Rocky Corner
Rocky Corner
Guess what, I was right. There certainly was more amazing scenery. It’s an incredible road from the east to the west coast of Vancouver Island. You travel through mountains, lakes, rocky hills and rainforests to end up at a coast line that has soft sand beaches and rugged rocks. On the way we stopped at what the locals call ‘Rocky Corner’, a spot where the Kennedy River passes over huge boulders creating waterfalls and rock pools. Jack and I had a great time trying to catch the biggest tadpoles I’d ever seen!
If I’m honest, I wasn’t expecting a great deal from our next accommodation just on the edge of Ucluelet. We’d found this cabin online at a time when available accommodation along this part of the west coast seemed impossible to find. The pictures on the website portrayed it as small but cosy and not particularly attractive, but it was only a bed for a couple of nights so we went ahead and booked. We were glad we did. It was perfect. Open and spacious, set in the middle of the forest but only a short walk along a boardwalk to the edge of the peninsula and views through the trees from each bedroom and living room window of the shoreline. No tv and no internet – very very peaceful indeed.
Wildlife was definitely in abundance. As Jonathan was unpacking the car, a black bear stopped by to take a look and see what was going on. It stuck his head out of the woods about 25 feet away, Jonathan didn’t stay around to make conversation and came back into the cabin and closed the bottom half of the stable door. It obviously didn’t like the look of Jonathan as we didn’t see or hear him again for the rest of our stay! That evening after Mum and I had done a quick grocery shop and we were sat outside having a BBQ, Mark, the owner, stopped by for a chat. In the course of the conversation he did mention about the wildlife in the area, in addition to the bears which we already knew about, there were wolves and cougars – perfectly normal for Canada. In just meant we had to take extra precautions with Ollie, no wandering around by himself and definitely no leaving his food outside!
Ucluelet Aquarium
We had a lazy start the next day and didn’t manage to get out of the door until 11am. We headed out along part of the Wild Pacific Trail, a hilly coastal footpath alongside the Pacific with more stunning vistas! We also tried our hand at Geocaching, a bit like orienteering crossed with a treasure hunt using GPS. Our first find was a kids cache, full of toys, so we left a yellow fish and took a pencil! I’m certain it’s something we’ll do more of, if you want to find out more information about geocaching, then take a look here. Along the way we did spot some bear scat in the middle of the trail, one was old, but one was very fresh!
We made it back to cabin after a couple of hours for a quick lunch before heading back out to visit the Uclulet Aquarium and do a spot of fishing off ‘Whisky Dock’. The aquarium was great fun, although only very small, it had lots of open tanks where you were free to touch and hold the sea creatures inside. Jack, Granny and I held starfish (harder than you think), sea cucumbers (very slimy and squidgy) and touched all sorts of other things, including a starfish that smelt of garlic as you stroked it! While we were enjoying ourselves, Jonathan and Granpops sorted out the fishing licences. We’d heard there was a school of mackerel in the area, and apparently, when one bites, they all bite and have a feeding frenzy, so it should be highly likely we’d get a catch. Well, that’s all well and good in theory, but in practice it was another matter. A couple of hours later, the boys had only one catch, a small mackerel caught on Jacks tiny rod by Jonathan, too small to go on the BBQ so back it went.
Unbeknownst to me, my husband had organised a surprise evening out to celebrate our ninth wedding anniversary! Good job we were travelling with a couple of babysitters! We enjoyed a lovely long dinner and wine at Norwoods, a place we’d thoroughly recommend.
The Travelling Haywards 