Campbell River, Port Hardy and Prince Rupert Week two of our three week tour. We're about to leave Tofino and head for Campbell River.
Taylor River Sunday - The weather has taken a turn for the worse. It's cool, heavily overcast and raining on and off.
Taylor River
Sproad Lake Still, at least the clouds are coming out well in the photos.
Union Bay Union Bay is on the eastern coast of Vancouver Island.
Goose Spit Point To break the journey up a bit I'd planned to stop in a couple of places around the town of Comox, one of them being Goose Spit Point, which is a good spot for seeing wildlife apparently. However, it's still raining and it turns out that most of Goose Spit Point is actually occupied by a military base of some sort. Doh!
Heron Still, there were a few herons about, so I took a few photos in the rain and jumped back in the car.
Comox Air Force Museum Next stop on my list was the Comox Air Force Museum, which basically charts the history of the Canadian Air Force in Comox. They've got a big field full of planes a few hundred yards up the road, but as it was still raining heavily we decided to give that a miss and just head straight for the indoor museum bit.Even though the museum is not terribly big, they'd clearly put a lot of effort into it and it was a very interesting way to spend an hour or so.
Comox This is outside the entrance to the airfield, which is next to the museum.
April Point Resort A while later we arrived in Campbell River where, on the recommendation of the lady in Tourist Information, we had a late lunch/early dinner in the restaurant Quay West. Their chowder was magnificent.After lunch/dinner we headed for the ferry port for the ten minute ferry ride to Quadra Island (which was a very reasonable CAD37 return with the car). Then it was just a couple of miles to drive to our next hotel, the April Point Resort.As you can see from the photo, parts of the resort are built on stilts over the water.
Room We had a lovely room, at the top of the steps that you can see just to the left of the centre of the photo.
Eagles These Bald Eagles were sitting in the trees just behind our room and making quite a racket.
Spa Despite the fact that the resort is by the water, they've decided to build a small lake to stand their spa in.
April Point The clouds were looking awesome and it had finally stopped raining.The building on the right is where the hotel's reception and bar/restaurant are.
Seal There was a seal swimming about in front of the resort.
Pier This is where you could get a water taxi across to the hotel's sister hotel, the Painter's Lodge, which is back on Vancouver Island.
Rooms Some of the waterfront rooms.
Clouds The low clouds were making for some moody, atmospheric views.
Cruise Ship Campbell River is on the Inside Passage, which is the route that cruise ships take when they're travelling up the coast to Alaska. As the inlet is fairly narrow at this point you can get some good views of the cruise ships as they pass. Unfortunately it was almost dark when the first one arrived.
Cruise Ships Five were scheduled to pass by on this evening. Here you can see three of them together.
Room View after Dark When it got properly dark out, I went out to take a few photos of the lights of Campbell River in the distance.Beers sampled today:- Hoyne Dark Matter
Balcony View Monday - The weather forecast wasn't great, but the day had at least start off well. Here's Judith admiring the view from our room's balcony.
Miscellaneous View A miscellaneous view in the resort's grounds.
Sea Plane A sea plane heading for Campbell River.
Yacht Very many people around here seem to own boats of one sort or another.
Rebecca Spit Park We thought we'd spend the day exploring Quadra Island. Here's Judith going for a walk at Rebecca Spit Park.
Mountain View There were magnificent views of the mountains in the distance.
Cortes Island Ferry From Quadra Island it is possible to get this ferry even further into the back of beyond, to the even more remote Cortes Island.
Clouds! The weather had been holding up really well, but rain clouds, seen here on the right, were closing in from the south.
Bay Fortunately the rain clouds skirted past us and the weather stayed lovely.
Heriot Bay We drove on to Heriot Bay (where the ferry to Cortes Island goes from) and had a very nice lunch in the Heriot Bay Inn.
Heriot Bay Inn View We had a lovely view from our table on their terrace.
Mudge Point Lighthouse Shortly after lumch it started to pour with rain (we'd done well to avoid it all morning), so we drove towards the north end of the island for a while until the tarmac road turned into a gravel logging road, at which point we turned round.Fortunately the weather had perked up again by the time we made it to the Mudge Point Lighthouse.
Eagle When we arrived at the Mudge Point Lighthouse there were loads (at least a couple of dozen) bald eagles circling in the sky.
SouthEnd Farm Winery We also popped in to the SouthEnd Farm Winery, which isn't far from the Mudge Point Lighthouse. There's not really a lot to see there, but we had a nice chat with a lady who works there, whose mum was born a few miles from where we live in the UK, and Judith samples some of their wines. We also bought a bottle (shown in the photo) to enjoy on our balcony back at the hotel.
Cruise Ship Another cruise ship passing by the resort.
Painter's Lodge This was the view of our hotel's sister hotel, Painter's Lodge, from our hotel. We'd decided to pop over their for dinner.
River Taxi So we caught the river taxi across to the Painter's Lodge. Here's the river taxi man playing with one of the seals/sea lions (I can't tell the difference when they're in the water) that hang around the dock area.
Painter's Lodge This is what the Painter's Lodge looks like from close up. It seemed very busy and hectic compared to our very peaceful and laid back hotel on the more remote Quadra Island.
April Point Resort View And this is what our hotel looks like from the Painter's Lodge.
Waiting for the Water Taxi Anyway, we had a nice dinner in the Painter's Lodge bar before catching the water taxi home.
Sunset There was a magnificent sunset.
Sunset The water taxi runs until late into the evening.
Disney Cruise Ship Beverages sampled today:- SouthEnd Farm Winery Bara 2017 (rose wine!!!)- Stanley Park Amber Ale
Car Tetris Tuesday - We'd decided to take the car back to Vancouver Island for the day to allow us to venture a bit further afield, but the ferry was busy. Here they are trying to work out how to cram as many cars on as possible.
And we're off! Definitely no more room there.
Ferry View That's a bit of Quadra Island on the left, with Campbell River in the distance.
Campbell River Approaching Campbell River.
Elk Falls Provincial Park We parked in Elk Falls Provincial Park and headed off on the trail to their suspension bridge. There's a hydro-electric power station next to the park and these enormous wooden pipes take water to the power station. What you can't tell from this photo is that each of these pipes is about 6 metres (20 feet) across. They must have taken quite a significant effort to make.
Elk Falls Provincial Park A miscellaneous view.
View Point Judith on the steps down to the falls view point.
Elk Falls The view of the falls from the view point.
Elk Falls Suspension Bridge Me on the suspension bridge, taken by Judith.
Elk Falls Suspension Bridge From a bit further along the trail you can see the falls on the left, the suspension bridge in the middle at the top and the view point just to the right of it.
Deer Falls The trail also passed Deer Falls, which was very pretty.
Judith Judith near Deer Falls.
Quinsam River Hatchery We returned to our car and drove the short distance to the Quinsam River Salmon Hatchery. They had a moderately interesting visitor centre, but no fish and not even any water in any of their tanks! There was a trail down the river, but it was rather hot out by this time and signs saying there were bears in the area. So we decided to give that a miss.
Shelter Point Distillery We didn't have much more luck at the Shelter Point Distillery, which was open but didn't have any tours on this day. Doh! So we had a bit of a self-guided look around.
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail However, they had some fabulous barrels full of flowers outside that had attracted this enormous (by UK standards) Easter Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
Can't remember where this was. We stopped at this pretty beach on the way back to Campbell River for a bit of a walk.
Beach Fire Brewery We popped in to the Beach Fire Brewery, which looked very nice, but because it was only 4pm they were only serving bar snacks. So we stopped for a quick drink before heading back to Quay West for more magnificent chowder.
Ferry The ferry back to Quadra Island was still surprisingly busy, but definitely much less crowded than in the morning.
Sunset There was another nice sunset.Beverages sampled today:- Beach Fire Brewing Wheelbender Stout
Whale Wednesday - Spotted a whale in the far distance while we were having breakfast. Good job I'd taken my camera to breakfast with me.
Ferry Busy Indeed! (Do you see what I did there? :o) Like yesterday, we turned up at 10:30 for the 11:00 ferry, but it was so busy we missed that by miles. The bunch of cars in the distance inside the yellow kerb is as many as will fit on a ferry in one go, so it was going to be touch and go as to whether we even made it onto the next ferry.
12:00 Ferry We made it onto the 12:00 ferry with enough time to spare to be able to run upstairs and watch them playing car Tetris again.
Heading North Back on Vancouver Island we headed north on what looked like it was going to be a really scenic drive, but turned out to be a 145 mile drive between two rows of massive trees. The sat-nav showed that we were driving past all sorts of lakes and things and most of the time we couldn't even tell there was anything there at all as the trees were so dense.
Lake At one point we stopped at a rest area and I walked through fifty yards of dense trees to satisfy myself that there really was something on the other side of them.
Beaver Cove We detoured slightly to have a look at a pretty town called Telegraph Cove, but it turned out that you needed to pay to park, which is rather unusual in Canada. As I didn't fancy paying for two hours parking to spend five minutes taking a couple of photos we decided to head back to the highway.We passed Beaver Cove, which a) was very pretty and b) had a massive logging operation that you can't quite make out in the centre of this photo.
Port McNeill The next place up the coast was Port McNeill, which was picture perfect but didn't actually appear to have anything to do. We saw a Tourist Information office, so popped in. The only thing the helpful man could recommend for us to do in town was to go and have a look at the "burl" (I know, I'd never heard of such a thing either).
World's Largest Burl So here it is. Basically a massive tree tumor. The biggest one in the world.So having exhausted our options in Port McNeill we headed for our hotel in Port Hardy.
Quarter Deck Inn Room View There was a nice view of the harbour from our room.We were only supposed to be here for one night, but we'd miscalculated the ferry schedule and would have to stay for two nights to catch the next ferry north to Prince Rupert.
Mink With Crab! Whilst looking for somewhere to have dinner I spotted what I think is a mink diving into the harbour. It was too quick for me and I didn't manage to get my camera out in time. However, I did have my camera in my hand when it reappeared thirty seconds later with a massive crab covered in seaweed in its mouth! I just managed to get this photo before it disappeared from sight.Anyway, we found our way to the Sporty Bar where I ordered way too much food, including a literal bucket of the best chowder I had during our entire trip.
Cenotaph Out walking around Port Hardy after dinner. The clouds in the distance were looking rather menacing so we decided to head back to the hotel.
Harbour There was a nice view of the harbour on the way back to the hotel.
Heron
Seal The scary dark clouds seemed to have passed us by so we headed for a wildlife viewing hut near he hotel. There were loads of eagles flying about and also the odd seal head popping up out of the water.
Eagle After half an hour we were all eagled out so we headed back to the hotel...
Juvenile Bald Eagle ...to find this juvenile Bald Eagle sitting on a post in the hotel's car park. They are really massive from close up. This one didn't seem at all bothered by the occasional person walking by. Anyway, time for bed.Beers sampled today:Vancouver Island Brewing Dominion Dark Lager
More Eagles Thursday - Thursday started as Tuesday had ended, with eagles all over the place. This one sat in this stop for over three hours!
Eagle
Quatse Salmon Stewardship Centre We drove the short distance to the Quatse Salmon Stewardship Centre, fearful of what we might (or might not find) after our experience a few days ago. However, this tuned out to be an excellent experience. As we arrived a lady who appeared to work there wandered over and asked if we'd like a tour of the site, after which we went for a look around their interpretive centre.
Steelhead Salmon A fish in the interpretive centre.
Sculpin And another one. All in all it was a very interesting hour or so.
Storey's Beach We then headed for the Tex Lyon Trail, but the weather wasn't looking very promising and the trail looked rather overgrown, with the usual warning about bears in the area. So we headed for the nearby Storey's Beach instead and had a walk along that.
Heron This heron was fishing on the beach when we arrived, but quickly relocated to the trees. Then a couple of eagles turned up and it decided to clear off altogether. Probably a wise move.
Taziker View The nice lady at the fish centre had recommended the Taziker restaurant, which was only a couple of hundred yards from our hotel, so we decided to pop in there for an early dinner. This was the view of the harbour from our table. And the food and service were excellent. Highly recommended.
Harbour View After dinner we went for a walk along the harbour.
Post Eagle The eagle was back on the same post in our hotel's car park. It must really like it there.
Island View What I thought was an interesting view of a little island just outside of the harbour.
More Juvenile Eagles Early to bed as we needed to be up for 04:30 to catch the ferry to Prince Rupert.Beverages sampled today:- Victoria Island Brewing Broken Island IPA- Tofino Brewing Dark Lager
Ferry Friday - Up at 04:30, checked out of the hotel and we were queuing to board the ferry by 05:30. The weather was not looking very good at all for our super scenic 16 hour ferry ride up the coast to Prince Rupert.
Now that's a caravan That's probably bigger than my house! I wonder what sort of mpg he gets towing that?
Ferry Leaving Port Hardy visibility was not good.
Lounge View In addition to booking a cabin, we had also booked seats in the lounge at the front of the boat as we were advised that this would be an excellent spot to admire the scenery from. And it would have been if it wasn't cloudy and pouring with rain.
Island Another little island.
Moody Still, the clouds and general poor visibility did add a certain moody "Tony Hart"-ness to the views.
Whale There seemed to be a few whales about, but actually getting a photo of one was tricky. I saw a water spout, so I was looking right at this one when it jumped out of the water in the way that they do in wildlife films. Unfortunately wasn't turned on at the time. So I only got this picture of it sticking its fin/"arm" out of the water a few seconds later.
Whale And a few seconds later it rolled over and stuck its other fin/"arm" out of the water. But it didn't jump out again. Doh!
Flag The flag on the back of the boat. It took me about ten attempts to get this picture with the flag in just the right position.
Klemtu Unexpectedly, we made a stop after about eight hours at the unbelivably out of the way town of Klemtu. It took ages to dock the boat, then two cars and a bin lorry got off and two other cars got on. There were also a handful of foot passengers.
Leaving Klemtu If the ferry were to stop running for any reason, this place would be stuffed.
Ship View A miscellaneous view on the ship.
Narrow Bit This is the narrowest bit of the whole trip. It's so narrow that Judith's head barely fits in it. It would be interesting to see a massive cruise ship going through there.
Prince Rupert A while later we left the interesting narrow bits, the weather got thoroughly miserable and it got dark. The two mile drive from the port to our next hotel in the pouring rain was surprisingly stressful, particularly as Google have tagged the hotel as being on a different street to the street that it's actually on and there's no easy way to get between the two. Grrr.Beverages sampled today:- None! Mainly because I knew I'd have to drive when I got off the boat.
Crest Hotel View Saturday - We couldn't see anything out of our room's window when we arrived, so the panoramic view we woke up to was a pleasant surprise, although the weather was still a bit grim. We had a very nice breakfast in the hotel's restaurant before heading out.
North Pacific Cannery First stop was the highly rated North Pacific Cannery, which is about a ten mile drive from Prince Rupert. We were lucky that we managed to arrive ten minutes before a tour started as they only run them every two hours (because they last for nearly two hours).
Net Making/Maintenance Shed Most of the site is built on wooden posts over the water and is in a remarkably good state of repair. There used to be hundreds of these sites along the British Columbia coast, but over the years they closed and fell apart. Now there are only a handful left and this is considered to be one of the best preserved.
Ruins Having said that, not all of it is in a great state of repair.
Rendering Vats After a while they discovered that rather than throw away the bits of the fish they couldn't put in cans, they could process them in these huge vats to release valuable oils. They must have smelled lovely.
Dock The spacious dock area.
Boat A boat on the dock.
Net Making/Maintenance Shed Inside the net making/maintenance shed.
Radio in the Company Store A 1928 RCA Radiola 60.
Canning Shed Inside the canning shed. They still had lots of the canning machinery in here. It would have been amazing to see it working.
Model Trains A few years ago someone donated this enormous model trains collection.
Butze Rapids We had to drive past the Butze Rapids on the way back to town.
Butze Rapids Panorama As you can see, the sun had come out, which is apparently a bit of a treat around here as Prince Rupert is one of the wettest places in Canada, with an average 260 rainy days each year.
Kwinitsa Station Railway Museum The first thing that strikes you about the railway museum is that it is surely too tiny to be a museum. The second thing that strikes you is that it must be closed because despite the "Open" sign outside, there was no obvious point of entry. We ended up walking round the building trying the doors until we found one that was open.But it turned out to be a bit of a hidden gem, which lots of interesting information about the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway to Prince Rupert.The most amazing fact was that Prince Rupert was planned to be the new Vancouver until the guy that was the driving force behind the project went down with the Titanic.
Crest Hotel Sunshine View We went back to the hotel to drop the car off. I thought I'd be as well to take another photo of the view from our room in the sunshine.
Signpost This signpost was just outside our window. Unlike the robbing one at Land's End, you don't need to pay to take a photo of it.
Crest Hotel Terrace The hotel has a very nice terrace, seen here on the right, which was definitely looking much more appealing now that the sun had come out.
Wheelhouse Brewing A few minutes walk from the hotel was Wheelhouse Brewing, which was basically in a sort of shed like building. Since we'd been in every other brewery we'd come across we thought it would be rude not to pop in. Their beer was very nice.
Approaching the Sunken Garden Later we went to have a look at the Sunken Garden.
Sunken Garden
Dinner As the brewery in the shed were in no way geared up for providing food, we had dinner back in the hotel.
Sunset There was another quite nice sunset.Beverages sampled today:- Prince Rupert Wheelhouse Brewing Blacksmith Brown Ale- Prince Rupert Wheelhouse Brewing Scurvy Dog Spruce Ale- Terrace Sherwood Mountain Brewing Lava Bed Red Ale
Bear Watching Sunday - Tricky day as we had a seven hour bear watching trip, after which we needed to drive 220 miles to our next hotel.Here's the boat we went bear watching on.
Seals The actual bear watching bit of the trip was in a bear sanctuary that was a two hour boat ride from Prince Rupert. We saw these seals on the way there.
Boat View It was still pretty cloudy out as we headed into the bear sanctuary...
Alaska ...which is so close to Alaska that my phone picked up a "Welcome to the USA" text!
Houses There were some super remote houses. This one is apparently a B&B. It would be an interesting place to stay for sure, but you wouldn't get far without a boat.
Waves Some pretty waves as we were cruising slowly through the bear sanctuary with our eyes peeled for bears on the shoreline.
Finally, a bear! After well over an hour we spotted this bear, which was about a mile away. I couldn't even see it, even through the 15x zoom lens of my camera. I just took a photo in the general direction the guide was pointing and then scoured the image later on.
Another bear! On the way out of the sanctuary we saw this bear, which was at least near the shore. However, it was pouring with rain by this time so I only got a couple of photos before retreating under cover to protect my camera.So £200 each for a seven hour bear watching trip to see one bear from a mile away and another one in the pouring rain. Maybe I'm being overly critical, but that doesn't seem tremendously good VFM to me.
Whale On the plus side we did get quite a good look at a couple of humpback whales on the way back to Prince Rupert.Here's one getting ready to dive.
Whale And there it goes.
Whale And another one getting ready to dive.
Lighthouse This is apparently the most northerly manned lighthouse in Canada.There was also quite an interesting eagle feeding session, but I was fed up of trying to take photos by that point.
Ferry On the way back into Prince Rupert we got a good look at the BC ferry that takes people to the allegedly super posh Haida Gwaii. Unfortunately we didn't have time for that sort of thing.
Container Port We also got to see the container port, which is apparently the second largest in Canada due to its excellent railway connections to the whole of North America. Gosh.
Driving Back on dry land we retrieved our car from the hotel car park and headed for Smithers. We were concerned this journey might be as boring as the one to Port Hardy, when we drove between two rows of massive trees for four hours and couldn't see much of anything. However, we needn't have worried. The scenery on this trip was excellent.
Driving As it was likely to be too late for dinner by the time we got to Smithers, we stopped for a bite to eat in a weird McDonald's in a remarkably giant Walmart in a place called Terrace (I think). I'd had a beer from a brewery in Terrace with dinner the previous evening.
Alaska A guy on the ferry to Prince Rupert told us that this road to Stewart was super, super scenic, much like the magnificent Icefields Parkway. Unfortunately it was already about 6pm, so we didn't have time for a 300 mile detour to Stewart and back. Doh! So we pressed on to Smithers.
Smithers When we got to Smithers there was literally no-one there. It was like a ghost town.
Prestige Hotel So we went back to the hotel for a beer before bed.Unfortunately we wouldn't have long to take in the lovely scenery around Smithers as tomorrow morning we would be checking out of our hotel and heading straight for Prince George to start week 3 of our holiday.Beverages sampled today:- Smithers Brewing Amber Ale