Day 11 - Saturday 18th - Vancouver Island

Bears, bears, bears............

Eileen and I set of for our drive to Tofino on the west coast about 100 miles. This would be our first sighting of the real Pacific Ocean, during my time in the MN I had never seen the Pacific. On the way we spotted a parked car with what looked like a large dog on the verge. When we got nearer we saw that it was a black bear. I swung a "U" turn and we stopped just across the road from it. Your fearless photographer, Eileen, jumped out of the car and snapped away, she's very brave but lacks imagination! I just wound down the window and snapped from the safety of the car - big scaredy!

After the excitement we headed on through the drizzle over the mountains and down to the coast. We first went to Chesterman Beach where we had a picnic lunch sheltered behind a large rock. A brilliant beach and the ocean looked beautiful. You may have gathered by now that the weather wasn't great but around this time it brightened up considerably.
Tofino was an interesting wee town at the end of the highway. It seems to be full of beach bums and surfer dudes - he slips easily into the parlance! On the return journey when looking for a turning to Long Beach we turned into a First Nation reservation, as I was about to do a "U" turn a mum and cub black bear ran across the road I managed to get a shot of them before they disappeared into the undergrowth. We eventually found Long Beach, as the name implies it is very long some 13 km with lots of bums and dudes. You will see in the pictures below that there are lots of washed up tree trunks on the beaches - I'm sure that there is money to be made recycling these!