An All-Too-Brief Four Days on Vancouver Island

We just got back from 2 weeks in British Columbia and it was a great trip. The bulk of our time was spent in Vancouver but we spent the first 4 days in Comox with my cousin Sue and her husband, Garth.

A room with a view

Comox is located roughly halfway up the eastern side of Vancouver Island and is just a 25 minute flight from Vancouver. It is a beautiful city and Sue and Garth, who are both serious about horticulture, have a beautiful home and a  botanist's dream for a yard.

Comox is surrounded on 3 sides by the town of Courtenay with the ocean on the 4^th side. A city of approximately 25,000, Courtenay is considered the hub of the Comox Valley and manages to be both quaint and modern at the same time. It has all the conveniences and amenities of a larger city but with a decidedly small-town feel. There are lots of interesting shops with clever names and cute signs. And I highly recommend the seafood chowder at Cornerstone Cafe and Taphouse – thick, chunky and delicious.

They have a very nice tea shop in Courtenay and since my wife loves tea shops, there was little doubt where we would be heading first. As we trekked from cute shop to cute shop I noticed that every specialty shop has music playing and it’s different in every shop. Sometimes the music just feels right and sometimes it’s just totally wrong for the store. The kitchen store we went into was playing jazz and it was perfect! The store had a very jazzy feel about it and it just worked! These are the kind of things my mind notices when my wife has kicked shopping mode into high gear.

 

Time seems to stand still when you shop at Graham’s Jewellers in Courtenay and my wife found a sign in the Laughing Oyster Book Shop that pretty much sums up life in our house.

  

 This Acura seemed to be following us around wherever we went while we were on the island. It showed up in Cumberland and Courtenay every time we did. I’m pretty sure it was the same car each time (call it a hunch). And when we weren’t being stalked by the hard-to-miss Acura, there was this hard-to-miss 1958 BMW Isetta. There really is a little bit of everything in Courtenay.

 

The town of Cumberland is just a few miles up the road from Courtenay and while Courtenay is both quaint and modern at the same time, Cumberland leans more towards simply quaint.

 

You can pick up all of your fishing needs at Cumberland Fly Shop. Just not on Mondays....

.....or stop for coffee and a bun at the Wandering Moose Café……

                     

 

 

              .........or the Village Bakery......

 

.......or have a pint at Cumberland Brewing, the local microbrewery. Cumberland may be small, but it is very complete.

One of the highlights of our time on the island was spending a day in Campbell River, about 45 minutes north of Courtenay. Just a few minutes up the highway from Campbell River is Elk Falls and it is definitely worth a few hours of your day. It is quite easy to get to and there is something about the sound of a waterfall that is just so peaceful. It would be a great place to camp. I can imagine being lulled to sleep every night by the sound of the water crashing into the gorge. It doesn't get any better than that.

It is about a one mile hike in to the falls but it seems shorter and quicker than that. That’s probably because it’s mostly downhill going in which means that it’s mostly uphill coming out. Plan accordingly.

You hike through beautiful BC rainforest – lush, green and everything covered in moss.






Of course, you hear the falls long before you see them and the sound just draws you in. And when you finally get there, this is what is waiting for you:

 

 

 

For a more complete look at Elk Falls, please follow this link to my Flickr gallery

Once we had finished our trip to the falls we wandered around the harbour in Campbell River for a while and then stopped at one of Sue and Garth’s favourite places for a late lunch - a very nice little Vietnamese restaurant with an interesting assortment of teas. Feeling a little down? Need a little pick-me-up? There are all kinds of wellness teas available. Why not drop in for some excellent spring rolls and a pot of Flu Shot? Guaranteed to improve your day. We all know that herbal medicine originated in Asia, but a tea called “Flu Shot”….? Alrighty, then.

Campbell River Harbour

After Campbell River, on our last evening in Comox, we went down to Comox Harbour and then to Goose Spit Park. Yes, there really is a place called Goose Spit Park.

Driftwood on the beach at Goose Spit Park

Goose Spit Park is a very nice spot. It is close to downtown Comox and a great gathering place for family get-togethers, picnics and so on. It has great views and there are lots of fire pits along the shore. They even supply the firewood. There is a ranger on duty at all times and you are not only encouraged to have a fire, but also to leave it burning when you leave, which runs completely counter to everything I’ve ever been taught about campfires here in Manitoba and in the forests of Northern Ontario. But the pits are on a rocky beach and there really isn’t anything around to catch fire, so they just keep the fires burning for the next group that comes along.

The views from Comox Harbour were amazing to this prairie boy. Several years ago, before I retired, I worked on the 18^th floor of an office building in downtown Winnipeg and one year we were having spectacular sunsets every night for several weeks. I brought my camera to work and spent a few evenings shooting the sunsets from my office window and then put a few of the shots up on Facebook. My Aunty Doris (cousin Sue’s mom) was born in Winnipeg but had lived in BC since the late 1940s and she commented about how much she missed prairie sunsets. It made me laugh because the only thing I could offer in reply was how much I wished I had her view of the mountains. The grass is always greener…..

But the views from the harbour were indeed spectacular.

The mountains from Comox Harbour 

As was the harbour itself.

On our last morning in Comox, before heading for Vancouver, we visited Filberg Park. A beautiful little park, it was gifted to the city in the will of a wealthy citizen. Winnipeg has a very similar place, called King’s Park. It was gifted to our city for $1 on the condition that it remain a public park in perpetuity. King’s Park has a very special meaning for Debbie and me. We were married there.

Filberg Park has a very similar "King's Park" feel to it – small, very well cared for and extremely beautiful. It also had a nice view of the harbour we had visited the night before except that the tide had gone out over night. The harbour looked very different without any water in many of the channels and boats aground.

And finally, a stop at Salish Seafood for some smoked salmon. The Salish Seafood storefront is very small but don’t let the size fool you. They supply roughly half of the salmon (smoked and fresh) sold on the mainland. They are a big operation. But the little storefront still exudes the Mom ‘n Pop feel of how it was when it began. We dropped in for “samples.” Right. They had 9 different varieties that they were “sampling” that day. At one point I told the woman behind the counter that we seemed to be shifting from “samples” to “lunch.” I was getting very full. She just smiled and handed me more “samples.”

We wound up buying 5 or 6 varieties of smoked salmon to take with us for noshing on in the hotel room when we got to Vancouver. And it was great! Candied Smoked Salmon, Teriyaki Smoked Salmon, Sriracha Smoked Salmon. My mouth is watering just thinking about it as I type this. And CHEAP! We checked the prices when we got to Vancouver and it was more than double! I don't even want to think about what it would be here on the prairies. And that was the way it went when we got to Vancouver, "You want to go out to eat or do you just want to have some salmon?" "Let's do both!"

Our four days in and around Comox were fantastic but the highlight for me came on the first day. We hadn’t been in Comox for more than an hour when Garth decided that we should head to the tourist information bureau in Cumberland and make some decisions about what to do during our stay. Garth is a photographer like me and as we were leaving we got to talking about photography. I mentioned that the two things that I consider lacking in my wildlife portfolio were eagles and wolves. I have photos of both but I have never been happy with any of them. I don’t consider any of them portfolio-worthy. Garth commented that we might not see any wolves but would probably see some eagles at some point during our stay. Not 30 seconds later we came around a curve in the road and there were about a dozen eagles feeding by the shore. “STOP THE CAR! STOP THE CAR! STOP THE CAR!” I was out of the car so fast I don’t even think it had stopped moving yet.

Thank goodness for digital or I would have exhausted a week's worth of film in my second hour on the island. I couldn't believe my good fortune. It was almost as if they were posing.

It was overcast that afternoon and, ideally, I wish I had been shooting against a blue sky. But when it comes to wildlife, my philosophy has always been that you take what you’re given and be thankful for getting it. And now I have portfolio-worthy shots of eagles.

For more eagles, please follow this link to my Bald Eagles gallery on Flickr

We had been in BC for 3 hours and with these images safely uploaded to my computer there was no way that this vacation would be anything but a spectacular success. And it was. So if you're visiting Vancouver Island, try to make some time for Comox and Campbell River. They're worth the trip. 

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