FRIDAY 5TH – VANCOUVER ISLAND

How time flies when you’re having fun. It’s Friday again already. The photo above is of Port Renfrew where some seriously impressive fish were being cleaned.

Today we spent a long time driving a scenic and circuitous route but didn’t get very far. We are just south of Chemainus, about an hour north of Victoria if you drove direct, but of course we didn’t. Our route was more circuitous than scenic but that’s only because, having seen the spectacular scenery of the Rockies, most other scenery struggles to compete.

We are camped in our usual preferred rustic environment but not in a National Park campground tonight. We are in a privately run one but very well set out with individual forested sites. The campground backs on to a very picturesque river where somebody had built the stone structure seen below.

The highlight of the day was the Kelsol trestle, originally built in 1920. It is described as one of the tallest free standing and most spectacular rail trestle structures in the world. It ceased to be used as a railway in 1979 and lay abandoned until 2008 when it was restored for pedestrian and cycle use. It is now part of a lengthy bikeway using the former railway corridor and a tourist attraction in its own right.

We encountered some wildlife today but not of the very exciting variety. There are a large population of rabbits here at the campground. The snake was sunning in the middle of the track at the Kelsol trestle. Where are the bears?

More meandering tomorrow.