Tofino Trip 2012 - Ucuelet

Last year, Jonathan and I stayed in a cabin in Ucuelet at a place called Surfs Inn. I have a couple blog posts from our visit there last April called "A Weekend Getaway" Part 1 and Part 2... if you feel like taking a little journey down our memory lane.

When going back this year we decided that we liked the Surf's Inn a lot and wanted to stay there again. The people who own Surfs Inn are really friendly and the cabins are awesome. The town of Ucuelet is really cute and fun to explore around in... it's a very small town. The only downside to staying there is that its about a half our drive to get to Tofino and the surf spots... but we thought it would be worth it.

The view from the Surfs Inn hostel  

We stayed in the Elephant Cottage this time around, we loved it! 

We had our own fireplace. One day, as we were sitting and enjoying the fire, a bear walked right past us through the bushes in behind the fireplace. Needless to say, we stood up and went inside!

The kitchen and living room  

Jonathan and Edison relaxing after a long day at the beach 

We took many walks around Ucuelet... to sightsee, to get ice cream, to go to the playground, to go to the aquarium. The nice thing about a small town is that you can pretty much walk where ever you want to go. Right across the street from Surfs Inn is the Ucuelet marina. We took Edison on many walks down there because he loved looking at the boats, and all the little fishies he could see in the water.

Here fishy fishy..

Tofino Trip 2012 - Chemainus

We are back from camping and I'm ready to get this blog updated!! I still have so many pictures from our Tofino trip that I'd like to share.

After leaving our hotel in Victoria, we headed for Tofino. We made one little pit-stop along the way - Chemainus. In all the years that Jonathan and I lived in Victoria, we'd never been in to the little town, known for it's many murals. We decided, being in tourist mode, that we'd stop and take a look around.

Marilyn and Edison, tightly packed into the back of the car 

"How long do I have to stand in front of this big tree??" 

You can take a train ride tour of the murals

The murals are really amazing! 

Their cute little downtown 

Love this sculpture! 

I was still taking pictures as we were driving out of town!

I'm glad we stopped and walked around, what a cool little place to visit! Next stop: Tofino!

Tofino Trip 2012 - Victoria

In the beginning of July, Jonathan, Edison, Marilyn and I left for a two week trip to the Island. We spent most of the time in Tofino and Ucuelet... Jonathan had surfing on the brain... but we also made a couple of other stops along the way.

Jonathan and I wanted to spend a day in Victoria at some point on our trip. We both went to the University of Victoria, spent a few years living there and have some very fond memories. Since moving back to the mainland (7 years ago!!) we've only been back to Victoria a couple of times.... we can thank ridiculously overpriced BC Ferries for that.

We decided to head to Victoria first, spend the day doing the sightseeing/tourist thing, spend the night there and then head to Tofino first thing the next morning.

Edison had fun on the ferry, as usual...

Our day in Victoria was fun! The first thing on our agenda was finding a hotel so that we could drop of the two bikes and three surfboards we were carting around on our car. We came across the Admiral Inn and really liked it. It was nice, not super expensive, and we had our own entrance which was handy for unloading all our stuff. We would totally stay there again. And the best part was, it was only a two minute walk to the inner harbour!

Edison loved his new digs... the Peapod toddler bed 

Bringing all his toys into his tent 

Marilyn, never missing a chance to practice her violin

After unloading we headed over the the harbour to walk around. I forgot how busy and touristy it gets there, but it was still fun to see all the awesome buildings and all the vendors selling their wares. We wandered down on the causeway, past the Empress Hotel, took a stop at the Parliament buildings, and then headed back to our hotel.

There was a street performer who was totally awesome at what she did and so entertaining to watch. Most of the time she stood like a statue... but if you put money in her jar, she'd move and show you that she wanted you to have your picture taken with her. Marilyn wanted to give her money because she was so good... but didn't really want to go in for the picture. As you can see... Marilyn didn't really have much of a choice...

After our walk we did a few other things to end the day. We ate at a couple of our favourite places from when we lived there, Jonathan went skateboarding at the skatepark he used to work at, and Marilyn and I went on a drive out to good old Costco for a few things.

It was a fun day. I'm so glad we were able to spend a bit of time there... I definitely miss that city!