Travelogue

Our cozy cabin at the Mackenzie Beach ResortWe boarded the 8:30 ferry from Port Angeles, which would take us on a 90-minute scenic journey through the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Victoria on Vancouver Island.

As we drove onto the ferry, I got very nostalgic thinking back to our 30 years of annual trips to Martha’s Vineyard. Time to make new memories on an island of a very different sort that we had never been to before.

Sunset stroll along Mackenzie BeachOur plan was to stay 2 nights in Tofino, 2 in Ucluelet, and 1 in Victoria. Unbeknownst to us when we made our reservations, there was a pretty serious periodic road closure situation on Highway 4 to Tofino, which would impact us. Crews were working on rock scaling, a labor-intensive process to remove dangerous rock material from cliff faces along the Cameron Bluff.

Our hotel informed us that the highway would be open from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm and then again after 5 pm. What they neglected to tell us was that the “flush” (movement of cars) switched at 12:30 pm from going towards Tofino to going towards Victoria.

Herb and his hot tubIt took us a while to get through the ferry unloading process and customs, so we didn’t arrive at the closure point until 12:50 pm, meaning we had just missed our “flush.” Now we had to wait until 5:00 pm to go through.

We sat in the hot car for a while, but then I noticed that some people were walking a short distance through a wooded section alongside the road to get to the shores of nearby Cameron Lake, which we could just see through the trees from our car.

Along our morning runWe decided to make the best of a pretty bad situation and take our beach chairs out to the small beach and read for a while. It certainly beat sitting in a hot car getting aggravated.

Finally, at 5:00 pm they let us through and we drove the 2+ hours to our hotel on MacKenzie Beach in Tofino. Fortunately, our MacKenzie Beach Resort cabin (#7) was worth all the effort getting there - beautiful ocean views and a hot tub and fire pit on our private deck.

Lunch out in TofinoTofino is a very popular destination, so we were very lucky to get such a great place to stay on such short notice. It wasn’t exactly cheap though. It cost $750 USD for 2 nights. Herb and I spend most of our vacations in a motorhome or camping in the back of our 4Runner, so we rationalized that if we amortized our cost per night vacationing, it was pretty cheap. It’s good to splurge once in a while.

And the best part was that the heat wave had hit Tofino, meaning that it was a balmy 80 degrees, very unusual for what is normally a cool, wet climate. Herb hates cold and damp and would happily spend every vacation in a desert if I gave him the chance, so he was quite happy with the Tofino heat wave.

Surfers in Cox BayIt was already past 7:00 pm when we finally got here, so we immediately poured ourselves a glass of wine and walked out to the beach to enjoy the sunset. There were still dozens of paddle boarders and surfers out on the water enjoying the last minutes of daylight.

Once the sun was down, we scurried back to our cabin and spent an hour soaking in our private hot tub. It was a really cute hot tub - oval, made of wood, and 4 steps to get into it. It was definitely only a hot tub for 2. I kept trying to think where we could put one of these in our small yard.

Crazy "non"-trail up to Cox Bay LookoutAt one point I left the hot tub to go into our room to get my phone. Not realizing that the sliding glass door was closed, I smashed my nose really hard into the glass. Herb and I felt the next few minutes feeling it to see if it was broken, but everything seemed in its proper place. It didn’t swell too much, but I did feel it for over a week. I am such a clutz.

The next morning we set out on a run from our beach (MacKenzie Beach) and tried to make our way north to the town of Tofino. It required some navigating through woods, scrambling on rocks, climbing down stairs down to beaches, but we did manage to get to Middle Beach, Third Beach, and Tonquin Beach before turning around. It was a very fun and well-needed 5-mile run.

View from Cox Bay LookoutAfter a shower and another dip in the hot tub, we headed into town to explore and have lunch.

The town was pretty busy, and we didn’t really feel like waiting around for a table in a sit-down restaurant, so we chose the very highly-rated Al’oha Poke and Tostada take-out restaurant at the end of Campbell Street.

It’s not really a food truck, but rather set in one of a group of six container businesses with shared outdoor seating. Except for the bees vying for our lunch, it was great.

Made it down the Cox Bay trailI had the Aloha Bowl, which had Salmon, Shrimp, Calamari, rice edamame, shallots, avocado, pickled radishes, spicy aioli, teriyaki sauce, and I can’t even remember what else. Herb had the Tuna Bowl with Mahi Mahi, sweet onion, avocado, sesame seeds, garlic mayo, and more stuff that he can’t remember either. It was absolutely delicious.

Later that afternoon, we drove down to Cox Bay Beach, one of the most beautiful beaches on the Island and the best place to learn to surf in all of Canada, because of the consistent, medium-sized waves. Our son and daughter-in-law took surfing lessons here last year and absolutely loved it. Well, we weren’t doing that, but we were going to try to do what is considered the best hike in Tofino - the scramble up to the Cox Bay Lookout for a fabulous view of Cox Bay and the surrounding beaches, islands, and mountains.

Evening on our deckBut first, we spent a few hours just relaxing on this beautiful beach watching several groups taking surfing lessons.

As sunset approached, we decided it was time to head up to the lookout. Not wanting to carry our beach chairs and cooler up a difficult trail, Herb hid them in a small cave behind the sandy beach. Hopefully, we would be able to find them later.

The trail was not signed or marked in any way, so we relied on the Gaia app, which showed the trail as well as our progress along it. Gaia has been an extremely valuable tool for us to find some great trails, as well as to not get lost.

Morning farewell stroll on Mackenzie BeachThe trail (if you could call it that) started at the southern end of the beach. We looked for the biggest opening in the forest that looked like a path and started up. The first third of the trail wasn’t very steep, but had exposed roots and rocks to navigate around.

The next section is where the canopy thickens and the terrain becomes steeper, with fallen trees to climb over or under. The last third of the hike gets very steep with some exposed rock.

Every once in a while we noticed on Gaia that we were getting off trail, but we figured if we just kept going up towards the top of the ridge we were generally going in the right direction.

Herb fighting the jungleEventually, we came out to a beautiful viewpoint overlooking Cox Bay, the mountains, and an endless pine forest in between. I’m not sure if we had reached the official lookout, as Gaia seemed to show that we should be more to the right, but there was a giant ravine between us and where it wanted us to go.

It was an incredible spot though, so we declared it was good enough, as did about a dozen other people who joined us. We stayed for the golden hour of sunset, but left in time to not have to go down this crazy trail in the dark. Surprisingly, going down wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

As we strolled back along the beach toward the parking lot, we remembered to pick up our hidden chairs and cooler along the way.

Mackenzie Beach RhinoOf course when we got back to our cabin, we soaked in the hot tub for a while. Herb stayed in much longer than me, squeezing out the last minutes of hot tub warmth. I think I was already asleep by the time he got into bed. He must have been as wrinkled as a prune.

It was going to be hard to leave this place tomorrow morning. It was pretty ideal.

Before leaving Tofino, we took one more stroll on MacKenzie Beach, this time heading south. We thought we could possibly find a path through the jungle-like border of our beach to get to Chesterman Beach, but it was just too thick.

We did, however, meet a sand rhinoceros, complete with driftwood horn.