This Pilgrim’s Progress [Lorraine Yeung]

Back last September, my cousin and I went camping for the first time with some friends! First vacation in too long. Jesus was awesome to show us some cool stuff, and he also saved all of us from near death. No exaggeration – the lot of us could have easily died with severe food poisoning on Day 4.

Day 1 Saturday

Tim Horton's at 4:45am

Woke up at 4am for the ferry to Nanaimo, but not without a quick stop to Timmy Ho’s. Got an early ferry over to the island, was pretty rainy on the way there. Some of us caught a couple of winks on the way over. The gluten free bakery was closed for breakfast when we arrived and the other gluten free place the town over wasn’t open yet either.

We  decided to drive to Port Alberni and try our luck there. It was a beautiful drive.

Driving through Cathedral Grove - monumental cedars blowing my mind!!

Drive to Port Alberni

We ended up finding a fancy greasy spoon type breakfast and checked out their public market.

Port Alberni

Honda CRVs have horribly over cautious owners. We discovered this after trailing behind them through windy roads at a turtle’s pace. In spite of this, the drive was beautiful. We drove through old cedar forests and past wide open crystal lakes. Gorgeous, gorgeous creation.

Jess enjoying some fresh island air

Me taking a pic of Jess enjoying some fresh island air

Heading up towards that Pacific Rim

Arrived in Tofino and checked out the market. Tofino had some quirky little corners and fun little signs. Here are some of my favourites.

Deaf Child Playing

All from one house

More signboards from Tofino

I love it when a plan comes together

Checked in and set up camp. We were so thankful that God managed to keep it pretty nice and dry throughout, so we didn’t have to set up in the rain. Got out my brand shiny new tent, pitched it with an ocean view.

Our first camp set up, ever!!

Checked out the beach. Our neighbors next to us had just cooked up some fresh mussels they harvested off the rocks on our beach, so we thought it would be neat to have hunt for some ourselves for dinner.

Mussel hunting on some rocks near our beach

The tide was way too hide, but we had fun beach combing on some super soft sandy beachiness. Instead, for supper we went in to town, bought chicken and had dinner and campfire back at camp.

First Camp dinner: grilled chicken rice!

Had a camp fire that only took about 2 hours to get started. We probably had the soggiest bunch of logs to use. Threw some salt in there and had a super multi colorful campfire which we eventually abandoned due to rain.

Campfire Day 1

Day 2 Sunday

My first camp breakfast ever!!

Woke up and made pancakes with grapefruit. Checked out Tofino town.

Cox Beach

Checked out Cox beach and stayed there until the tide came in. Saw big waves. Had fried rice for lunch. Campfire and dogs for dinner.

Day 3 Monday

The most glorious morning, little did we know this was the last blue sky morning for the rest of the trip.

Quick breakfast with toast. Woke up to the most glorious morning – little did we know that it would be our only glorious morning.

We prayed here and asked Jesus to show us some cool stuff!

Went on the hot springs tour. Prayed and asked Jesus that we might see some whales. Set off on a boat for about 2 hours. Views were glorious!

Views from the boat

We had fun!

On the boat

My quick cameo

On the way there, God blessed us families of sea otters and seals. No whales sadly, but we still prayed. I also saw this little yellow guy as we landed on the island.

Island Slug

Walked through a super old rainforest where grew cedars who were probably just saplings when Jesus walked the earth. The board walk Was cool. Loads of the boards were engraved by a whole bunch of different tribes, nations, groups, people.

Coastal Rainforest - just saplings when Jesus walked the earth!

Boardwalk

Just by the Hot Springs

Hot Springs smelt like sulphur at first. Was cool. Really close to the ocean. We sat in a cleft where the hot springs ran our from under us and cool ocean waves washed over us until we got nailed by a large wave. Jess got impaled on to a bunch of barnacles, she got a rad flesh wound. :)

Hanging out by some rocks

Group photo time

Hit the big ocean on the way back, got to see seal lions!! Whoa!! A whole bunch on them on a small rocky island. Waves were huge on the way back, so awesome. Finally! God showed us some whales!! We saw an orca, two two humpbacks and grey whale on the way back.

Two Humpbacks and a Grey Whale :)

Huge sea swells on open ocean. Ate out at Sobo. Oysters, wild salmon and cloudless chocolate cake. Delicious!! Went back to camp and played Apples to Apples.

True story: This was the toughest hand of Apples to Apples - hilarious!

Day 4 Tuesday

Scrambled eggs, sausage, banana and apples for breakfast. Jess and I soon went beach combing. Was low tide and there were a ton of mussels. Ran back to camp with a knife and a giant pot and harvested mussels a whole bunch of them. We wanted to cook them all fancy, so we sent my cousin to get some wine, lemons, and garlic. FAIL! We had a flat battery, so biked he in to town while cleaning them up! Us girls sat around our picnic table hacking barnacles off our lunch and cleaned them up pretty well. We destroyed our knives!

Little did we know that these were deadly Mussels

Finally my cousin got back, we cooked them, they smelt divine!!

Smelt Delish

So before we ate them, our friend called randomly! We told him about lunch, and then gave us a heads up about red tide. Red tide, after a couple of phone calls and googleling, we discovered that all the mussels and shellfish in the area were affected by red tide, and we would have got super sick, even to the point of death if we ate them. Jesus totally had our backs on that one!! THANK YOU JESUS!! We discarded mussels, went in to town and got some greasyfish and chips and ice cream.

Hi little fella!

Beach combed in the afternoon. Found a starfish. Had potatoes and tuna for dinner. Ran out of propane. Could not find our spare bottle. We also ate weird camp  pie. Rain

Day 5 Wednesday

Tofino Rain

Rain. Rain. Rain.

Made scrambled eggs with cheese. Went and dug some trenches around the tent.

Went for our surf lesson. Surf lesson cancelled.  Epic rainfall warning. Had tea. Went back to camp. Went beach combing and found some sand dollars. Went back to camp. Rain. Dug more trenches. Read. Got a text from our logger friend from our home town. Say what?!

Matty P, our logger friend from Squamish came and visit us. Sat in his truck and listened to his stories. Checked on our trenches and went back to camp. Rain. Thought about fasting for the night. Went to the dockside pub for wings. Went to Sobo for dessert. Bed.

Day 6 Thursday

Rain.
Made better pancakes. Cleaned up. Went combing and found some sand dollars. bits of them. Then went to Tofino tea shop. Still closed.
Went to TuffBeans and had a chai latte.

Hmmm... tea lattes

Went to surfsisters and got in to wetsuits and boots.

Surf Sisters

Went to south chesterman beach, managed to stand up and catch some whitewash waves. Saw Matty P again. Went to the co-op and made steaks and potatoes back at camp. In bed by 6.30pm. Feels good.

Day 7 Friday

Pancakes for breakfast. Super early start. Woke up at around 6.30am. Went to get wetsuits an boards first thing. Caught some white wash waves.

Lunch time we ate macaroni with tinned tuna and sweetcorn in the rain with our make shift long board table. Felt like true surf bums.

Classy cold surf bum lunch in wetsuits in the rain... that's how we roll.

Saw Matty P again. Went for our 1.30pm surf lesson and this time could catch and ride 80% of waves. Surfed until 5pm ish and decided to skip dinner due to rain. All I wanna be is dry again. Jess did our laundry. She’s an angel.

Day 8 Saturday

Woke up. The first night that I had a reasonably good sleep. Rain. Made a group decision to skip breakfast. We eventually packed down our camp. Hit the road around 9.30am. Everyone is looking forward to ring home. Driving to qualicum beach for breakfast.
Saw my first bit of blue sky in days exciting.

Journey home - back to blue skies and dryness.

The gluten free place in Qualicum beach was closed down, so we drove to Nanaimo and had lunch at a gluten free cafe near the ferry. The blue jewel cafe. It was super new age and in need of Jesus. Unfortunately due to close at the end of tr month.  Got on the ferry an went home.

Dry :)