Goin’ to Port Renfrew
The rental company’s offer of an upgrade to a Toyota Prius sounded like a good opportunity to try out a hybrid car.
An hour and a half later, the more nimble Ford Focus seemed like a lost opportunity. Canada’s newest highway, between Lake Cowichan and Port Renfrew in the southwest corner of Vancouver Island, was made for driving in a smaller car with a sportier suspension.
No one would have said that last year. The old logging road between the two communities had been around for a long time. It was locally notorious for damaging even the four-wheel-drive vehicles that were the only feasible alternative to the big trucks.
But the British Columbia government decided to upgrade the road and rename it as part of Pacific Marine Drive. The last five kilometres of paving was finished early this summer.
The new hardtop surface allows visitors to take a circle route north from Victoria to Duncan, west to Cowichan and Port Renfrew, and back thru Sooke to Victoria along the old coastal highway (or the other way around, of course).
It’s limited sightseeing country. This is a slice of the real working-life Canada, an uncrowded highway winding through trees, the occasional lake and expanses of logged-out hillside where fireweed adds a welcome decorative touch to views of big stumps and baby conifers.
The road itself can be an attraction, though, if you’re in a car built to take twists, turns, dips and climbs. Here is a place to try it out without stretching the law or common sense. A top speed of 80 or 90 km/h will provide plenty of excitement for an hour or so. It’s also about the most anyone would rationally want to do on a road dotted with blind curves and one-lane bridges. No dividing lines yet, either.
Nearer Port Renfrew, there’s a nice stop along Lower Harris Creek at the site of the Harris Spruce, one of the surviving giants of the original forest.
A one- or two-minute walk from the roadside parking lot leads to the huge tree and the nearby creek. Both are worth the visit, nestled in a quiet landscape of smaller spruce, wildflowers and plentiful ferns.
At the end of the road lies Port Renfrew. It’s a lower-cost, far-less-crowded alternative to Tofino and Long Beach, which are located much farther north along the coast. You won’t find anything here to match the sandy sweep of Long Beach and its massive breakers.
Port Renfrew has its own charms, however. Hiking trails abound, including the southern end of the West Coast Trail and one of the easier portions of the Juan de Fuca Trail — so named because it follows the shore along the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
While there’s no walking along hard sand or sitting on a stranded log at night to watch phosphorescent breakers roll in, the local alternative known as Botanical Beach offers plenty of walking through a stretch of tidal pools full of unusual rock formations and odd sea life.
Sandstone and shale outcrops show the geological history of the region. Odd pits and bowls in the rock host purple urchins and green anemones. Crabs, sculpins, mussels and bull kelp are also present everywhere.
If the day is hot, take the approximately 10-minute drive east of town to Lizard Lake, a charming little forest swimming spot. There are more trees than beach, but the water is warm, there’s a long wooden dock to serve as a diving platform, and the lake is small enough that moderately strong swimmers should be able to cross it with ease. We saw a trucker pull off the road and run in for a quick dip on a scorching day this summer.
If the weather isn’t conducive to rambling, a good alternative is the deck of the Port Renfrew Hotel at the west edge of town. You can sit at an outdoor table with a cool beer in the late afternoon shadows and watch the charter fishing boats return with loads of fat salmon and halibut. For those who’d rather spend the day out on the water doing the fishing themselves, the prize is a cooler full of fillets the size of fire logs.
Accommodations are limited and probably best reserved in advance. They vary in type but can be found at the town’s tourism website. They’re also one-third to one-half the cost of motels and B&Bs in Tofino.
Restaurants are even fewer. But there are some gems. The hotel serves good, full plates. If you make reservations by no later than the morning, you can sample the work of the Cash brothers, two highly trained chefs who own the Soule Creek Lodge. (Keep in mind that they take Mondays and Tuesdays off, and that the lodge, while a pleasant place to stay, lies at the end of about two kilometres of rough, uphill gravel road.)
Don’t tell anyone, but the Coastal Kitchen Cafe, located on the main road near the hotel, is a vacationer’s dream — a spacious, rustic (but not overly cute) establishment that serves heaping plates of imaginative salads, juicy burgers and sea-fresh halibut, all done with an eye to good nutrition at prices that even thin-walleted campers will like.
You’d better like hiking and/or organized fishing if you plan to spend any time here. But the air is fresh and the views terrific
This article taken from the StarPhoenix, Canwest News Service.