Vancouver Island
Dave and Helen Damouth
www.damouth.org
October 3, 1998
We last wrote from Victoria, the last outpost of real civilization as one heads north up the Pacific coast. On September 13, we drove from Victoria 70 miles up the East Coast of Vancouver Island to Nanaimo. We were rather anxious to get our mail (the annual registration renewal forms on our Truck haven't arrived yet, and the registration expires at the end of September). So we called ahead and made reservations at the Living Forest Oceanside Campground, and arranged to have our mail forwarded there.
This turned out to be one of the nicer places we've stayed. By calling ahead, we lucked into the nicest campsite in the park. We're on a cliff looking out over Nanaimo Bay. We can see several low islands, a mile or so across the water, and then the high mountains on the mainland, about 15 miles across the Straits of Georgia. Most of the campsites in this park are 50 feet wide, in the shade of large fir and cedar trees. Some are in really deep shade, buried in the forest. Others, like ours, are in more open forest, with a view. For full hookups in a large site with a view, with taxes and Good Sam discount, we're paying $18.30 ($12.08 in US currency) per night.
A walking tour along the harbor front in Nanaimo is fascinating. An attractive paved path leads past an incredible variety of activity - freighters loading bulk cargo, barges loaded with railroad cars, a busy ferry terminal, an assortment of idle fishing boats of all types, a busy seaplane terminal, a crowded yacht harbor, a pleasant little city park, a modern high-rise apartment building with balconies overlooking the harbor, small shops and restaurants. On the end of a public fishing pier, we watched a family busily pulling up and checking a bunch of crab traps that were sitting on the bottom, roped to the pier.
One afternoon, we paddled the canoe up the Nanaimo River. The first portion winds through tidal flats, and then gradually narrows to become a winding steep-sided river. We disturbed a great blue heron, which croaked a series of noisy complaints as it flapped slowly away. After only a few miles, it became shallow. We carried across several shallow rapids (and across one interesting fish barrier used for counting the migrating salmon), but finally gave up. On the way back, we took a different one of the many channels through the tidal flats, and then paddled back along the steep cliffs just below our campsite, which were festooned with a drapery of moss and drooping cedar branches. We again disturbed the heron, and again had to listen to the complaints. Several kinds of ducks and many flocks of Canada geese were scattered through the tidal channels. A kingfisher flew along just ahead of us, diving down to skim the surface of the water, then flashing back up to a branch to wait for us to catch up. Somewhere along these cliffs, now invisible in the foliage, there used to be the entrance shaft to a coal mine. A seam of coal was mined from underneath the entire campground, ending at a fault just to the east of the campground.
Next morning, we looked out across the bay where we had been canoeing, and found it nearly all dry - large expanses of mud, with huge sunken logs scattered all over - escapees from the large collections of logs that are stored in the bay awaiting processing in one of the several pulp and lumber factories in the area. We had scheduled the canoeing for high tide, and now we had no doubt that this was a good idea.
Near Lake Cowichan, the lumber industry has established an experimental forest and placed interpretive signs along the road and along short trails. We spent an interesting afternoon learning which tree species thrived in the various microclimates and how to control root rot. I can now identify half a dozen of the common coniferous native trees. Much of this area has been actively logged for at least 100 years. Each section of forest had a sign indicating what years it was cut, replanted, thinned, burned by forest fires, etc. The entire valley seems to be a gigantic scientifically managed farm, with a crop that requires 100 years or more to mature after planting.
We circumnavigated Lake Cowichan - nice scenery all the way. The road around the western half of the lake is a slightly improved logging road. Fortunately, the logging trucks didn't happen to be running while we were there. (They fill most of the width of these narrow roads, and have right-of-way.)
9/17 Nanaimo has been very nice, and we'd like to stay longer. But the good weather can't last forever, and we'd like to see more of the Island. This morning, we packed up and drove the 120 miles across the Island to Tofino, on the West Coast adjacent to Pacific Rim National Park. The western half of this highway is rather slow. It's narrow, twisty, steep, under construction in several places, with traffic reduced to one lane. We spent time sitting in a line at three different construction areas. At one point, a road sign warned of an 18% grade. At least twice, we found ourselves grinding up a hill in second gear, barely holding 30 mph.
We called ahead and found that our first choice campground (Bella Pacifica) was full (on a rainy weekday in late September!) So we're at Crystal Cove, which had space, at a considerably higher price. This park is neat, manicured, with expanses of perfectly mowed weedless grass, many rose bushes (still blooming), neatly trimmed shrubbery, and paved drives. We have a rather small site with an ocean view (if we stand in the right place and crane our necks a little), for which we are paying $45 (even translating that back to US dollars doesn't make it seem reasonable). The place is nice, but not that nice! And worse yet, they are not modem friendly. We'll have to scrounge around in town to find a place to get on-line. On the other hand, we're 100 yards or so from one of the prettiest little coves we've seen on this coast. There is a small forested island and some large rock outcroppings just off shore, protecting a broad sand beach. At low tide, the cove contains many acres of clean sand extending out to the island and to the adjacent rocks, giving access to numerous tide pools for us to explore. At high tide, the big ocean swells crash noisily against the rocks, but are reduced to little ripples inside the cove, which fills with water, still with a sand beach around the edge.
It's been raining off and on this afternoon. We just realized that this is the first significant rain we've had in almost a month. The weather has been near-perfect, with daytime temperatures in the low 70's.
Well, as it turns out, this park is modem friendly, although they don't know it. There's a pay phone about 25 feet from our trailer, and on the wall next to the phone is a junction box where the phone lines are attached. With my handy-dandy alligator clip adapter, I can plug into the pay phone almost as easily as if it had a standard modular plug. So we're getting our daily Email fix, and even a bit of Internet stuff, although the 800 number we're using incurs a fairly high surcharge from our ISP while we're in Canada, so I try to hold down the total on-line time.
Pacific Rim N. P. has lots of nice things. It's hard to decide whether the best part is the beach or the rain forest trails. The beaches alternate between rocky wave-scoured headlands and bays with miles of wide sand beaches. This is typical of most northern ocean beaches, of course - and at a casual glance, one could hardly tell these shorelines from those in Maine.
The difference is just above the beach, where the an old-growth forest begins. The fringe of forest along the cost is almost 100% Sitka Spruce, beginning with low wind-pruned krumholtz (short tangled mats of trees, often mixed with low shrubs such as Salal). Just back from the edge, the spruce begins to grow tall, and within 100 yards, mature trees may be over 200 feet tall and several feet in diameter. Sitka spruce is a light but strong wood, long favored for ships masts, and used extensively in the early parts of World War II for building bombers.
Beyond this fringe, the spruce gives way to Western Red Cedar and Western Hemlock, which are even bigger. Some of the cedar trees are several hundred feet tall and 10 feet or more in diameter at the base, with flaring buttresses spreading out to the roots. The cedars may live 800 years. The wood has anti-rot properties, so that when these gigantic trees eventually fall, they may lay on the forest floor for hundreds of years. As a result, the forest floor is an impenetrable tangle of huge, partially rotted, logs. The tops of these logs eventually rot enough to form a fertile nursery for new seedlings, and it is common to see a log six feet in diameter with a row of big trees growing out of the top. After fifty years or so, these trees manage to extend their roots down to the ground. Eventually, the old log rots away, and the "new" trees, now hundreds of years old, are left standing on stilts.
The forest canopy is very dense, absorbing up to 95% of the incident light. Relatively few species of plant can survive on the ground, with limited light and few nutrients. But those that do exist here are impressive. We saw bracken ferns up to seven feet tall. Sword Ferns formed dense hemispherical mounds six feet in diameter. In isolated places where a little extra light came through a gap in the canopy, a tangle of tall blueberry, red and black huckleberry, thimbleberry, and blackberry fought for space. The lower branches of the trees, high in the air, were covered with lush gardens of moss and ferns, and fringes of hanging moss drooped from under each branch. The ground, rocks, logs, and even portions of the boards of the boardwalk trails, were densely covered with moss. This has been a very dry summer, but it still felt moist and cool in these forests.
9/21 We had a late dinner at a nice restaurant perched on a rocky point, with miles of sand beach on each side, in the middle of the National Park (at "The Centre" - a visitor's center with interpretive displays). We watched last of the sunset glow disappear and a fog bank drift in while we sipped a lovely British Columbia Chardonnay. We now admit that British Columbia can produce some high quality white wine. (But we haven't yet had a BC red wine we liked.)
Later, back at our trailer, we walked down to the beach. A huge foghorn is droning out its characteristic two-toned groan somewhere nearby. The fog is patchy, drifting around gently in a faint erratic breeze. Straight overhead, the stars are clear, with the Milky Way so bright it's hard to believe it's real.
9/24 We've been walking more trails, hanging out on the beach, and eating out most evenings. (The Loft and The Schooner, both in central Tofino, have good food, and we've found a couple more good BC Chardonnays). The weather is still wonderful, although it's clouding over today, and a shower or two is forecast.
We could hang out here indefinitely, but have decided to move on and see more of the Island while the nice weather lasts. The drive back across the island was just as scenic (and just as steep) in the reverse direction. We've now done an 18% grade in both directions, and after being scared of this magic number for two years, can now say that it's no big deal. Going up, we held about 27 mph in second gear through the steepest part. Going down, we were in first gear, using the exhaust brake, and I had to touch the brakes occasionally to keep the engine under redline rpm. We're still running with stock valve springs. If we had the 60-psi valve springs installed, we wouldn't have needed the brakes at all. The total elevation change is not great here, so the steep hills don't last long and we didn't learn much about the longer-term issues of overheating the engine, transmission, or brakes.
The drive across the island and up to the Campbell River area was slow but uneventful. The rain amounted only to a few sprinkles, and by late afternoon, the clouds had mostly vanished.
Just north of Black Creek, we stumbled accidentally across a beautiful campground that doesn't seem to be in any of the directories. Miracle Bay RV Resort is adjacent to Miracle Bay Provincial Park, directly on the water. It is quite new, and has about 25 large full-hookup sites, about 10 of the sites directly on the beach. Several beach sites were vacant, and we've settled in for several days.
The campground owner looked puzzled when I asked about hooking my laptop to his phone line. He was quite interested and cooperative, as I showed him what is involved in retrieving Email. The office had a single phone line, shared between home, office, and credit card machine. Yet he was quite willing to let me use it. Fortunately, everything worked well, and he was impressed that I was on-line only a little over two minutes.
We're camped at the point where the Straits of Georgia begins to narrow toward the Discovery Channel and are enjoying the passing parade of ships. There are always several boats visible. Most common are the cargo barges. The northbound barges are loaded with a wide variety of goods - huge shipping containers, trucks, automobiles, storage tanks, stacks of building supplies, and other unidentifiable things. Southbound barges usually are piled high with logs. These are often self-loading barges, having a pair of large cranes in the middle, and a high bow and stern structure to retain the log piles. The logs are stacked crosswise. We've seen up to three barges strung out behind a single tugboat, connected by an extremely long cable. From our distance, it appears that some of these rigs may approach a mile long. This is a sheltered passage, all the way to Alaska, but it's narrow in places and this seems like an ungainly and dangerous configuration. We've also seen fishing boats, ferries, small freighters, a couple of large cruise ships, and quite a few sailing yachts. One evening, we were surprised to see a large two-story house coming down the Straits. Through the binoculars, we discovered that a barge had been converted to an impressive houseboat - two stories, porches, a cathedral ceiling with a wall of plate glass. A tug was towing it south. We're still speculating on the ownership and purpose.
A pileated woodpecker seems to be resident here. We've seen it several times in trees just a few feet from our trailer, and watched as it hammered away at the trunk of a fir tree, scattering large chunks of bark in all directions. This is a huge, impressive, bird which we have read about but never seen before.
The birds along the shore are mostly gulls. They are hard for us to identify - many in nondescript mottled brown plumage of their first winter. I think I've seen Herring Gulls, Bonapart's Gulls, and Glaucous-Winged Gulls.
Campbell River is a bustling town, built around its harbor. The harbor is modern, and houses a large (but mostly idle) fishing fleet, a few yachts, and a ferry terminal. A large community fishing pier sits just offshore, lined with fishermen. A blackboard on the pier contains a frequently updated list of fish caught - mostly Coho salmon ranging from 6 to 13 pounds. Further north is a large industrial area along the waterfront. While driving through this area, we came across a sort of graveyard for old floatplanes. Planes and parts of planes of all types were scattered across several acres. The fuselage of an old, small, high-wing seaplane, mostly stripped of gear, was sitting forlornly near the road. This type of plane, now very rare, intrigues me, and if I ever decide to learn to fly and buy a plane, I'll be tempted to try to find one to restore. The bottom half of the fuselage is a boat hull, and the plane lands and takes off directly on the hull, with only small stabilizing floats on the wings. The one we saw here was amphibious, with landing gear that retract into the sides of the fuselage.
9/28 We're awoken just before sunrise by noisy crows scrabbling around on the roof. Helen rolls over and goes back to sleep. I dress and head outside to catch the early morning show. The tide is unusually low and the wind is calm, so the very small waves are far offshore, and the absence of surf noise feels strange - I can hear all the other little sounds. A Great Blue Heron is stalking glacially, about one step every 20 seconds, through the shallows in front of the trailer. A tiny blur hanging motionless over the water becomes, through the binoculars, a Kingfisher, making like a tiny helicopter as it stares at potential prey below. A nearly full-grown herring gull is walking in circles around mama, pestering her for food. She's ignoring junior, who finally wanders off to hunt his own breakfast. A low throbbing rumble comes from a big tugboat several miles out in the channel. It's towing two huge barges, each heaped with an amorphous pile of what I assume is wood chips. A dozen crows dash around, squabbling noisily over whatever it is that crows squabble about. In the midst of all this, the sun pops up over the distant mountains and suddenly it's full daylight.
9/29 On the road again. The long-term weather forecast is deteriorating, and our days here are numbered. We drove up Highway 19 to the end of the road, at Port Hardy. The only paved road wanders all over the island - heading far inland, and even tending south for a while before turning back north, rejoining the coast near Port McNeil. It's no problem for big rigs, providing you are not in a hurry. A couple of places are under construction for a short distance, but otherwise the road is quite good. The terrain in the middle of the island is a jumbled mess of low mountains, nearly all of it "managed forest", meaning that they clearcut and replant it every 100 years or so. This gives the land a weird patchwork appearance, with sharp lines delineating forest areas of various ages.
Wildwoods Campsites is a shaggy campground, in the woods, on the water across the Bay from Port Hardy. There are a few permanent residents, but hardly any transient campers, so we have our choice of campsites. The large sites have names instead of numbers. We chose Rosie's Roost, among tall trees on top of a hill overlooking the bay.
After setting up camp, we drove around the area. The road past our campground continues on out to a modern ferry terminal on the end of the point. This is the southern terminal for the ferry that goes far up the coast to Prince Rupert. From here, it's 315 miles to Prince Rupert by ferry, or about 1300 miles by road.
Port Hardy is the center of commerce for the northern part of the Island. The only significant industry seems to be logging.
9/30 On the way to Telegraph Cove, we passed "Canada's largest log sorting facility" and stopped to watch. A steady stream of logs of all sizes and shapes arrive on trucks and railroad cars. Huge wheeled machines with mantis-like mandibles grab half a truckload of logs and spread them out on many acres of bare ground. Humans with tape measures and chain saws inspect the logs, sometimes cut them into pieces, and mark each piece for sorting into one of 35 different piles for delivery to many different kinds of factories - pulp mills, lumber, plywood, shakes and shingles, telephone poles, etc. Some of these logs were seven feet in diameter, dwarfing the people working around them. After each log is inspected and graded, smaller machines pick up the marked logs and move them into "bunks" - steel cradles which hold a group of logs which are then bound into a bundle with steel cable. The bundles are then carried to a ramp and dumped into the bay. The whole place looked like an overgrown anthill, with many specialized machines, each with a mouthful of logs, scurrying randomly in all directions. It's far from random, of course - after watching for a while, we realized that it is a carefully orchestrated production line, efficiently processing a huge volume of logs each day.
Out in the bay, workers in miniature tugboats (about 18' long) are herding bundles of logs, and sometimes individual logs, into raft-shaped collections, held together with with booms made from individual logs linked together by steel chains. These little boats are amazing. They act like overgrown jetskis - able to start and stop almost instantly, turning in their own length, and generating huge amounts of power when necessary to force their way through acres of giant floating log bundles. The process reminds me of cowboys cutting individual cows out of a herd. They dash into the disorganized mess of logs, force an open channel, and frantically push and prod until the right log pops out into the channel and can then be pushed into a raft. The rafts are typically 60 feet wide and 400 feet long. Up to 18 of these rafts may be towed at once, making the long trip down to factories in the Vancouver area. Later, looking out into the channel from Telegraph Cove, we watched one of these rafts go by. It moved very slowly, and was still going by when we got tired watching. I'd guess it was around a mile long.
There is an interesting set of signs on the gravel forest roads. If there is active logging in the area, a small red stop-sign-shaped sign is posted, saying that public access is forbidden during working hours on weekdays. For logging trucks, these are high-speed and essentially one-way roads. The flow of trucks is controlled by radio, and there is no provision for random automobiles. Forest roads which are not actively in use for logging have a different sign, indicating that they are open to the public, with the usual "don't blame us - you're on your own" disclaimers.
10/1 We've definitely overstayed our welcome. It rained most of the night, and the forecast is for several days of rain, with low heavy clouds. There's more to see here, but it will have to wait for another year. We headed down the island to Qualicum Beach, pulled into Cedar Grove Tent and Trailer Park in late afternoon, found one of the few campsites that had a little dry ground among the puddles, and set up camp in the rain. We phoned Wayne and Rita McKenzie, and arranged to have dinner with them - a very pleasant evening. Wayne showed me their new house, still under construction, while Helen waited at the trailer for Rita to arrive directly from work. Wayne and I met the ladies back at the trailer, talked a while, then we all moved to the Beach House Café, on the beach, for an excellent dinner. Wayne is organizing an RV Club mini-get-together here next week, but we don't feel like sitting around in the rain for several more days, and will miss it.
10/2 The rain stopped, briefly, this morning, after 36 hours straight. This place gets 150 inches of rain a year, most of it in the autumn and winter, usually starting before now. It was still raining intermittently as we crossed back to the mainland on the ferry and drove down to the border.
It's kind of comforting to be back in our own country. The US customs agent asked us our citizenship, then waved us through with a big grin - making us feel right at home. Better yet, we saw a little blue sky just before dark. We're at Birch Bay State Park, on Puget Sound about 10 miles south of the border. We haven't made any detailed plans for the next month or two. We'll probably spend a few days in the Seattle area, then drift out around the Olympic Peninsula and down the coast.