Oh, my...woke up to another fabulous day along the coast of Vancouver Island. If this gorgeous sunny, warm weather keeps up we'll never leave here to see the rest of BC. But, that's ok with me. There's so much to see and as we move north we only drive about 120km or about an hour before pulling into a new campground.
Friday morning our move was from Qualicum Bay north to Campbell River continuing along Route 19A, the Oceanside Route and alternate to the Highway 19. We hung around the campsite till about 11 before getting on the road, no big hurry since we only drive a short distance. I've started a new book, Gone Girl, and took my coffee and read for an hour down by the river. The night before I had dropped my iPad (book reader for me) as I was coming out of the motorhome and shattered the glass in the upper corner. It also dented right at the volume button so the volume sign was staying on right in the middle of the page, but with a little lifting I got that to disappear. ipad still works, just a little cracky on one side.
We came to this beautiful Union Bay and stopped for a tea break to enjoy the view.
We had driven on only a mile or so when we came to the town itself, with many of its historical buildings restored and open to view. I needed to get some postcard stamps and mail a couple of notes so we pulled over again and I took a walk around. The town was a coal transporting area until 1961 so the community was built by the coal company, all company built housing, company store. Hard to believe there was a wharf and train out into the middle of the lovely bay to load the coal from the north of the island onto barges. Today none of that remains and instead we saw several divers walking into the water, maybe collecting oysters as that's a big industry along this coast.
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| The original jailhouse, a combo two-cell jail and home for the jailer. |
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| The Post Office still in use, built in 1901 |
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| Community Church. |
From Union Bay we passed through the larger city of Courtenay with all the big services and stores, a population of 23,000. Then on to Elk River Provincial Park, just 3km north of Campbell River. A little piece of heaven!!! Our site was enormous and totally wooded. There are 120 sites in the park but it's so spacious you don't see anyone other than someone across the road. There are river sites and ours was just across from the river, so easy to get to. I think I'm finally figuring out how the reservation system works here in Canada. I had reserved the Friday night site but wasn't able to book a whole weekend, so I figured the whole park was full. But it turns out that only half of the sites are available on line and the rest are first come, first serve. Plus, even though we are big, it looked like we could fit into almost any of them. We set up by 1:30 and an hour later the campground was full. There truly isn't anything better than camping in a Canadian Park.
We took a walk along the river before dinner and saw many fly fisherman in the water...this guy was resting on a log. This area is known as The Salmon Capital of the World, so fishing is what it's all about.
Saturday morning we moved into the Driftwood RV Park in town, great owners who told us all about the busy weekend in Campbell River. The park is right on the Highway so a little noisy but great location with a view of the bay right across the street and an 8km bike path to ride. They even provide you with a bucket of kindling and a blanket to take to the beach for a campfire, evidently you can have a campfire on the beach, just not in any campgrounds.
The big event in town this weekend is the Campbell River Salmon Festival and Logging Sports. We stopped at the Visitor's Center for maps and info and went out to Nunns Creek Park. For $5 entry we had a fun afternoon watching all kinds of competitions and eating salmon. It's a small community event but had competitors from as far away as New Zealand as well as eastern Canada and the US.
After checking on Foster and having dinner back at our place we thought we'd catch some more of the competition, but by 6:00 it was finally wrapping up. We did see the closing where a clown dressed "Tourist" climbed the 80' pole to stand atop and do stunts while keeping up a commentary on his microphone. Pretty amazing. From there we drove out to Painter's Lodge for a little boat ride across the water to watch sunset from the deck at April Point Resort. Clouds were coming in so there would be lots of color in the sky.
As we were crossing over to Quandra Island we passed behind this container barge being pulled up the bay by a tiny tugboat.
Then dessert on the deck as we watched the sun set over Vancouver Island. Pretty neat!
About the same time we saw the Celebrity Century cruise ship making its way south. This is part of the inland passage from Vancouver.
Finally the evening came to an end, we took the little boat back to Campbell River and called it a night.
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