The end of our Vancouver Island trip.

A year ago today is the day we returned home from our 3 week stay on Vancouver Island. As it turns out, the weather that day was very similar to today's - wet and cold, bordering on snow.

But before we can get home, we have to go back to the day before, when once more we woke up to - you guessed it - SNOW! It wasn't quite so wonderful with blue skies as this picture suggests, at least not at first, but it did clear up quickly, but once again we reasoned that if there was snow down here on the beach....what on earth happened up in the mountains. The view from our campsite.

There were a number of Crows (these would be Northwestern Crows) hanging about looking for handouts.

As well as a couple of Steller's Jay.

After breakfast we went for another walk along the beach where we saw this American Robin looking sort of out of place.

A last check at the rocks in case any shorebirds had happened to show up over night. They hadn't......

So settled for Starfish instead. Since we had decided that heading back that morning didn't seem like the most prudent thing to do, we went and paid for yet another night and then headed into Uculet. Seems to me I was running low on paper towels after moping up moisture constantly. I should mention that being in Uculet brings back memories as I spent my 16th birthday there. My father built houses for a living, by himself, from start to finish, and for some reason he was building some houses in Uculet. The road had really just been pushed through at that point. My father had the first VW van to come into British Columbia, and never drove anything else afterwards and it was in one of these vans that we made the trip over road so rough that at one point we had to stop and hunker down at the side of the road while they blasted and then cleared up before we could proceed. I had been elected to go with him to do some house painting. The surprising thing is that Uculet doesn't look that much different than it did back then, more years than I'd care to mention!

One thing that Uculet does have are some nice walking trails and we headed to one after doing our shopping chores. The following scenes show the rugged coastline.

After our walk we were heading back to camp when we noticed that we could see the tops of all the mountains that stood between us and getting home. We looked at each other and read each others minds - it was now or never! By then it was 4:00 pm in the afternoon, we tossed the dogs their supper and hooked up the trailer in record time. Although we didn't expect it, the park people gave us back our money for that night and we headed out. A large transport truck was just ahead of us - perfect - let it clear the road ahead of us, we just sat on his tail and made it all the way to Port without incident. There are some trips you never want to end, this wasn't one of them (at least not after the last few days). My husband was all for heading straight to the ferry terminal, but that would have meant not getting home until the wee hours of the morning, so we headed back to Rathtrevor and picked a spot. Didn't even unhook the trailer or put down the jacks, just parked it for the night.

Next morning we are up bright and early, take the dog for a quick walk - and - it started to snow - again!!! Drove to the Tim Hortons for a breakfast to eat on the road and it was really snowing. Got to Nanaimo and the roads were turning white. Got to the ferry terminal and sat there in the snow and wondered what was happening on the other side as there is a steep hill to climb out of Horseshoe Bay but figured we'd cross that bridge when we got to it. As it turned out it was only raining on this side and although we drove through a bit of sleet part way home, we made it.

Thus bringing the first trip of the year to a close.