With a few more days before we were due to be in Victoria for the next of our volunteering stints, we decided to head to the “Wild West Coast” of the island. It lived up to expectations with a beautiful shoreline and big waves crashing in from the Pacific. We visited the towns of Tofino and Ucluelet (figure out how to pronounce that, then say it 10 times fast). We spent two nights camping near the beach and taking advantage of the sunny weather for beach walks and hikes in the national park, broken up by an afternoon in an excellent cafe in Tofino updating the website and catching up on email.

Blue sky and beaches!

Bikers on the beach

Hiking along a boardwalk to the beach

Of historical interest is that the area was home to about 2000 military personnel during WWII, complete with bunkers and machine gun emplacements, as Vancouver island was deemed to be a likely spot for a Japanese invasion. Needless to say, the folks stationed there didn’t see much action during the war.

On Friday we headed south again to Victoria. Saturday morning was spent on a long-overdue swimming pool stop. In the afternoon, following rumors of trains, we went to the amazing “Miniature World” in downtown Victoria. It was basically a bunch of incredibly detailed dioramas depicting various scenes from history. Quinn of course spent the whole time watching the model train run around and around the track. My personal favorite was the “World’s smallest operating sawmill.” Someone had taken the time to build a working model of a sawmill, complete with all of the saws and other equipment. You put little logs through it, and it would cut them up into miniature 2x4s. I can’t imagine how long it took build this thing.

Train!

The amazing tiny sawmill

On Sunday we rented bikes (with Q on a tag-a-long) and toured the coastline outside of BC, stopping at a marina for an amazing Sunday brunch. The unexpected highlight of the day, though, was a street art festival going on around the corner from the bike shop. A local brewery had donated the walls of a couple of their buildings and street artists were up on scaffold doing their thing with spray paint. They were getting started when we left on our bikes at about 11:30, and were in full swing when we returned at 4pm. We stood around watching for about an hour before heading back to our campsite at an RV park for dinner.

The southern coast of the island near Victoria

Biking in Victoria

An artist at work

The DJ keeps the beat thumping

The ferries were pretty relaxing. We didn’t try to bring our own food on board, so no cooking or cleaning up, and we even had our own 10×10 room with a private shower. Oh the luxury!

Our first ferry got us to Prince Rupert, BC at about 4am. We carried Quinn down to the car and put him in his sleeping bag in the back of the van and drove out into the rain. Our next ferry departed at 7am bound for Port Hardy on Vancouver Island.

It rained almost all day as we traversed some amazing landscapes, which must have been photographed for the brochures one day when it was sunny in 1985.

Shades of grey

A tug boat towing a raft of logs

15 hours later we drove off the ferry and into the rain in Port Hardy. We stopped at the first campground we found to spend the night. The next morning we found a restaurant in town where we could eat breakfast and watch it rain.

After a few hours drive in heavy rain the afternoon found us in Telegraph Cove, a couple of hours south from Port Hardy. It was raining a little less so we were able to explore the quaint little village and its whale museum. We did some laundry and settled in at the local RV park. The spot was exposed so now we had wind and rain lashing against the side of the van. Not wanting to stress the canvas of the pop top, we decided to close up our turtle. We huddled around the laptop to watch the Lorax while the rain beat against the van. We slept downstairs with Jen and Quinn curled up on the sofa in back and Witt on the floor. Not great, but we did sleep.

The harbor at Telegraph Cove

On Monday we went out on a whale-watching tour, which we found out from some other passengers is world renowned. Miraculously it (mostly) didn’t rain, and we saw some amazing marine wildlife.

This cluster of birds indicates a “bait ball” – a school of fish below the surface that have formed into a tight ball. Often whales will lunge into these balls to feed.

Sea Lions

Harbor Seals

Tufted Puffin

We had a great lunch of salmon chowder and spinach salad in the local restaurant before heading south once more. It was raining, but dried out a bit in time for us to camp near the beach north of Courtenay. We saw some crazy fish leaping 1-2 feet in the air presumably to catch bugs above the surface of the ocean.

Leaping Salmon

On Tuesday we headed to Port Alberni in intermittent rain following rumors of a steam train. When we arrived we discovered that it had closed up shop a month ago. We really are behind the tourist season here. The campgrounds are fortunately still open, but they are deserted. We are usually one of 1 or 2 campers in campgrounds with 50 to 60 sites. What, people don’t like to camp in the rain?

Instead we went to Stamp River falls for some salmon viewing. It wasn’t really a waterfall, but more of a narrow canyon with a torrent of water forcing its way violently through. I’ve seen too much boater porn to say it’s unrunnable in a kayak, but it’s definitely at least class V.

The salmon have the unenviable task of swimming up the canyon. We hiked in to a viewpoint where we could watch the poor fish trying to hurl themselves up a 3-foot waterfall. We watched probably 50-60 attempts over the course of 30 minutes and most ended with the fish being briefly pinned between the falling water and the rocks below. There is a fish ladder installed here, and I imagine that after they give up trying the traditional methods they head for the ladder, trying not to let their friends catch them doing it.

It’s interesting that this ladder is bridging a natural feature rather than a dam or hydroelectric plant. It was installed in the 50s purely to increase the number of salmon that would spawn, thus increasing the population available to be caught later.

We camped for the night at Sproat Lake where we dined on, what else, salmon!

Robert Service is a well known local bard

We spent Saturday in Dawson City. Jen did laundry and I took Quinn to the museum (which had a train shed) and to a playground. The next day we started off on the last leg of our journey to Alaska on the Top of the World Highway. As advertised, the unpaved road keeps to the hilltops and ridges, providing amazing views.

Dawson City and the confluence of the Yukon and Klondike rivers

Trains!!

On the Top of the World Highway

We were about halfway to the US border when the van stuttered and died again, just like on the Dempster. Ugh.

This time I was pretty sure I could get us moving again, and since it was relatively warm and dry out, I broke out the tools and disappeared under the van. First I tried to actuate the fuel tank switch manually by applying voltage to the terminals of the switch, but no luck. Seems like the switch really is fried this time. No problem, just switch the two fuel supply lines – then we should be running off the front tank, right? I switched the lines, and after cleaning the worst of the diesel fuel off of my hands the van started up and we were on our way… for about 3 minutes. Frustrated and out of ideas, we coasted back down the hill to a pullout.

We flagged down the next car that came by. It happened to by Martin and his wife Diana who live in Dawson City and were out leaf peeping. With Martin’s help, we tried bypassing the tank selector and splicing fuel line from the tank directly into the line feeding the engine. We weren’t sure which fuel line came from the front tank, so we tried both, but with no luck.

Martin and his wife then drove two hours back to Dawson to get fuel for the back tank. With the fuel lines re-connected and fuel in the tank, the van still wouldn’t start. So out came the tow rope and Martin generously towed us back to town, leaving us at the only auto repair shop in town, where we planned to spend the night (and possibly the next day since Monday was a holiday).

Martin towed us back to town

Of course, when we tried to start the van back in town, it fired right up. We drove across the street to an RV park to spend the night. At least we got showers, but by then it was too late to make dinner, so we had Wow butter (a soy peanut butter substitute that curiously has been available almost everywhere in Canada) and jelly sandwiches.

The next morning we learned that the repair shop wouldn’t be open until Tuesday. Since our battery will only operate our diesel heater for about 1 night without sunny days or driving to recharge the battery, we decided to get a hotel in town. We drove the 2km back to town and checked in at the Eldorado Hotel. We spent the day sightseeing and playing in playgrounds. I went for a hike along the trail that circumnavigates town. They left a lot of the old artifacts from the settlers who built cabins there during the boom days along the trail. It sort of looks like rusty old junk, but it does add an element of history to the trail.

Downtown Dawson City

On Tuesday morning I called the repair shop. The soonest they could get me in was at 4pm, so we headed out into the rain to visit a couple of the remaining museums on the list, including the firefighting museum and an excellent First Nations cultural museum.

After crossing the two ferries and fueling up at Fort Macpherson, we stopped for the night at Rock River campground at around 4 pm. Since we stopped pretty early we found ourselves with a few hours to kill after dinner and before bedtime. We were back in Pacific time zone, which meant that the sun went down at about 1030 instead of 1130 as it had been in Inuvik, but that still left us with plenty of time to watch Cars 2 on the laptop in the van.

The Dempster

The next day was a real treat. After not seeing any bears on our way up, we saw two large grizzlies foraging near the road. We watched these amazing animals until they disappeared from view. The leaves have started to change color, and the drive south was much prettier than it had been a week ago on our way north. We pushed on to Tombstone Park Campground in order to give ourselves time for a hike the next day before driving back to Dawson City.

Bear #1

Bear #2

The next morning after our oatmeal (we alternate between oatmeal and granola with yogurt for breakfast. Exciting stuff!) we got on the road at our usual time, around the crack of noon. As usual, we were pretty much the last people to leave the campground.

We drove the 10km to the trailhead for Grizzly Lake and started our hike. It turned out to be quite strenuous. The elevation profile showed the section we hiked to be only 2 miles each way, but with an elevation gain of 1400 meters! Thinking about that, I’m not sure if I believe it, but it was quite steep. Quinn was a trooper, hiking just about the whole thing by himself, and with nary a whine or complaint! We are psyched that he appears to enjoy hiking!

Look at that!

Quinn power!

On the way back to Dawson we had two more treats in store. Witt spotted a mink running across the road, and sometime later we’re pretty sure we saw a lynx, also running across the road in front of us. We weren’t able to identify these animals until we asked at the visitor center in Dawson. A lynx sighting is pretty rare no matter where you are, so we felt pretty fortunate to see that even if we weren’t able to get a photo.