Tofino – Riveted

Tofino to Qualicum to Victoria

Laura Domela — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 22:11:00 +0000

This morning we left our gray rainy campsite (wow! things changed overnight!) in Tofino and headed back across the island on our way to Victoria. But first, here's one more shot from yesterday at Bella Pacifica Campground while it was still sunny:

Oh wait, there are a few more things I want to mention that we did before we left Tofino. Yesterday afternoon we went into town to grab some oysters, and right as we got back to the car I looked up in response to some intense bird sounds and said to Kevin quickly "lookuplookuplookup!!!"

There were about eight bald eagles flying overhead, and two of them were in dramatic combat. As we watched them RIGHT above us, two of them went careening into each other, locking talons (you could HEAR them hit each other, that's how close they were) and spiraling through the air. After a couple rounds of that, the loser retreated to the top of a nearby tree while the others went on their fish-hunting way over the bay. It was so cool to see this so close!

Here are two of them — already much higher than before — after the drama was over (when I could finally stop watching for a second to get my camera out):

Also, yesterday we stopped for lunch at Tacofino, a taco truck right off the main highway near our campground (in the parking lot behind "Live to Surf" surf shop). This place has seriously great tacos. We each had a regular Baja-style cod fish taco, and the Tuna Ta-Taco (seared sesame albacore with wasabi mayo, cabbage, salsa, and seaweed salad). So good!!

Also, check out their fabulous t-shirts! The skull is made of flowers and in the middle of his forehead there's a Tacofino logo (praying hands holding a taco), and the skull has a big fish in its mouth. (Kevin's wearing his right now!)

Okay, back to today! We left early (for us…8:30am). The drive was soggy but beautiful and looked mostly like this:

We made a stop at Qualicum Beach to pick up a bit more seafood (still not tired of fresh seafood). I did a little research while Kevin was driving and found a highly-rated spot called French Creek Seafood. We parked in the nice big marina parking lot and walked around the marina to the seafood store (it's the large clump of buildings you can see in the distance, across all the boats):

The entrance to the fish store was completely nondescript and working-harbor awesome, and had the nicest fish ladies inside helping customers. We highly recommend a stop here if you're up this way. Enter through the brown door with the little red neon "open" sign:

We picked up some clams for dinner tonight, some fresh crabcakes, more frozen calamari (I love putting this in risotto or pasta!) and some more smoked salmon pate.

We drove the rest of the way to Victoria (about 4.5-5 hours total from Tofino) and now we're at the Westbay Marine Village. It's still gray and rainy, but we're close to town and we'll have a great time here exploring (and working of course) until we catch the ferry over to Port Angeles on Friday morning.

Here's Victoria, just across the harbor from our spot at Westbay:

Tofino and Ucluelet

Laura Domela — Wed, 23 Jul 2014 12:58:00 +0000

The other day we went in search of a beach Kevin remembered from his childhood. We had a great day exploring Tofino (after cramming in a bunch of work while eating breakfast and getting internet at a cafe in town). First, we headed out to Tonquin Park and hiked down to the beach.

Next we headed south toward Ucluelet. We stopped and hiked a bit out from the Amphitrite Lighthouse on the Wild Pacific Trail.

Both "Wild" and "Pacific" … check!

Gorgeous coastline, isn't it? It was nice that the sun came out yesterday, too!

We headed into Ucluelet and checked out a marina RV park where I'd thought about staying, and it's great! We'd definitely come back and stay here. There are about five spots that have great views out over the marina and the water, and a few more around to the side that have this view:

And here are some other shots of the marina and downtown (the same thing, really):

After driving around Ucluelet a bit, we did a little exploring at Chesterman Beach:

…as well as some more hiking around the rocks near our own beach:

Back in Tofino we stopped and had a few oysters and a couple pieces of sushi at Tough City Sushi and it was great! Oh, and so was the view (complete with sea plane landings):

Those are Kusshi oysters from Qualicum Beach. We're planning to stop at Qualicum Beach once more on our way to Victoria to pick up another couple dozen.

Searching for Shell Beach

Laura Domela — Tue, 22 Jul 2014 12:36:25 +0000

“It’s called… SHELLLL Beach”

My Dad’s eyes tilted slightly higher and his voice took on a reverent, mysterious tone when he said the name of the place. Dad had a way of describing things that made them seem magical. Sometimes, he could impart that mystical quality simply by saying the name – with a certain inflection and a particular combination of body language and tone that made the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. And, you knew that he was telling you about something special, something rare and unique, something that you might remember for the rest of your life.

It was 1969.

I was eight years old and it was the summer after the second grade. We had just celebrated my little brother’s first birthday on the East side of Vancouver Island at a place called Qualicum Beach – a place where the tide seemed to go out for miles, and you could wade almost out of sight from shore while still standing in water that came only to your knees.

Now, we were across on the West side of the island at Tofino – which seemed to me like the boonies of the boonies. Our family was on an extended summer vacation in our slide-in pickup camper. We had left our home in desolate Denver City, Texas about four weeks earlier on what was, to eight-year-old me, the absolute adventure of a lifetime.

Growing up in Denver City, I never saw mountains, or even hills. We had no lakes, streams, or creeks. There were no trees – except a few small cottonwoods planted in people’s yards. At the edge of our tiny town you could see forever – over a barren, wind-blown, treeless, dusty landscape with a vast horizon dotted only by the occasional windmill or pump jack. Summers were blistering hot, winters were freezing cold, and all of the seasons were windy and dusty.

For me, the multi-week camping trip to Canada was an experience on par with a trip to Mars. Everything I had seen on our remarkable journey – mountains, streams, lakes, rivers, trees, beaches, rocky coastlines, geysers, volcanoes, wildlife – was so far outside my young frame of reference that I would have been no more impressed had I been suddenly been dropped onto the surface of some alien planet. We had left the dusty high plains of Texas and traversed the rocky mountains, entered into a foreign country, boarded a ship, and landed on an amazing island. We had traveled for weeks and it seemed to me that we were about as far from home as one could possibly be.

Then, someone told us about “Tofino.”

It was just a word, but to me – something in the way they said it grabbed my attention. My mother asked the locals who were telling us about Tofino if they had ever been there. “No,” they said. “We hear it’s amazing, but we’ve never been over there. It’s a long drive to the far side of the island, and we’re waiting for the road to improve.”

My Dad was most certainly NOT waiting for the road to improve. We filled our fresh water tank, topped up the main and auxiliary tanks with gas (as well as the secret auxiliary-auxiliary 10-gallon tank my Dad had scrounged from a junkyard Corvair) – and headed down the four-hour dirt-and-gravel road across Vancouver Island to Tofino.

That’s how we got to the boonies-of-the-boonies.

Now, here at the edge of the world, someone had told us about a hike to a secret beach – a beach where there was no sand, but only finely-ground seashells – a beach that was accessible only by a long and treacherous hiking path.

“SHELLLL Beach”

This was the boonies-of-the-boonies-of-the-boonies. We had gone off the grid, and then gone some more. And now we were headed off of the off-the-grid grid. My eight-year-old mind struggled to even grasp the concept. We were going to a place farther from Denver City than I had ever imagined possible.

My Dad was an intimidating figure – 5’11” 250 lbs – enormous muscular arms built (he said) from working on the oil pipelines as a teenager. His personality was even larger. He was a high-school band director, and he had the ability to tame over two-hundred teenagers at once with only the sound of his voice. His larger-than-life presence could simultaneously induce fear, admiration, and respect. He could walk into any room and everyone’s attention went to him automatically.

My Dad picked up my newly-one-year-old brother in one giant hand and we set out to find… SHELLL Beach. We were traveling with another family – who had their own camper and kids – and all of us were geared up and ready for the expedition. After a bit of easy hiking down a “normal” beach, we came to a place where there were two options: an overland trail through the woods, and a seaside trail that scaled the rocky cliffs above the breaking waves. Mom (and most of the family we were traveling with) opted for the through-the-woods route. Dad, Chuck (the other dad) and I – all went along the ocean route. Since my little brother was sometimes a handful, Dad decided just to carry him. It was harrowing.

“There were times,” Dad would later say “when I wouldn’t have given you a nickel for the chances of all three of us on those cliffs. I was holding onto the rocks with one hand and holding Craig in the other – and Craig decided that would be a great time to jump up and down and yell “Aahhhh Aahhhh Aahhhh” with a big grin on his face! The path was so narrow that both feet wouldn’t fit side-by-side, I had to keep them single file…”

Dad had a bit of flair for the dramatic in his storytelling.

It was also on this hike to … SHELLLL Beach… that Dad took “The Photograph”.

He was a photography buff. Even with our schoolteacher budget, he had a pro-level SLR, and a set of high-quality lenses. He had practically memorized the past year’s issues of all of the popular photography magazines. He took slides (and slides only – my goodness, print film is for AMATEURS!), and Mom maintained our beautifully-organized collection of Kodak Carousel slide trays that spanned our entire family history. From birthdays to band contests to Christmases to vacations – and around the calendar for another loop, the slides chronicled our family’s life from before I was born until after both my brother and I had left home for good. Many of the photos were amazing. Mom and Dad had both done some spectacular work for amateur photographers.

But here, at …SHELLLL Beach…, Dad captured “The Photograph” – the one that was to be forever etched in family lore as the best photo ever made by any of us. Three-year-old Dianne, the daughter of the family that we were traveling with, was sitting on the jagged rocks by the ocean. Behind her, the fog had created a murky-mysterious gray that melded with the harsh brown texture of the rocks. She was wearing a bright yellow jacket which – with her almost-white hair – made her look absolutely angelic sitting near the edge of the craggy cliff in the golden-hour light.

From that day forward, any time we were having slide-show night at our house, we would all silently wait in anticipation for the time when carousel number 43, slide 15 would drop into the projector to reveal “The Photograph.” Most of us were looking away from the screen, watching the faces of our guests for the predictable “OOOOohhhhhhhhh” reaction that inevitably occurred when the click-clunk-whirrrr of the carousel projector signaled that the cute photo of Craig feeding the chipmunk was about to give way to… aesthetic bliss.

My Dad died in 1993.

Now, 45 years after that hike, Laura and I are camped in Tofino in our Airstream. The road here is still tricky, but nicely paved and well-traveled. Tofino is no longer an outpost inhabited by just a few hearty souls. It is a popular surfing destination, with a number of upscale resorts, tourist attractions, restaurants, and vacation properties. It still manages to retain a great deal of its charm – despite five decades of development.

I wanted to find Shell Beach again. I wanted to hike along the rocky cliffs. I wanted to see the beach made only of shells. I wanted to see the place where “The Photograph” was taken – so indelibly engraved in my memory of nearly five decades.

SHELLLL Beach… isn’t on any of the local tourist maps. It isn’t included on any of the signs for “beach access” for any of the numerous local waysides. I Googled, Mapped, Foursquared, Travelocitized, Yelped… I found only a handful of semi-obscure references to a “Shell Beach” near Tofino. On Foursquare, I was able to see that a few people had actually “checked in” there, and had thoughtfully left a set of GPS coordinates. I moved those into Google Maps, asked for directions, and our quest began.

We parked at a beach access that appeared to be nearest the GPS coordinates. We walked up the beach until the shore would permit passage no more. On the left, there were sheer rocky cliffs interrupted by deep seawater-filled chasms. They were not passable. On the right – there was a beautiful new upscale resort/hotel/restaurant complex. We looked in vain for an offshore route around the hotel that would take us there. We ended up at the boundary of a private residence. We could go no farther.

Next, we drove around to the closest road access on the other side – which, ironically, turned out to be the same beach where we were camped. We walked all the way to the end of the beach, but were turned back when a through-the-woods trail turned out to be blocked by a giant swamp. Finally, we worked our way around the seaside route – scaling the steep rocky cliffs with the tide coming in and huge waves breaking below us.

I imagined my mother – forty-five years ago – taking that first trail and meeting us on the other side, at …SHELLL Beach. As Laura and I climbed over the challenging rocky route above the ocean, I pictured Dad with my baby brother in one hand, gripping the rocks with the other, slowly scaling the path around the point – determined not to let the rocks, the ocean, or the gymnastics of an over-excited one-year-old deter him from his quest.

We may have found Shell Beach today – I can’t be sure. There were no signs or placards. There was a small cove with a beach that appeared to have only ground-up shells instead of sand. In my current life experience – traveling around the world – hiking, biking, camping, flying, and boating just about every kind of terrain imaginable and experiencing the awe-inspiring power of so many remarkable natural places – this place was beautiful, but not particularly amazing. It was just another wild, remote beach, accessed by a medium-difficulty trail. Whatever it was, for me, it was not “…SHELLLL Beach”

On the internet, I saw a reference to a couple getting married recently on Shell Beach. There were a couple of nice photos of the bride and groom kissing near some rocks.

There is magic in the places we visit. But that magic is created by a non-reproducible combination of the time, the place, our life experience, and the people we share it with. When you return, even if the place is the same, the magic may be gone – or it may live only in your memory.

I’m certain my brother doesn’t remember the time when Dad almost dropped him off a cliff into the Pacific Ocean while hiking the West Coast of Vancouver Island. He probably wouldn’t recognize the name “…Shellll Beach.”

But, I do. I remember it – and I went back to that place today. And, I think I could still hear Dad’s laugh somewhere out there in the waves.

(Posted by Kevin)

Tofino, British Columbia

Laura Domela — Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:22:29 +0000

We're now in Tofino, BC (above photo from Mackenzie Beach). Tofino is across Vancouver Island from where we were last (Nanaimo), on the west coast. It's rugged and lovely. It feels like a California surf town plopped down somewhere in Alaska.

The drive over here was not even close to as tough as we'd heard, but then we've driven some pretty tough roads. This is just before the 18% grade:

The drive was beautiful…

…and just a tiny bit hairy at times (we were on the outside going this direction so we just had to watch for large vehicles moving over into our lane…and there weren't any). I drove the first half of the drive and Kevin drove the last half. I got the better deal, for sure.

We're camped at Mackenzie Beach Resort for two nights and we'll move over to Bella Pacifca for the last night. So far the $4/day internet at Mackenzie Beach has been, um, basically like not having internet, so we're at a cafe in town right now having breakfast, doing some work, and soaking up the connectivity. The campground is full hookups, not too far from the beach, but that's about it. It's very "no frills" in terms of view and campsite quality for $56 dollars Canadian per night.

Here's our spot when we first arrived and it was still sunny:

And here's our spot after many more Sunday arrivals came in. Our site (#38) is strangely much larger than anyone else's site.

Okay, back to Tofino. Yesterday afternoon after we got settled we went and explored town a bit. We stopped at the Tofino Brewing Co. on a whim ("Hey, what's down that street?") and decided to stay for a tasting flight.

The brewery/tasting room:

Great logo:

The beer was great and the atmosphere was fun and casual, full of tourists and locals. The tasting room has a license for one tasting flight or one pint per person, and you can buy bottles to go in 4-pint-packs or growlers (a single growler, or a double "growlinator". We brought home some Blonde Ale, some Tuff Session Ale, and some Spruce Tree Ale. I really wanted to try this one, but they were completely out (and they wouldn't sell us the two display bottles they had): Kelp Stout — a dark, rich, full-bodied ale brewed with locally harvested Kelp, giving a unique, umami-type quality to this complex beer. Great label too:

We did more wandering in town and picked up this really cool Northwest Coast eagle…oh, I mean cheese/pate spreader. We try to get things we'll use, and we definitely will use this! This is the handle (pewter). Love it!

We used it right away too! In town we picked up some smoked salmon pate and some crackers and cracked one of the Spruce Tree Ales for an afternoon snack. The whole Tofino Kit:

Dinner last night was smoked fish tacos (again, I know, yawn, can't we think of something else to make?)

This morning it's cool and gray. We got up and made a couple of cappuccinos to go and walked on the beach out in front for a bit.

Our breakfast sandwiches, espresso drinks, (and internet!) here at Caffe Vincente this morning were great!

After some more work, we'll head out to explore more of Tofino, and probably drive down to Ucluelet!