Day 3 on the west coast

Remember the last picture on the last post? The view taken from our campsite of what appeared to be a clearing sky? Well next morning we got up to this view - same place - and yes, that is snow! Now I don't think that snow is all that usual on the west coast of the island at any time of the year. Definitely not at the end of March, as these pictures were taken on March 26th of 2008. However, the thought of being able to get pictures of snow on Long Beach was kind of exciting and so after breakfast, we headed to the beach.

As you can see from the tracks, we weren't the only people crazy enough to be camping on the island in March, there were others out there as well.

One had to admit that it held a certain charm......and of course my ulter-ego thought she had died an gone to heavan - a beach with snow - what more could you ask for!

Driftwood, grasses, sand and snow. After a morning walk on the beach we decided to take a bit of a drive. My husband had wanted to go to Toquart Bay, so to do that we had to head back out highway 4 - the road in (finally now I am almost at the end of this - I've found my map of Vancouver Island).

This is Kennedy Lake, a large lake right beside the highway. We stopped here to use the rest rooms. The turn off to Torquart Bay was just a little further down the highway but it soon became apparent that unless we had a snowmobile, we wouldn't be going to Torquart Bay today, as the road was still snow covered, so back we head to the beach.

This time we decided to go to Wickaninnish Beach. Many years ago the Wickaninnish Inn used to be located on this beach, now a bigger and grander version of that Inn is at the Tofino end on Chesterman Beach that we had visited the day before. The building still remains and is now an interpretive center, which we have never actually gone in. There is a big parking area here and you can either walk north along the sandy beach towards Long Beach, or you can walk a more interesting trail with lots of boardwalk and some up and down stairs, that takes you to some more rocky and secluded bays. This was the route we chose.

As you can see the scenery along this route was spectacular.

This view is looking north along the beach.

It helped too, that the skies had cleared and the sun had come out.

One of the rockier beachs towards the end of the trail.

This was about as far as you could go. We had walked this whole route without seeing a single bird.

But when we got back to the parking lot, there was a flock of Red Crossbills feeding on these cones.

With the skies clearing we figured we'd be able to make it back over to the east side of the island the next day.