At the end of the day, I’m sitting in this virtually abandoned campground about as far North as you can go on Vancouver Island. What started as a quick weekend surfing trip has ended in adventure… or at least mosquito warfare.

Carol-Anne and Christian took me to Pacific Ridge National park near Tofino to do some surfing. I wasn’t going to go at first, but decided if I left here without trying, I’d never forgive myself in my old age. So I put on the wet suit, grabbed the board and ran… okay more of a trot. I was pretty gung-ho after Christian gave a quick dry-land lesson. That lasted until I hit the water and it was so cold my feet ached (kind of like an ice cream headache in my feet, mind-blowingly painful). I didn’t think there was way I was going to submerge my body any further than my ankles, even with a wetsuit! But Carol-Anne was already waiting for me in the water and she didn’t seem to notice the cold. I told her that I didn’t think surfing was my thing and I had to get out. And that was my surfing experience.

Actually, I stuck it out. My feet went numb, and I started to have fun. Carol-Anne showed me how to grab a wave and I rode a few waves on my stomach. Essentially, I tried to stand up a bunch of times, wiped out a lot, even got to a squat, but never stood. But I had fun, cleared my sinuses (is that TMI?) and thoroughly exhausted myself. In the end, it turns out I’m about as good at surfing as I am at most other sports, which is not very good, but at least I had fun.

After surfing I decided to stick around and camp a couple of nights, I checked out the beaches, went into to Tofino and did a few hikes. Since the campground was full, I drove around town looking for a quiet place to sleep and camp. I found a quiet parking lot just outside of town. It didn’t have a No Camping sign, so I bedded down for the night in the car. Doors locked as it was my first night not sleeping in a campground. Nothing happened and I woke up the next morning early before anyone decided to take a hike. (I went on the hike, it was good). I also drove and did a few Pacific rainforest hikes, (you know, with the old growth forests..).

The thing I find sad about these old growth forests is that they really make it obvious how much of Canada we’ve cut down. I think the fact that they have these last few stands left is sad, not sad because they kept them, but because the rest is gone. In the last 200 years we’ve removed so many trees that the only remaining, intact forests are so special because they are so rare. Our early Canadian ansestors (though not necessary mine, or yours) would have seen a much different forest. Even 50 years ago…

These trees are huge! 90 meters tall or more, 15 meters around. These are giant trees. I feel positively tiny in comparison.

I was going to camp near Pacific Rim at the Kennedy lake picnic area. It’s a nice lake with a view of a snow capped mountain. I went for a swim, washed my hair and read my book. A few people came and went but I figured they would clear out after dinner time. I made dinner, the people cleared out and I made some tea and read my book again. This was the relaxing vacation I was hoping for, especially with a nice quiet, sunset over the lake and distant mountains.

Really relaxing, until some teenagers with very loud gansta rap (yep, gangstA) , with copious amounts of swearing , some serious base, talking about how ghetto they made the ghetto. When three more cars showed up, I figured it wasn’t going to be the quiet evening I’d envisioned. Since I’m not ghetto enough to be cool, I left with the plan to find another picnic area to park for the night.

Instead I found Tom.

The road into Pacific Rim is very windy, with steep hills and hairpin turns, often both at the same time. People seem to drive that road ridiculously fast. In fact I know someone, who won’t be named here, who drove that road going at a lightning fast 180 km an hour! (okay 180 isn’t technically lightning fast, not 75 miles a second or anything… but it’s still pretty fast)
I averaged about 80 at my fastest, but going much slower than that most of the time.

Fortunately for the fast drivers behind me, there are frequent pull-outs to let them pass. In one of these pull-outs was a car with it’s hood up, being the good Samaritan that I am, I decided to ask if I could help.

The man asked if I had any duct tape.

I normally carry duct tape in my car, but this time I couldn’t find any. I did have some first aid tape and some tinfoil… Tom’s radiator hose had broken and we tried to patch it up with the limited materials. I told him I’d follow him out in case he needed to stop again. He made it about 20km when his car began to smoke. I followed him into the nearest pull out lane and saw that the hose had broken right off. Not good.

We tried to patch it again, this time with some cut up aluminium can pasted with some first aid tape. It seemed to work decently. A little drippy, but the fluid didn’t pour out. I went to get more water, and asked some people who showed up if they had any duct tape, it turns out, the guy is a mechanic. He takes a look at it, and tells Tom to call a tow truck. Tom, not being phased, (we did after all do a really good patch job), waited until the guy left and got in his car. I followed him, just in case.

(Tom gave me a bottle of wine for helping, which maybe I should have refused, but I love wine. I really should have refused the second… but he insisted)

For about 20 km we drove until the car began to smoke again. Originally I was going to follow him until I found spot to camp, but it was obvious that he wasn’t gong to make it to town. Tom was an older man, with 200 lbs of fresh-caught salmon in a cooler, who desperately needed to catch a ferry and get to Washington because half of this salmon belonged to his boss, who had taken him on the fishing trip. Anyway, I couldn’t do much for the salmon, but I offered to take Tom to town where he could get a room for the night and call a tow truck in the morning (it was getting dark).

Conscious of the fact that the mechanic in Victoria tried to convince me that my back brakes needed to be fixed (which I don’t believe, because they are fine, and even then the front brakes are more than adequate), and the fact that this poor guy having to squeeze into the Sportage, weighed about 300 pounds and the fact that I didn’t have my glasses and I can’t drive at night without them, AND the road was ridiculously windy, and animal filled; I drove onto Port Alberni very carefully. Eyeing several awesome riverside camp spots on the way.

It was pitch dark when I dropped him off at the Best Western, and my GPS gave out and I couldn’t find a nice, quiet, side street to camp on. So I kept driving out of town hoping to find somewhere to sleep. Before I knew it I was on the windy highway again, and it was near midnight. This was not a very good situation, but there was no chance to turn around and no chance to stop. So I drove.

I drove for about 30-40 minutes when I saw the roadside parking lot for the Cathedral Grove (Cathedral grove is another old-growth, pacific rainforest. I wanted to see this in the morning and didn’t want to backtrack so I parked beside the highway in a parking spot beside a giant tree). I didn’t get much sleep. Between the large trucks flying by, the paranoia that someone was going to find me and kill me, and that I was convinced there was a large animal outside my car, possibly a sasquatch, I was terrified. It was well after 1 am when I dozed off.

I awoke with a start when a car pulled up beside mine. I hid under the covers as much as possible. I peeked out nervously to see some guy taking a leak next to the tree, but thankfully, unaware of me…

After about 4 hours of restless sleep, I decided to get up early and check out the grove. I saw some BIG trees, but it wasn’t as picturesque as the rainforest hike on Pacific Rim. But in hindsight, it was probably prime sasquatche territory.

To be continued...