Wandering a Seussian landscape on Vancouver Island's Coast
Sense Memory from a Vancouver Island road trip in 2018
When: September 2018
Where: Shorepine Bog Trail at Pacific Rim National Park Reserve on Vancouver Island
Road Trip: South Vancouver Island
What: walking
Accompaniment: Border on Border by Night Moves
We almost didn't go on the walk. Tantalizing name or not, I was tired and ready to call it a day. My husband, remembering how excited I'd been when we drove past the sign earlier, insisted we go. It was less than a mile. It would only take a minute.
We followed the boardwalk from the trail out to the bog, and I was instantly enchanted. It was unlike anywhere I'd ever been. The stunted shore pines looked straight out of a Dr. Seuss landscape. Each tree, alive or dead, was a sculpture. Some were little more than a tall stalk topped with a tuft of foliage. Others had curved arms, perfectly spaced by the patterns of light and growth. Pale lichen bunched on the wood. Vaguely sinister sharp-tipped snags loomed over the trail.
In an apoplexy of delight, I followed my husband around the loop, stopping constantly to take photos even knowing I could never capture the experience of the bog and scampering to catch up. Blue sky showed through the clouds after days of rain, but the clouds moved in as we walked, shifting faster than I could keep up with in my photos. It may have been less than a mile, but it felt like we looked out across a vast area, no other visitors nearby and the boardwalk hidden by vegetation.
When was that last, extra stop a highlight of your trip?
South Vancouver Island Road Trip
I decided a few years ago that I don't like all-day drives, so I try to limit each day's driving to four or five hours if I can. This trip could be done in fewer days with longer days of driving. The Anacortes ferry was great, but if you weren't hitting Victoria / Butchart Gardens you could drive to Vancouver and ferry straight to Nanaimo instead. (I didn't want to risk getting stuck in traffic at the border and missing our ferry, scarred by some memories from college in Bellingham.) A "fun" part of road tripping in Canada is relying on printed maps again instead of Google Maps because we didn't want to pay extra data charges 😂 No stressful moments figuring out where we were and how to get anywhere, no sir, none at all.
We stayed at the Brentwood Bay Resort after getting off the ferry and adored it. We pulled up and I was like, we can't afford this place, even though I'd gotten a good deal. I was the awkward person who, when offered a glass of local cider at check-in, asked if it was free. 😅
Nanaimo had a cute waterfront with lovely plantings and a cutesy downtown with some trendy restaurants (and a pretty bad drug problem), but I'd say no need to spend more than a night there.
Driving from Nanaimo to Ucluelet took several hours, but much of it passed through gorgeous scenery that made the time fly. The internet made out that the road to Ucluelet was the gnarliest you'd ever drive and you were taking your life into your hands, but it was a non-event. I made us get new tires before we went (we were due), but the road was mostly in great condition save a bit under construction.
Focus on the Western Coast
We camped at Pacific Rim National Park Preserve, at a campsite about midway along Long Beach. The park is between two small towns, Ucluelet and Tofino, both with fairly expensive lodging. It rained every day, which made camping a little blah, and one night we drove down to Ucluelet in desperation to get some hot food and get out of the rain. We found one restaurant, and everyone else who wanted to eat out in town was there. The wait was so long for a booth that the server begged us to share a table with an older Canadian couple we'd been chatting with while we waited.
Despite the rain, the whole area was fantastic and we could have spent much longer than the three nights I was able to snag a campsite. Highly recommend despite the difficulty in getting out there.
Tofino has pumped a lot of money into prettying up the town and I was all over their public infrastructure and cute shops and public art, though it's much more tourist-y than Ucluelet. The Tofino Botanical Garden was a charming world of its own, with lighthearted sculpture art and structures, lively resident fowl, and an adorable cozy teahouse I could have hung out at for hours. In fact-checking this, I see they have a guesthouse — I would try to stay there if we went back.
Schooner's Cove at low tide was cool to explore, plus had an interesting walk through the woods to reach. The Ucluelet Lighthouse Walk had pretty views and interesting shipwreck history.