Tuesday - Today was our drive up the east coast of Vancouver Island. We got a decent start, stopped at Tim Hortons for breakfast, and went across the intersection to a convenience store to fill up with gas. We didn't realize they had "self serve" and "we serve" pumps. Joe accidentally stopped at the only open one, a "we serve," but we don't know if we paid more at that pump than at the "self serve" ones. We assume we did..But we got information from the gal who pumped our fuel, so he thought we got our money's worth. Interesting restroom, they only had a black light in it.
A lady was coming in the door as we were going out and she asked if that was our "big wagon" parked out there. She said "isn't it beautiful." She pointed to our car, then to hers parked next to it -- which was a Smart Car.
Our next stop was a t-shirt factory in North Cowichan. They have some of these t-shirts at the campground, but a very small selection, so the guy there gave me directions to this factory, and we got a little tour. And bought a few shirts. Of course, we didn't drive "straight" to it, we had to circle through the town twice and almost gave up before we spotted it.
This is the truck they take to "events."
Our next town was Chamainus, famous for having been saved as a town by the addition of murals on buildings. We drove past some of them, but didn't walk the town.
We made another pitstop and outside the restroom was this dumptster and sign to save the salmon heads. Interesting. Also interesting item was a yellow fish sign on lots of the creeks we crossed that said "sensitive habitat." I'll have to ask John and Bridgette about that.
We passed some trucks hauling lumber, then saw the lumber yard right at the edge of the harbor. I think this might have been the town of Cedar.
The next town we drove through was Nanaimo, which had a beautiful "welcome" sign. We had gotten of Highway 19, which was NOT an interstate, and driven up 19A, which took us through the towns. Most of the towns were very clean and pretty. Blackberry season is just coming on (everything is late this year because of their harsh winter, so I don't know if this is late too), Joe can hardly stand to drive by these without stopping and picking them.
There are some beaches along this route, but not all the time. A lot of forests right along the coastline, some cliffs, but Parksville is one of the towns known for its sandy beach. We had heard there was a sand sculpture contest going on here, so we drove down to the first beach we saw, but the sculptures were not there. It was a nice beach, and some great driftwood (that I left behind).
As we headed back to the parking lot, we asked someone about the sand
sculptures, and got directions, so we did find it. And that was a
highlight to the day. These things are awesome. I was going to post pictures of all of them, but I estimate there were 25 sculptures, so I settled on just posting my favorites.
These next 2 sets are front and back sides of the sculpture.
We checked out the beach briefly, saw a neat kite that Joe would like to find (it looked like a real seagull), then continued on.
The next beach town was Qualicum Beach, but we didn't stop, just did a drive by, because it was right beside our highway.
We drove through an oyster area, saw the oyster boats and whatever they anchor off-shore. This might have been Fanny Bay, but I can't remember.
We drove on up to Courtenay/Comox, which was our turn-around point. Collins had told us there were wooden sculptures on the beach at Comox, but we couldn't find them. When we asked a lady down by the beach, she said those were in Campbell River, which was another 60 miles or so, and we knew we couldn't get that far today, so we headed back, trying to make some time now. By the time we got this far north, we lost our blue skies. The smoke in the sky was from the fires in interior British Columbia, up by the Kamloops area we were told.
At the Qualicum Beach intersection, we took Hwy 4 down to Coombs, where we had to stop and see the goats on the roof (Joe had read about these but they were a surprise to me). And some very interesting shops here.
We turned around here and headed west on Hwy 4, our destination was Port Alberni. Along the way we found another point of interest, Little Qualicum waterfalls, so we took a short hike down to see the falls.
This looked like a perfect little hot tub pool in the midst of these rocks (just about in the middle of the photo).
Joe got to talking to some guy here and I thought he was never coming back up, he actually took a wrong turn and came out at another trail, but finally, we continued on, past pretty Cameron Lake. We could really see the smoke in this valley and it was really hovering over this lake and in the trees.
We made it to Port Alberni just at 7:00, as they were closing the dock. We talked to the lady who worked at the shop at the end of the dock at Tyee Landing, and she talked about the heat (Port Alberni did set a record for heat today), and the smoke, which she said had just moved in today. We drove around the harbor here and through town, then headed home.
We headed back, drove through Coombs again about 8:00, and got home about 9:45, we logged about 350 miles today, a 13-hour day. We did see 4 deer on our way home. And I am finishing this blog sitting in line at the ferry terminal, getting ready to board for our trip back to the U.S. (2:30 p.m.) Our ferry departs here at 3:00.
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