Day 5

Tuesday, Sept. 4 - Day 5

We're back on the mainland today. Had an awesome time on the island (as usual) at what is probably the best/nicest/awesomtasticest (yes, I made that word up) campsite we've ever stayed at, the Mussel Beach Campground. Turning off the highway before Ucluelet we had about 3 km of nicely paved road followed by about 5 or 6 km of "rough road" (read: there's some hardpacked gravel to fill in the spots between the pot holes)

We got there around 7:00 or so on Friday, extremely tired. Thursday night/Friday morning saw the 2 of us getting a grand total of 4.5 hours of sleep due to an amazing amount of oversight in how long it takes to actually clean out an apartment. We ended up not leaving the apartment until 11:30 am and thought, with it being the long weekend, that we'd be out of luck with catching an early enough ferry to let us get across the island before dark. We got into line at 12:30 and caught the 12:50 ferry!

We made a quick stop at Cathedral Grove in the middle of the island. Gorgeous place, with enormous, ancient trees and a beautiful lake off the end.





Got to the site and had a choice of sites. Ended up going with one that was essentially a private beach site (technically the beach was shared, but there was enough of a divide between us and our neighbours that we didn't see them unless they were out walking on the rocks) and set the tent up right there on the sand.





Saturday we got up, had coffee on the beach and looked around (it was a little dark the night before). Site faced South-South-East with a view of the Ucluelet lighthouse. There wasn't much sand for a beach and swimming was out of the question as it was pretty much solid rocks for about 100 meters, but it was gorgeous nonetheless.

At noon we headed out to find some surfboards so that we could live up to our promises from the previous post. We checked 2 or 3 places in Tofino before we found one that had any boards left. We rented the boards for 24 hours (actually 26 because the guy felt guilty about making us wait while he fixed a fin on Colleen's board...on an aside, he looked like one of the hobbits from Lord of the Rings...Merry or Pippin, can't remember who's who). We went down to the beach and promptly proceeded to lose all sensation in our feet. The day's surfing went as follows (actually so did the next day's):

Colleen:
Catch a wave, don't quite get up, fall
Catch a wave, get up for half a second, fall
Catch a wave, get up, ride the wave to shore looking like a rockstar, make a nice dismount, ta da!

Jeff:
Get run over by a wave
Get run over by a wave
Catch a wave, get run over by said wave
Somehow throw out shoulder walking back out to catch another wave
Catch a wave, ride it most of the way to shore, have the nose of the board go under, get run over by the wave
Catch a wave, decide it's time to get up, fall off side of board
Catch a wave, get up for approximately 1/8 of a second, fall, watch surfboard go flying overhead, thank a higher being that I'm still alive

After a couple of hours, the cold got to us and we headed in, dried off and cranked the heat in the car on the way back to the campground. Once we got back we decided to check out the, as advertised, "hot showers". Best...showers...ever. Open air, plywood walls, blue plastic tarp for a curtain, but absolutely amazing. Looking up at the sky with steaming water was superb.

Day 3 at the site was more surfing with a dash of whale spotting from our campsite. We saw a couple whales off in the distance with the odd one "jumping" out of the water causing quite the splash.

Check-out day was raining overnight so everything we hoped would be dry to pack up ended up being soaked. We saw a couple dolphins a little ways out from the beach in the morning as well as a local bear rummaging for breakfast just across the bay.

We made our way back to Nanaimo to catch the ferry and once again got lucky and only had to wait about 45 minutes. Once across, we drove about 45 minutes north to Alice Lake to crash for the night. It ended up being the camping equivalent of a drive through. Drive in-->Setup tent-->Sleep-->Packup and leave. We've been there recently so we didn't feel too bad about not seeing anything. And right now we're doing laundry (because our towels, which haven't had a chance to dry in 4 days, stink) in a laundromat in Squamish, BC.

Next stop, somewhere between here and Osoyoos, BC.