Skip to main content

Our First Canadian National Park

Tuesday, June 28th – Port Alberni to Tofino to Port Alberni, British Columbia - Day 137 

Our first National Park in Canada was the Pacific Rim National Park. We were excited to see how it would compare to the American system. An hour drive and we arrived at the visitor centre to purchase our national park pass. Instead of a junior ranger package, they have the explorer package. Instead of a badge, you get a dog tag with the park name on it. The explorer book was very well done. 


 Our first stop was into Ucluelet to visit the lighthouse and the stunning views of waves crashing into rocky shores. We ate lunch and looked out into the ocean to see any ocean life passing by. No luck. We did find very cool massive slugs that were four inches long. We walked for a few hundred metres along the Lighthouse trail before turning back to the car. 


 Into Pacific Rim National Park and to the rainforest trail, a 1.6 km boardwalk through lush forest. You walk over log bridges and the boardwalk takes you up and down by ferns, mosses, and massive trees. I loved this trail. We only did one of two loops of the trail, but I wish we had time for both. 


To be continued...


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Desert Forest

Saturday, May 28th – Joshua Tree National Park - North to Joshua Tree National Park - South, California– Day 107 Our campsite was a large open dirt area with some scrub around the outside. In the dark we had managed to park beside the pile of horse poo and shaving. Horses were allowed in this site. Gen stepped in the middle of a pile.   The Joshua Tree National Park visitor centre was a five-minute drive away. The town of Joshua Tree was packed with college age millennials communing with nature. There was a market with kombucha, organic greens and a few small tortoises. It was all very pleasant but very busy. The laundromat was at the edge of the market, I charged the devices and did the laundry. Gen bought some produce from a guy loading a truck. I even snuck in to buy some watermelon kombucha.   The drive into the park was ten minutes followed by a ten-minute line to show our pass. A quick stop to fill up our water bottles and we were into the park. Th...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Desert Forest - Part 4

We finally decided to move to our last destination before the sun set. The Arch Rock Nature trail was next. We reached the parking lot and saw the rocks in the distance, we were debating what we wanted to do. We just started moving and once we did, we found ourselves racing down the trail to the rocks. The kids wanted to play monster and once they started running, everyone else was running as well. We had another poo-mergency with no restroom in sight, the evidence is buried in the desert. There was more climbing on the rocks. We took pictures of the sun setting and took a quick look at the Arch rock before starting back to the car.  Gen was behind the wheel, an hour later we were leaving the park’s south entrance. We stopped at the Ranger station to freshen up in the bathroom and fill our water bottles before heading to our campsite. Luckily, the site was the overflow campsite for the park so was minutes from the outside of the park....
Post a Comment
Read more

Canyonlands is Another Planet - Pt 3

Thursday, May 12th – Moab, Utah – Day 91  Our day was shortening already, our next hike, the Grand View Overlook was closed due to a search and rescue operation. Apparently, falls and accidents happen quite a bit at National Parks; Gen looked up the top ten most dangerous parks and Canyonlands wasn’t there (it was number 12).  We got a recommendation to hike the White Rim Overlook trail, a 0.9-mile easy hike. The kids were running out of energy. They made it most of the way and then decided to stop to climb a rock. Gen and I continued the short distance to the canyon edge to see the sights. Canyon after canyon after canyon was what we saw. We stopped to sit and marvel at the scenery as the shadows started to lengthen.   On our drive back, we saw the sun set and we stopped at the visitor centre one more time to see the view from just across the road. I couldn’t get enough canyons; I was in love ...
1 comment
Read more