We ended up having pretty great weather for most of our days on Vancouver Island. We headed to Palmerton Beach and Raft Cove and enjoyed these beaches more than the more popular San Josef beach. They were more rocky and rugged and just felt more secluded.
There was a short hike to get to Palmerton beach and it opened up to a rocky shoreline. The hike to Raft Cove was longer and very rugged. It brought us through what felt like a rainforest. There was a little more scrambling over trees and climbing around mud holes. It opened up to a huge beautiful beach.
Our last stop of the day was at Grants Bay. Another short hike to another beautiful beach. It was really windy and getting chilly so we took a few pictures and called it a day. We found an iOverlander spot that brought us up an old, very narrow logging road and we had an awesome view of the bay.
We headed to Winter Harbour and grabbed showers at the Outpost. It was raining again so we didn’t hang out long.
It looked to be a full day of rain so we went back to Holberg and grabbed lunch at The Scarlet Ibis, which is the most remote pub on Vancouver Island. Another further place reached!
We started to head to the middle of the island to see some viewpoints that a local had mentioned to us. We saw the Eternal Fountain, Devils Bath and the Vanishing River which all exist due to karst topography. Karst is a type of landscape where the dissolving of the bedrock has created sinkholes, sinking streams, caves, and springs.
We found a nice little spot on Kathleen Lake for the night. The next day, we drove up on some logging roads for great views.
We ended up on the other end of Kathleen Lake and found a fantastic spot. We decided to call it a day and just enjoyed the sunshine. The sunset was incredible that night!
Our next stop was to Little Huson Caves and this was by far our favorite stop. We did the short hike down to the caves and were in awe. This place is a hidden gem! We should’ve worn our suits and did a polar plunge because it was a perfect place for that.
On Tuesday, we made our way to Comox and Courtenay on the east side of the island to go to some breweries. Craig had picked out the ones he wanted to go to and there were too many to hit in one day.
Wednesday was Craig’s 55th birthday! We headed into Nanaimo and hit a bunch more breweries and had a fantastic lunch at the Rusted Rake. It was a great day celebrating!
On Thursday, we had reservations to get on the ferry from Duke Point to Tsawwassen at 5:45 pm so we had some time to kill. We had boondocked down another forest service road that was close to a trail with a suspension bridge. We checked out the bridge, went to two more breweries and then it was time to get in line for the ferry.
The ferry ride was pretty much like all the rest that we have done so far. The sunset was beautiful and we enjoyed the two hour ride. We got to Tsawwassen and decided to find a place to camp instead of trying to cross the border. We found a gravel parking lot at a tennis club. Kinda random but it worked.
Friday morning we got going pretty early and headed to the border. We decided to cross at Pacific instead of Peace Arch because we had read it would be less busy. There was no line and we thought we would sail through. They asked more questions here than on any other border crossing we had. We had to park to the side and go inside to see the Agriculture Police and declare everything we had. We racked our brains, hoping we didn’t forget anything because they would fine us if we didn’t list out everything. We handed the agent the keys and we were told to stay in the building. That was the first time we had ever had a search without us being present and we were not fans of that. She came back having just confiscated our eggs and said we were good to go. We had never had any issues crossing borders with eggs, but we were on our way.
It’s hard to believe our time in Alaska and Canada is over. We had waited for so long to get back to the further places and it felt like the summer went so fast. We enjoyed seeing and doing so many new things and reminiscing about places we had already been too. It was a fantastic summer!! We’re excited to explore some mountain areas while the weather holds.
Off to explore in the lower 48…