RV and Vancouver Island.
This was our home for the next 16 days!! Fraserways Class C Motorhome (Medium). At 7.2mtrs long, 2.5mtrs wide, 3.4mtrs tall and weighing in at 5700kg it is considerably bigger and heavier than most UK motorhomes. Yet as long as you have a current UK driving licence (including the more recent 3.5ton limit) you can legally drive this!
The check-in process was quick and efficient, and after a guided tour of the RV we were handed the keys and off we could go!
Now that we had our RV, we needed to stop at the local Walmart to get some supplies, a liquor store for even more important supplies and then head off to the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal as we had a 5pm ferry crossing booked to take us to Vancouver Island. And then we drove onwards to Victoria. (50 miles)
At this point I should mention all the campsites, ferry crossings and the Parks Canada Pass, had been booked in advance. So, we kinda knew roughly where we were going. I also did a rough milage calculation of around 1200miles for our journey over the next couple of weeks. Let’s see how that works out!
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As Vancouver disappeared into the distance and Vancouver Island appeared on the horizon.
The ferry trip itself was outstanding, the scenery was so beautiful. I thought "Vancouver Island is going to be amazing!!"
Victoria.
We had 2 nights booked at the Fort Victoria RV Park.
Just up the road from the RV park, was a town called Sooke and Wenstob Timber. If you watch Netflix, then this is the home of Big Timber. As I work with timber and having watched this several times, and I also thought that after travelling over 4000miles knowing they do enjoy having visitors visit from all over the world, that it would be rude not to pop in and say hello!
Not forgetting timber is a huge industry in this area. Now I have the t-shirt and the hat!!
A few miles in the opposite direction are ‘The Butchart Gardens’. Established in 1904 and still owned by the same family, the gardens cover a whopping 55 acres with over 900 different bedding plant varieties on display! I’ll just let the pictures show you just how beautiful this is!
Hopefully you are impressed because we were very!!
We eventually left Victoria behind and headed off to Green Point Campground in Ucluelet for 2 nights. It was a fairly long drive at 190 miles, but it was an amazing journey. On route we stopped at an Old Country Market in a town called Coombs, which is known as ‘Goats on The Roof’. Why, you ask? Well, because goats actually live on the roof!! We even had time to stop at a couple of viewpoints to take in the amazing scenery.
Lunch at Cameron Lake was a picnic consisting of the goodies we had just purchased from the Goats. Strangely we were joined by white rabbits. We didn’t expect to see white rabbits here!! Luckily it wasn’t bears!
Wally Creek was our last stop on-route, which was amazing!!
After a long day on the road we decided to head further along the coast to Tofino so we could have a ‘fish n chip’ supper and watch the sun go down.
Green Point Campground sure was rustic, sat right on the edge of the North Pacific Ocean which is also known as the Ring of Fire. Apparently, it has bears, cougars and elk roaming free, and an amazing beach. Sadly we saw none of the above (again)!
But we did see mushrooms, loads of different types of mushrooms, but we chose not to sample them………Just in case!
Tofino.
We headed back to Tofino as we were booked on a whale watching trip. We booked our trip with The Whale Centre and only booked this the day before (luckily, we had the last 2 seats on the boat) as we wanted to check that the weather was going to be good to us. To our surprise the weather played ball and the sun shone all day!! Whale watching trips were also available in Victoria, but the weather was not so good there!
There is, (yet no locals seemed to know about it) a designated RV parking area which I found on google maps. It was on the side of a residential street with paid parking. When the day was over, I returned to find a parking ticket. I knew but had forgotten, you must park facing the flow of traffic! Luckily unlike the UK it was just a warning with a $0,00 fine!
Sorry, I got sidetracked there, let’s go to see the sea!
On our 2.5 hour trip we saw, a Bald Eagle, several pools of Sea Otters (which are really cute!) one of the largest species of Sea Lions in the world, some Grey Whales, oh, and let’s not forget the stunning scenery of Vancouver Island. The thing with the Whales is law states you must always be at least 100mtrs away from them, so a good eye and even a good camera would be recommended!
Back on dry land we headed to the nearest café for refreshments as it had been hours since we last ate! We also had enough time for a quick wander around to hit the shops and see some of the other local sights!
Tofino is a very beautiful (what we would call) little seaside town.
The next day, we headed to the Living Forest Oceanside Campground & RV Park in Nanaimo, which was 121 miles back the way we came from. This was just for 1 night as we had an 11am ferry crossing to Horseshoe Bay booked for the following day. The upside to the journey was that we could stop at ‘Goats on The Roof’ for lunch! Also, at the Goats is ‘Steamboat Willy’ which used to be a crazy golf venue, apparently it’s been abandoned for 20years!
Log Lorries.
These obviously are very important in BC (and there are plenty of them) But, if like me you remember the opening sequence to the film ‘Final Destination Part 2’ you know they must be treated with extreme caution as some of the roads here are narrow and windy!
Nanaimo.
All we got to see was the campsite and the ferry terminal. The campsite had spectacular views, the ferry terminal not so much! Once we were on the ferry our next destination was Whistler, which was about 75 miles up the hill!
This was also the day that the long overdue rains really arrived. So although it was really, really wet, the ferry crossing was very enjoyable, and on occasions you could actually see some of the amazing scenery!
We now realise that having spent a bit of time on Vancouver Island there is so much more to see and do which we just didn’t have time for. Having thought about since we got home, if we ever return to Vancouver Island it could be a good two week holiday and next time we would probably hire a car and then use hotels as this would enable us to get to some of the more remote places that an RV wouldn't fit, and not have parking issues!!