Today we ventured out from Victoria and completed a lap of the south west of Vancouver Island. We followed the coastal road to Port Renfrew then went inland to Cowichan Lake & back to Vancouver along Hwy 1 that runs along the east coast.
The drive along the south west coast is quite an interesting drive. The road winds though a lush old growth rain forest with huge cedar trees. It was really hard to take good photos of due to the lack of places to pull over and the lack of light because the forest is so dense. Many rave about Cathedral Grove to the north but it's only a very small little pocket of forest. The south west coastal forest runs for some 50kms. It's more or less devoid of tourists which is always a good thing. We did a short hike around the small peninsular at Port Renfrew called the Botanical Loop. Above is the first point of interest you come to. It's called Botany Bay. It doesn't look anything like the Botany Bay I know in Australia.
You may have noticed in the first photo, a solid coverage of low cloud. The western coast of Vancouver Island (and apparently the North American west coast) tends to be covered in fog most of the time before 11am. Today was no exception. Then all of a sudden, the fog lifted and the sun made an appearance. It's amazing what a difference it made in such a short amount of time. If you look close enough, you'll see the Washington State coast across that water. I was impressed by the shear cliff sculptured by abuse from the wind and waves. Its about 8m high. Nature still manages to cling on despite the weather conditions. The trees are clustered tight right up to the edge of the overhang of the cliff.
Port Renfrew is nothing more than a jetty and a hotel (well not quite, but close). We walked along the jetty being the nosey tourists we are and saw this shifty character up one of the trees. The inland part of the "Circle Route" as it's called, was interesting enough without being spectacular. Logging on the island is big business and most of the island is scarred with patches of tree stumps. Much of the rest of the journey was tree stump scenery. The lakes on the island are nowhere near as pretty as those in the Rockies. Cowichan Lake wasn't even worth taking a photo of.
