I always like to go away somewhere for my birthday in May. This year we’d decided to go to Northern Vancouver Island, largely because earlier in the year we had planned to buy a house there. This plan came about for 2 reasons: 1) we saw a Wings Over Canada episode where John Lovelace was shown lots of properties in and around Port McNeill and we were fascinated by the beauty of the area; 2) we really would like to own a house again one day so we were looking at places where we could actually still afford a house, with the view of renting it out until we were ready to retire there.
By the time May came around we had already decided against the house idea, so we just concetrated on having a good vacation. It didn’t get off to a particularly great start, but got better as it went on.
We stayed in Campbell River for 5 nights, from which we drove great distances because we didn’t actually like the town very much (it was too sprawling for my taste). The self-catering apartment we stayed in, Wellcome Inn, was actually really lovely and massive – a bargain at $95 a night. The bathroom was the size of our apartment’s living room/dining room/kitchen combined, and we enjoyed lounging in the double bath each evening with candles and music and wine.
We went to Elk Falls Provincial Park just outside of Campbell River on Highway 28 and hiked a trail that followed the river for a few Km and ended at Elk Falls and Moose Falls – nice, if unspectacular, waterfalls.
Later that day we drove the entirity of scenic Highway 28 west to Gold River – a wonderful setting for a town, but a terrible town for the setting in that it seemed to have no pulse and no soul. We will be staying there for 2 nights during our honeymoon as a base from which to explore Strathcona Provincial Park, so maybe we’ll see the soul of the town then. The highlight of Gold River was driving down to the edge of Nootka Sound and chatting to the Air Nootka pilot who convinced us to come back and do a scenic flight with him in July.
The next day we spent on Quadra Island, one of the Discovery Islands which turned out to be a lot bigger than we imagined. I really liked it there, especially our morning spent entirely alone on Rebecca Spit,getting blown every which way by the wind.
Unfortunately, most of what seemed to be the best bits of the island (i.e. the best hiking spots) were located down badly kept logging roads so we couldn’t take the hire car down them. We tried, but we found it too difficult and dangerous. In the afternoon we took a hike to Morte Lake – I was thoroughly enjoying the hike through dense green forest but SO wasn’t enjoying himself nearly as much for some reason, so after a sit by the lake we headed back the way we came rather than circumnavigating the lake as I had originally planned.
The third day was extremely rainy so we headed to Courtenay, a city I had loved when we had visited in 2004. Back then it was quiet and had a real laid-back atmosphere, but now it has become so unbearably busy with traffic, which is apparently a result of new direct flights from Calgary. This put us on edge and in bad moods that weren’t even lifted by a lunch in our favourite restaurant there – Atlas. After lunch we went to the Tourist Information Office to see if we could find any information on Strathcona Provincial Park but the staff there were so clueless that they hadn’t even heard of it – it’s right on their doorstep! They tried to be helpful but ended up wasting about 30 minutes of our time so unfortunately the bad moods continued.
We ended up taking a long drive all the way to Port Alberni that day because I wanted to see why it has such a bad reputation when, looking on a map, it seems to have such a lovely setting. The answer is that industry has blighted the aesthetics of the inlet. It could be a pretty place, but if it didn’t have the industry then the town wouldn’t exist so it’s a Catch 22. It wasn’t a terrible town by any means, but it was certainly unremarkable aside from the fact that you have to drive the beautiful Highway 4 to get there. The only problem with driving Highway 4 is that Iit makes you want to continue on it all the way to Tofino!
