Several months ago, Dale started planning an RV trip to Vancouver Island and I booked a reservation for Monday, May 23, on the ferry from Vancouver’s terminal at Tsawwassen to start the trip. The end of May is the beginning of the high tourist season on Vancouver Island and reservations were recommended. I chose the … Continue reading →

If you look closely at the map of Vancouver Island in my last post, you’ll see that most of the road network runs north-south along the eastern coast of the Island, from Victoria on the south, through Nanaimo, Courtenay and Campbell River, ending at Port Hardy in the north. There are no roads running the … Continue reading →

Tuesday started off looking like a cold, windy, overcast day – perfect for a walk along the coast in search of a lighthouse. So, off we went, driving 25 miles south to the village of Ucluelet, settled in 1870 as a trading post catering to sealers. Ucluelet (pronounced, “you-clue-let”) sounded to me like an aboriginal … Continue reading →

I mentioned in my last post that this part of Vancouver Island is a surfer’s paradise. So much so that one of the tourist maps we picked up at the visitor’s center turned out to be a map of all the best surfing spots and beaches. There are several of them and most are within … Continue reading →

After spending a couple hours watching the surfers, we decided to head back to the car for an off-road drive to the Norm Godfrey Nature Trail near the northwest end of Kennedy Lake, six miles on logging roads. This nature trail boardwalk through an old-growth forest is not in any of the guidebooks or tourist … Continue reading →

We scheduled our day so that we would end up back at the beach at low tide. Dale had discovered during her planning for this trip that there’s an offshore island that’s accessible from the Chesterman beaches via a sand spit that is high and dry when the tide is out. The island is called … Continue reading →

The wind died down slightly overnight, although the surf continued, due to the fact that the wave action along this coast is mostly from swells, rather than being generated by local winds. After lunch, we headed back down to Long Beach to walk its length. As soon as we walked out on the beach we … Continue reading →

We spent the day driving from Tofino on the Pacific coast, over the Vancouver Island Mountain Range to Parksville on the Strait of Georgia on the east coast, then north on BC19 to Campbell River. From Port Alberni to Campbell River, the road is mostly a modern 4-lane divided highway that looks like this: We … Continue reading →

The forecast for this Memorial Day weekend on Vancouver Island is warm and sunny, in the high 70s. Of course, Memorial Day finds its origins in the American Civil War, so it’s not an observed holiday here in Canada; lucky for us, since that means it won’t be a busy holiday weekend. With temperatures expected … Continue reading →

The Kwakwaka’wakw people, also known as the Kwakiutl, are the indigenous people of northern Vancouver Island. In the U.S.A., we would call these people “Indians” or “Native Americans,” but in Canada, they are collectively referred to as the people of the First Nations. The term Indian here (according to the Canadian Encyclopedia) is “considered outdated … Continue reading →

The ferry to Alert Bay leaves from Port McNeill on Vancouver Island several times each day. Its typical route is: Port McNeill to Alert Bay; return to Port McNeill; Port McNeill to Sointula; return to Port McNeill. Rinse, repeat. But if, like Dale, you do your research, you can buy a single round-trip ticket to … Continue reading →

The day after we visited Alert Bay and Sointula, we went on an excursion in search of Grizzly Bears with Tide Rip Tours. Their boats leave from Telegraph Cove (which is just east of Port McNeill) and head up Knight Inlet in search of bears feeding along the littoral zone. The typical tour heads to … Continue reading →

After leaving Cluxewe following our Grizzly Bear excursion, we spent an entire day driving to the opposite end of Vancouver Island, just south of Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, to Pedder Bay. We wanted to be close enough to Victoria to make a day trip there, but far enough away to be out of … Continue reading →