SATURDAY 6TH – FATHER’S DAY SUNDAY IN AUSTRALIA

This photo is ironically idyillic. It is a photo taken at Port Albernie in a very pleasant setting showing the extensive water side industry.

Today was one of those really pleasant days where we did so much that I am struggling to remember what we did. Our first chore was to check the gas tank. The gauge showed it to be completely empty but it turned out to be half full. We wouldn’t want to run out of hot water and lose the capacity to keep the fridge cool if we camp somewhere without power.

We then headed for the west side of the island. On the way, we stopped off at a series of waterfalls the name of which we can’t remember because they weren’t on the map we were using but they were among the best we have seen.

Our next stop was at Cathedral Grove to see the largest Douglas Fir tree in Canada, estimated to be 800 years old. As you would expect, it was quite large and those around it were not much smaller.

From there we went to Port Albernie which, although located about 100 klms from the west coast is on a salt water estuary linked to the west coast and one of those towns which has a very modern aspect to counter balance the very historical aspect. The steam train is obviously part of the historical aspect.

We tried to find the famous water bomber base on Lake Sproat but failed. We expect to be more successful on our way back east tomorrow.

We are now camped at Mackenzie’s Beach at Torofino on the west coast. This is another of those camp sites in a spectacular location but with really poor facilities. That doesn’t matter much because we are self contained but, at $58 for the site for the night, it is by far the most expensive we have stayed in. We are at the Byron Bay of Vancouver Island with a very impressive beach (by their standards) at our door step.

Shorts and tee shirt weather today and Trish even went for a paddle but commented that the water is much colder than any we would contemplate swimming in.

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.

THURSDAY 4TH – VICTORIA – WELL WORTH A VISIT

Not a lot to say tonight. What I thought I would do is give a pictorial representation of what we have done since arriving in Victoria a little over 24 hours ago. I am doing this more for our benefit than yours so that we will be able to remind ourselves what we did. The only venues we visited which I can’t represent photographically are Minature World, a very clever representation of various aspects of Canadian history and other matters and, the very nice harbourside restaurant where we dined last night.

Our first stop in Victoria yesterday afternoon, before we parked for the duration was at Craigdarroch Castle. It is promoted as a landmark of note but seems to serve no useful function other than as a testament to the opulence of the Dunsmuir family built on the highest hill in Victoria. It’s the photo above.

We did a Hippo Tour yesterday afternoon, the Victorian equivalent of the Gold Coast aquaduck, a great way to get an orientation of the city both on land and on the harbour.

This afternoon, we did a Parliament House tour where we learnt that the Canadian Parliamentary system is remarkably similar to ours.

That was after spending several hours at the B C Museum which is really well done and has some remarkably life like exhibits. It also has an Imax theatre where we saw a film on the construction of the Rocky Mountain railway featuring the engineering challenges in constructing the railway in precisely the country through which we have been travelling for the last week.

To conclude our Victoria experience, we were brought home by one of the cute little ferries which ply the harbour.

You saw the photo in the previous post of the floatplane landing. We are told that there is an average of 120 aircraft movements to and from the harbour each day. Judging by the number which pass over our heads here in the RV park as they come in to land, that’s likely to be right.

We’re on the road again tomorrow for the last week of our motor home adventure.

WEDNESDAY 3RD – VICTORIA

Note the sunshine in the photos today. We woke this morning at our idyllic lake side campsite to the sound of no rain on the roof.

We made our way to Tswassen on the mainland where we boarded a ferry for Swarz Bay on Vancouver Island. We are now very comfortably located at the nearest RV park to downtown Victoria being the RV park located within Westbay Marine village on the other side of the harbour. 

Our view this evening is not of an idyllic lake. It is of a group of floating homes located just behind us - a rather novel residential arrangement. It reminds us of the park we stayed in at Venice, similarly located across a body of water from the main action and accessible by ferry. 

We did the three kilometre harbour side walk to town this afternoon and entertained ourselves for several hours. Having now obtained an understanding of the geography of Victoria, we will give it a more thorough going over tomorrow.

We plan on staying here tomorrow night and then heading north to explore the rest of the island. It looks to have plenty of spectacular scenery.

TUESDAY 2ND – A LAZY DAY TODAY

If we drove directly from where we spent last night at Hope to where we are now, it would have taken us approximately an hour but, of course, we found some distractions along the way.

We are now back in our favourite environment, a National Park campground beside a lake with no immediate neighbours – Lake Cultus. The photo below is the view of the lake from our campsite.

This morning we walked from our campsite to the Othello Tunnels in the Coquihalla Canyon Provincial Park through which the Kettle Valley Railway ran between 1916 and 1959. It must have been an extraordinary engineering feat in 1916 to carve the tunnels and build the bridges between them.

From there we dropped into Harrison Hot Springs. That’s the name of the town. To access any springs, you have to be a guest of the upmarket Harrison Hot Springs Resort and Spa or join the common people in the town’s public pool which is also filled with the heated spring water. Again, we gave that a miss. The town itself has a spectacular lake setting and is very like Noosa although today, being a miserable wet day, it was very quiet.

We are booked on the 11:00am ferry tomorrow to take us over to Vancouver Island which we will explore until next Tuesday when we return to the mainland in readiness to surrender the motorhome and board the cruise ship on Wednesday.

MONDAY 1ST – HEADING SOUTH

Driving day today. We are now at the Othello Tunnels Campground just outside Hope, about 150 klms from Vancouver. Five tunnels were built through solid granite cliffs between 1911 and 1916 to complete the Kettle Valley Railway which closed in 1959 because of constant washouts, snow and rockslides. They are now a tourist attraction. We will be checking them out in the morning.

Today’s point of interest was Hells Gate. It is where the Fraser River, the main watercourse draining much of British Columbia, passes through a very narrow gorge which caused great challenges to the explorer Simon Fraser after which the river and the Fraser Canyon along which the river flows north of Hope is named. The gorge through which the water flows is 30 metres wide, the water depth is estimated to be 30 metres and the amount of water flowing is twice the volume of Niagara Falls at spring run off.

There is a cable car which takes you from the highway 800 feet above to the river level below. To assist the salmon which are generally not otherwise able to get through the raging current, a system of sophisticated fishways exists.

Our general plan is to head over to Vancouver Island but we are not sure when.

SATURDAY 30TH & SUNDAY 31ST – BEAR HUNTING

This photo is taken across Quesnel Lake towards the mouth of the Mitchell River. Note the gathering rain clouds.

Our bear hunting weekend turned into something of an anticlimax in that, while we had a great adventure, the bears simply didn’t cooperate. Our guides, Ryan on Saturday, and Gary on Sunday had really hard days at the office.

Fortunately, so that they could preserve some credibility, we did see a black bear on Saturday. You have seen the photo. He was about 300 metres away and, whether he got wind that we were there or something else spooked him we don’t know, but he disappeared into the forest never to be seen again.

Apart from the fact that we had to get up for a 5:00am breakfast both mornings, the lodge was fun in that, although we slept in our motorhome, we had fully catered meals with the other guests and got to swap war stories.

The Saturday exercise consisted of driving and walking in various rural areas, mostly in distant parts of privately owned property they had permission to enter. Apart from the one sighting of the bear, it was a long day waiting for something exciting to happen with some other wildlife appearing occasionally.

Sunday was more interesting in that we started by travelling for one and a half hours in Gary’s runabout along Quesnel Lake and then swapping to his jet outboard powered tinnie for a 30 minute run up the Mitchell River until we could go no further because of a log jam completely blocking it. We then settled in to a patient exercise of drifting down the river and/or waiting tied to a tree for a bear to appear – but it never did. We patiently spent seven hours in the little open boat enduring periodic rain showers BUT NOTHING HAPPENED. Poor Gary was trying so hard to find a bear but they wouldn’t cooperate. Fortunately our wet weather gear stood up to the challenge and we remained dry and warm notwithstanding the weather.

We thoroughly enjoyed the experience and learnt a lot about bear behaviour but we won’t be hurrying back.