shower! wonderful!