12 June 2017

Our first major adventure after arriving on the Island was to visit Cape Scott Provincial Park, located on the northern most tip of the Island. As we mentioned previously, this necessitated a drive of over 30 miles on a dirt logging road (averaging about 15 miles per hour).

Arriving at the park, we were treated to a spectacular hike through a rain forest as we trek to the beach. Meriam and I have visited two other rain forests but his one is perhaps the most unusual. On the walk in, we encountered an astounding assortment of twisted trees, as if Mother Nature thought about starting a pretzel factory here.

As we entered the beach, it seemed as if the magnificent trees of the forest were protecting this it from human traffic as there were no signs of human activity. In reality, tourism in Canada does not pick up until 1 July when their children get out of school.

Being a dedicated beach person, Diane was now in her element! We all explored the beach’s coves and eddies searching for gifts from the ocean.

One of the forums Meriam studied before we headed to Seattle mentioned that the beach at Cape Scott has been receiving “gifts” from Asia (translate this to junk from their shore to ours).  Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) we didn’t discover any today!

After the beach, we visited Bernt Ronning Garden. Bernt immigrated to Vancouver Island in the early 1900s where he began to collect a number of interesting plants from around the world. Perhaps the most interesting to us is the Monkey Puzzle tree.

Diane and John supporting a couple of the massive trees in the rain forest.

A wide variety of ferns, mushrooms and lichen was found throughout the forest.

We had been cautioned about bears (not Blairs), in fact we spied a pretty good sized black bear on the road up.

The forest was full of incredible trees, tree trunks, and root systems like those above.

Diane arrives in her element (although she would have liked it about 20 degrees warmer!)

Remember I mentioned seeing a bear. Here are fresh tracks from a mother and her cub!

We encountered massive root balls of fallen trees. Amazingly these gigantic trees have no tap root and comparatively small root systems.

Trail to Bernt Ronning’s Garden

New growth!