Like I said in the last post, this year we decided to a couple of local road trips instead of international trips. The second road trip was a two-week trip in September: North Vancouver Island, the ferry to Bella Coola, Tweedsmuir Park in the Chilcotins, Barkerville in the Cariboo, and back down to Vancouver.
This post is about the first part: North Vancouver Island.
The first day was mostly driving to Port McNeil in the North Island. I love the remoteness of the North Island. Previously we've been there for kayaking trips, but now we'll have a couple of days to explore a bit more. We arrived at Port McNeil and checked into the Black Bear Resort, which is fairly basic looking but has nice facilities like an outdoor BBQ spot, sauna, and breakfast. While we were doing our BBQ for dinner there as a large group of people outside preparing for their kayaking trip, leaving from nearby Telegraph Cove the next day.
The next day we got up early to catch the small ferry to Alert Bay. It is a small island that is mostly a native town, and the former site of an infamous residential school. We had been there before briefly, but just by walking, so we didn't have much chance to look around. This time we had a great local experience and we saw a lot. As it turns out, a couple of weeks before the trip, Celene was visiting friends in the Okanogan and met Amanda, who was visiting from Alert Bay. Since we were in the neighbourhood, she offered to meet us and show us around. Not only that, she invited us to a potlatch that happened to be going on that day. The potlatch was in the 'Big House' up the hill on the edge of town, and it was full of about a thousand people. It seemed most of the island was there, as well as many visitors. People from different nations on the coast all came to perform their dances. It was a great experience. The protocol was interesting: no getting up to leave during a dance. And there was apparently a fine if you fell down or caused any disturbance. After some time at the potlatch (it goes on for at least a couple of days) we went to Amanda's mothers place for a bite to eat, and she drove us around the island a bit.
On the ferry back we saw several otters in the water. It was hard to get a good picture by here goes.
Back in Port McNeil, we had dinner at a craft brewery called Devils Bath Brewing. Love the name: Apparently named after a cenote (flooded sinkhole) that is outside of Port Alice in the North Island.
The next day we drove a rough logging road to Little Huson Cave, where a creek runs through a large cavern.
The water was very clear, and the weather turned out to be warm enough that, despite the rough road to get there, there we a lot of people swimming.
In the evening we stopped at Telegraph Cove to look around. Very picturesque and lots of history, with these old wooden structures on stills dating back to the early 1900s. We had dinner there at the Old Saltery Pub.
The next day was just a drive to Port Hardy, which is only about 30km north of Port McNeil. The ferry leaves from Port Hardy and we have to be there before 6:00am, so I wanted to stay in Port Hardy the night before. Since it was close, we still had most of the day to look around. We turned onto Highway 30 which goes west to Port Alice. On the way we stopped at the Marble River Recreation Site, where we did an 8km hike along the river. It was a mostly easy hike with view nice views of the river.
We drove all the way to Port Alice, which very small (one coffee shop, one restaurant) and at the end of some very steep road down to the inlet. It felt very remote.
By the end of the day we drove to Port Hardy, and checked into the nice, native-run Kwalilas Hotel. After dinner there we walked down to the water, where some teens were fishing for salmon and pulling in one after the other.
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