April 13, 2010 by Rae

The RVer Who Stares At Goats

En route to Victoria, we made a stop I was told was a must see en route to Tofino, only it was closed then. So today was the day. We stopped at the Coombs Country Market, home of the goats on the roof. Unfortunately, there were no goats on the roof today. 🙁

The market is fun to walk through. There are kitschy tourist shops but also a large produce stand and an indoor food market filled with all manner of wonderful things to eat. I might stop back there on my way home.

goats apparently graze on the grass over the main market building

inner market square with statues

more of the inner market square

rather whimsical

back of a pretty little church

We did pick up some lunch meat and I bought a croissant for breakfast and apples for a snack. This is definitely a place where you could spend a lot of time… and money!

January 31, 2010 by Rae

The Pacific Rim Highway

Today, I drove the Pacific Rim Highway, which starts just north of Nanaimo, all the way to its end in Tofino, where I’ll be for the next three days. More on that later. 🙂

By RV, the PRH would suck. It is a narrow, winding road with one steep downhill after another. In a subcompact with a manual transmission, however, it was like being on a rollercoaster. Wheeeeeee! 😀

While the distance between Campbell River and Tofino is small, just a couple hundred kilometres, the time is great. It took me over five hours since I made a few stops and often could drive no more than thirty or forty klicks an hour.

Donna suggested I visit Little Qualicum Falls, so that’s where I pulled over first and did a little bit of hiking. I didn’t dare stay long since parking for an hour was a dollar and the only coins I had on me totaled seventy cents.

My mother suggested my next stop, Cathedral Grove. This is the site of one of the last old growth Douglas Fir forests on the west coast. Some of these trees are more than 300 years old. Some are at least 800 years old.

This place had an ethereal quality. I stood there, craning to see the tops of this handful of trees that has survived logging, disease, storms, and fire and I wept. It was a profound experience. I challenge anyone to stop at Cathedral Grove and not be moved.

Next, I discovered Sproat Lake. It was so clear that, well, it brought to mind a quote from Forrest Gump:

… that mountain lake. It was so clear, it looked like there were two skies one on top of the other.

I pulled into Tofino around 2:30, but could not check into my accomodation until 4, so I parked and walked around a bit, covering the entire, tiny, community. It’s the off season, so very little was open. I dabbled with the idea of having a dinner out instead of cooking, but the only options within walking distance would have cost over $50, more than my budget could cover, especially when I know I could get an equivalent meal in Campbell River for half of that.

You’ll need to come back for the next post to find out where I’m staying. 🙂

stairs to the lower falls

lower falls

footbridge over the lower falls

path near the lower falls

lower falls

footbridge seen from further up the falls

lower falls

lower falls (I like that pool of standing water)

picnic shelter

tundra-like vegetation

looking up towards the upper falls

a national tragedy…

western red cedar is in no way related to eastern white cedar

There was no Devil’s Club out today, but I saw plenty of it on the Alaska side of the Chilkoot trail

‘the big tree’ more than six feet wide and taller than the tower of Pisa!

a nurse log

(unfortunate name for a disease)

I like how they just took a chunk out of the tree instead of removing it entirely.

Cameron Lake

idiots in the 70’s set fire to this magnificent, centuries old, tree

this stunning lake teased me for several kilometres until I could find a place to pull over and take a few shots of it!

Clayoquot Sound

church on Main Street

Clayoquot Sound

I laughed so hard at this restaurant sign. My dad’s name was Gary and he loved ‘Canadian & Chinese Food’ restaurants.

December 8, 2009 by Rae

Travels Without Miranda, #10: Melrose, Scotland

My month’s journey backpacking around Scotland taught me that there is no reason why I can’t have something I really, really want. I woke up one November morning in 1997 and announced that I was going to Scotland the following summer. I spent six months saving up, and even losing a month’s income to the Ice Storm of ’98 didn’t deter me from my goal.

The most amazing month of my life was drawing to a close when I landed at the youth hostel in Melrose. It was a grand old Victorian house, but it was for the abbey I had come. My month had been one of following the steps of Scotland’s hero William Wallace and one of her kings, Robert the Bruce, and it was at Melrose Abbey that Bruce’s heart was buried.

Melrose youth hostel

There wasn’t much left to my trip, just a few days. I was due back at work in a week. I was heartsick to be giving up my travels, but excited that my life was about to begin. I was starting university in the fall and would move out on my own, events that made it a little easier to say goodbye to Scotland.

My last night in Melrose I sat on a bench watching the sunset behind the abbey ruins. It is one of those moments of my life that I remember with shattering clarity. It was a perfect moment in time when I knew that I was at the right place and that everything in my life was exactly as it should be. I was flooded with a feeling of peace and well-being and rose from that bench clearheaded and ready to face whatever the future had in stock for me.

Melrose Abbey. The Bench would be just offshot to the right.

It didn’t take long after that for my life to completely derail and I ended up spending the better part of a decade grasping for that perfect moment again.

While I’ve never had such a strong feeling of contentment since hitting the road with Miranda, I’ve had several glimpses of that peace I felt in Melrose. With that reference point in mind, I have been able to identify moments that are completely the opposite, when the universe is shouting at me to get out, to move on, that where I am is the wrongest place I can be. I haven’t shared the full story of what went on in Oliver, but I think that what I didn’t say in my announcement that I was leaving was pretty clear.

November 30, 2009 by Rae

Travels Without Miranda, #2: Alcatraz Island, California

Alcatraz Island is breathtakingly beautiful in a barren and desolate sort of way, architecturally graceful ruins blending in perfectly with scrub grasses, trees, and various flowers. Birds abound and, in fact, most of the island is white with guano. It is a stark, foreboding place, but truly beautiful. Some might think me crazy to find that place so pretty, but it is if you like ruins that blend in so thoroughly with their natural surroundings that you could not possibly imagine one without the other, then Alcatraz is the place for you.

I spent a sunny day touring the ill-famed Rock. Even though it houses one of the most notorious US jails and was the site of native protests, today the island is a peaceful bird sanctuary that belies the supposed horrors that went on between the crumbling walls of the prison.

chapel

mint green on the exterior

interior sampling of the mint green and baby pink colour scheme

those marks on the floor are bullet spray from a shooting during a hostage crisis

inmates had a lot of time on their hand (the knitting alone provides an interesting image, but the hot pink yarn is too much)

sample menu

The architectural details of the place are striking, showing an aesthetic that belies the purpose of the building. Add the surprising mint green and baby pink colour scheme and Alcatraz does not even remotely look as you would expect it would.

As it turns out, the prison’s reputation was not entirely warranted. I learned there that inmates actually tried to get transferred to Alcatraz as it was a more comfortable prison with some of the best food in the penal system. This is not to say that some of the stories that have come out of Alcatraz are not true; it was a brutal place housing hardened criminals, but there was a softer side to the Rock.

I had expected that I would return from my day on Alcatraz completed drained rather than refreshed, and instead learned that I should never assume anything, a lesson I applied during a humbling visit of the town of Banff.

July 22, 2009 by Rae

Bareloon Lake to Bennett and Out

The meanest miles didn’t give up once. The final stretch of the trail is uphill through sand. Never was I so happy to see a church steeple as I did when we reached Lake Bennett, our final campground!

We stopped just before the campground to look out over the lake. There were two floatplanes there. Flying out is another option when finishing up the Chilkoot and the one chosen by a family of 8 (including two young children) who had paralleled our trip, but pushed on to Bareloon when we stopped at Lindeman. We took a moment to wave them off as they flew into the wild blue yonder. Clichéd, I know, but the pictures will prove the cliché true.

We were met just before Bennett by another Sea to Sky guide who kindly brought in our last dinner, breakfast, and lunch so we’d have less to carry. Dinner that night at Bennett was an event, with caesar salad, mini-pizzas (assembled on site), pasta, wine, and cheesecake!

There is a lot to see in the Bennett area, so I explored a bit during the evening. What struck me the most was the amount of debris, mostly glass and rusted cans, which cover the site. They are all that remain of the hotels and saloons which covered this site during the gold rush.

Bennett is a strikingly beautiful location, a turquoise lake resting against grey mountains and rimmed with purple fireweed. Lake Louise doesn’t hold a candle to it! Mark was right when he said that hikers who take the shortcut from Bareloon miss out on something extraordinary.

We had another leisurely morning the next day and the guys made us pancakes for breakfast, a real treat after almost a full week of oatmeal and breakfast bars! We then went for a walk, sans pack, to check out the Bennett cemetery and also to look over the rapids that separate Lindeman and Bennett Lakes.

Lunch was veggie quesadillas and then it was time to start getting serious about packing up as more hikers were coming off the trail and in need of our sandy tent sites.

We left Bennett at 3PM on a train headed for Skagway that would drop us off in Fraser, where we’d left our van. It was strange to move forward without effort and I actually felt a bit queasy on the hour or so ride!

En route back to Whitehorse, we stopped briefly in Carcross to pick up our trail completion certificates and to poke around the tiny community. Our day, and our journey together, ended in Whitehorse, at the High Country Inn, where we had dinner without even changing or showering first. We ate out on the patio. 😀

My journey over the Chilkoot Pass is one I will carry in my heart forever. It was a week that blended history, ecology, and exercise; one that took me from lush Alaskan rainforest to British Columbian desert in the footsteps of men and women who shaped the modern Yukon territory. It was the trip of a lifetime.