Day 23 - Wednesday - June 18 - Layover in Prince Rupert

I enjoyed sleeping late for the first time since June 2 while in Shearwater. The Pioneer Hostel, besides having a group dormitory type room, also has some private rooms that they rent for a very reasonable $50 a night. Their bathrooms are very clean, there is a nice den area with a TV so you can catch up on the news, and you can use their pay phone while washing your clothes in their laundry. From here, it is about a 10-minute walk to the marina and it is centrally located to the rest of Prince Rupert.


The Pioneer Hostel in Prince Rupert.

I went looking for a place to have breakfast and found a great little coffee shop named Cowpuccino’s in the Cow Bay District. Yesterday there were no cruise ships in town and I pretty much had the place to myself. Today there were two ships in port and the coffee shop along with everything else in town was packed with tourists.
After dropping off the SD cards from my digital cameras to be copied onto CD’s at the local camera store, I went over to the post office to pick up the box of food I had shipped to myself from Port Hardy. I bought a pre-paid phone card at the local supermarket so I could use the Prince Rupert phone system to call home. After storing my food cache and new supplies in the kayak, I had a great lunch at a little restaurant called La Cucina. Later I picked up the CD’s from the photo shop and mailed them home so I would have a second set of photos in a safe place in case something happened to the SD cards that I kept with me.


The tourist excursion dock in Prince Rupert where I stored my kayak for two nights.

Joe Paolinelli from Skeena Kayaking picked me up at the Pioneer Hostel this evening and we had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant that overlooked the waterfront. After dinner, we took a ride out to Kloyia Bay where Joe does his kayak tours, mostly with tourists from the cruise ships. This one day kayak tour is a good introduction to kayaking in a safe and beautiful location.
This evening was spent re-packing my cleaned clothes and all the gear I had brought up to my room. I called home for what turned out to be the last time until reaching Ketchikan Alaska ten days later.