June 8 – To Tofino

A slightly longer time-wise move today but it was just because the road was so twisty and narrow that everyone has to go slow. It was hard on the RV. Lots of slow tight turns and plenty of bouncing to send stuff flying out of the cupboards.

I am not sure if it has a name but there was a pullout on the highway next to the great little rocky area where the river, which we were following, went through narrow gorges with some small waterfalls.

Lots of little nooks and crannies to explore.

When we finally arrived at the Long Beach Gold Course Campground, it was rather disappointing. Back in March when I was booking our trip I had tried to book a campground that was nearer the shore. I called and emailed over about a week with no answer. I had read in a blog about the golf course campground but they hadn’t said much about it good or bad. After a while I gave up on the other place and booked a site here. I should have tried harder.

This is the entirety of the full hookup RV area. There are 5 sites here.

There is a large no hookup tenting area in the nearby forest. I imagine it is mostly used by surfers. Long Beach in Pacific Rim National Park is very close by and is a surfer’s favourite. The people in the site next to us look like surfers. Even the guy in the campground office was a surfer dude, accent as well.

Adding to the setting, there is no WIFI here so we are on our own Bell hotspot. Later when we went into Tofino we could not find any open WIFI either. I expect that all the monetarily challenged individuals in town would overwhelm any free site. There was even one network called “No WIFI for Hippies”.

We decided to hit the two National Park visitor’s centers. The first one was closed but we got a quick look at one of the beaches.

The other one didn’t have much information and we found out have to buy a Park Pass if we want to stop anywhere in the park. The choices were a $40 per person annual pass or a $8 pp day pass which lasts from the current day to 4 pm the next so it is sort of a two day pass. I think we will stick with the day passes.

After the visitor’s centers we went into Tofino to do a quick check. It was packed. After driving by hundreds of parking spots I think I saw 10 free ones. We didn’t stop but will have to explore it more on one of our days here.

To top it all off the weather forecast is lousy. Lots of rain and highs in the low teens. We can dress for it but after all the great weather we have been having …

Everybody talks about the Tofino area and I had been really looking forward to coming here but all in all, it was a rather mentally depressing day. Hopefully our attitude improves.

We are here for 9 days.