Rob-n-Hild, oot and aboot eh? Sorry - 2022

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Nanaimo - Tofino (444 km. 7 hrs. Max elevation 413)

Rob remembered another poem that fit today's weather very well:

Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not
Whether the weather be cold, or whether the weather be hot
We'll weather the weather, whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not

We were excited about heading west towards Tofino and Ucluelet this morning. The sunrise was beauiful and a great way to wake up. Our first stop was at Little Qualicum River park. A quick look around - and more importantly a bio-break! This was going to be a day of looking in awe at trees. To start off with, what's with the trees missing their bark? Some research tells us that this is an Arbutus tree whose bark peels off naturally. This other tree had a serious cancer-like growth - possibly a crown gall typically caused by the bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens.

As soon as we started climbing across the mountains, it started raining. Spoiler alert - it didn't stop raining until we returned across the mountains again! At Cameron lake we were met with rain and fog, but got to enjoy the towering trees on both sides of the road - dwarfing all the cars zooming by.

All this sogginess did not invite us to take many photos - so we zoomed through to Port Alberni (which actually is at the end of a very long fjord) - drove straight through and on to the next mountain. And that's when the roadworks started. Oh-oh! All along Kennedy Lake they were upgrading the road - making it wider by the looks of things. That meant running a contra-flow with cars in one direction at a time. On top of that they stopped all traffic for 30-40 minutes so the poor guys could actually get some work done. We got to wait 50 minutes for our turn to drive the higgledy-piggeldy route through muddy gravel tracks and traffic cones. Still, the line-up of cars waiting to travel east was much much longer.

We also include some of the funnier-looking road signs we have seen. Man on bike crossing railway line (or cattle grid). Man on bike driving on rough gravel road (or metal bridge). Angry truck coming in from the right...

We made it to Tofino on the west coast of the island just in time for lunch. Our western-most point on our trip - 125 degrees west. It reminded us of trying to find parking in St. Ives. In the end we did manage to find a spot, and headed to the Sobo restaurant as recommended by Janet (that is Nanaimo-Janet, not Norway-Janet even if they are both Rygnestads). The food was delicious. We had the best smoked salmon choder with salad and corn bread. It helped after having walked around in the pouring rain.

Our second to-do-list item in Tofino was to visit the Roy Henry Vickers gallery. He is a renowned Canadian First Nations artist. His paintings are great and we visited in the hope that they had reproductions of two of our favourite paintings: "Prospect Lake" and "Kitkatla Sunset". He is a very sought-after artist - so "sold out" was the grim reply. We don't want to put copies of his valuable paintings here, but you can view them on his website. At least we came away with his 2022 calendar featuring many other of his paintings:
Prospect Lake
Kitkatla Sunset

Next we stopped in Pacific Rim National Park to walk the Rainforest Trail - a boardwalk 1 km loop. The boardwalk went up and down many stairs and was very entertaining. Lots of information posters to keep us looking and learning. Oh yes - and raining a fine fine mist. Thank goodness for Helly Hansen raingear!

The boardwalk through the rainforest were both functional and beautiful.

As you can see, the trees were absolutely enormous. Rob illustrates just how big by stretching his arms way out. We tried to take vertical panorama shots to show how tall the trees are, but you kind of lose track of them when you look up. And on top of that your camera lens just gets rained on when you look up!!

Thank you, Nanaimo-Janet, for recommending that we go down to Wickaninnish Beach rather than Long Beach. You are right that it is spectacular. There was a picnic area and much much driftwood. The beach was so long and wild. We got to touch the Pacific Ocean (no toes, just fingers). Rob for the first time. Hild for the first time since 1990 (La Jolla, California).

We also walked the Shorepine Bog Trail near Wickaninnish. Another boardwalk - thank you! These forests are not really navigable without some poor soul having built a boardwalk for you. And as Hege pointed out - everyone would be poor after buliding a boardwalk now with the lumber prices what they are!!

The marshes looked a lot like those we find in the mountains around Rygnestad in Norway. Some of the plants are a bit more exotic, but we felt right at home. Oh yeah - and we don't have any boardwalks there.

The trees are really short and gnarly and twisted. Looks like it is a rough place to try to survive.

In Ucluelet we ended up driving out to the lighthouse at the southern-most tip. The lighthouse was initially built in 1906, but it blew down. So the current one was built in 1915. It used a kerosene lamp and two stainless steel mirrors. Until 1961 the lamp and mirrors were floating in a mercury bath basin and required hand-cranking every 8 hours! Now that is labour intensive and also a bit of a worry to have mercury floating about...

We also learnt that the strange moaning sound we could hear intermittently was the sound from the "whistle buoy" rather than the more standard "bell buoy". This lead to a discussion of what would drive us to madness first - a moaning whistle or a dinging bell? The jury is still out.

We proceeded past the lighthouse to complete the Wild Pacific Trail - or at least the part of it that went around this peninsula. Some of the waters where truly wild and energetic, while other like on Little Beach were calm and soothing. The most fantastic thing was that it didn't rain in Ucluelet.

Ahead of us was the dreaded return along Kennedy Lake and its roadworks. Were we going to be waiting for an hour to pass? We were prepared for the worst - and we got the best. When arriving at the road block we were car number 5 and we waited for only 5 minutes! Lucky us. Off we went back across the mountains, through Port Alberni (still no photos). It started raining/misting again as soon as we got into the mountains.

We stopped briefly at Taylor River rest stop. It doesn't look like much, but a magazine article from Vivan suggested that a quick detour would be worth it. So we followed instructoins to park and head towards the river. We figure that if the sun had been out, the charming pool of water and bonfire location would look more like the magazine (on the right) and not as rainy and dreary as ours (on the left)...

Almost back home in Nanaimo and we stopped at Cathedral Grove where many giant trees are 800 years old, and the young ones are only (!) 300 years old. What a fun walk that was. Rob, again posing with the biggest tree. This tree is 76 metres tall - higher than the leaning tower of Pisa - about as high as our condo in Ottawa. We couldn't see the top. It is 800 years old, which means it was already 300 years old when Christopher Columbus came to North America in 1492.

Many trees have fallen over and given space to new trees. The fallen-over dead trees are called nurse logs as they nurse much life both plants, insects, and bacteria.

A fast-flowing creek was winding itself through the area. So calming to watch and wind down from an eventful day.

On our way to the hotel we took a detour through Coombs where they run goats on the roof of the country store! Someone's got to "mow" the roof, and goats are good at that. They even seemed to have a little houes on top of the roof too. We just don't understand why the goats don't just jump down and run off to somewhere more fun. We've seen video of Hege's crazy goats that are up and down everywhere all the time!

May/June 2022

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