I had the time and joy of visiting Canada’s Pacific Rim National Park Reserve over the past weekend with my lovely girlfriend. We stayed in a nice little cottage in Ucluelet (just south of the actual park, on Canada’s wet coast) where we had the luxury of a dry roof over our heads. Did I mention that it rained while we were there? As we were driving from Port Alberni to Ucluelet, we had to go over Sutton Pass. With the windshield wipers on full, we drove the rain, then the slush, then the snow, and finally the rain. Never once going over around 60 km/h or turning down the wiper speed from super fast. It was our second day, we decided to go for a walk. It was raining. Not like a typical rainfall on Canada’s west coast. It was like taking a shower, with a fire hose, for an hour; only it took just 5 minutes to be that wet. Once arriving at Wickaninnish beach we (read: I) found ourselves overloaded with camera gear. I made a quick trip back to the car to drop off a few, unnecessary items. The beach was in it’s west coast beauty. Fog surrounded our small wet bodies as we wandered through the seaweed and driftwood.

Maia mentioned something about a large bird way down the beach. Sure.  It was more than a large bird, we stumbled upon a young eagle feeding on it’s prey. What seemed to be that of another bird. At least, that’s what the pile of feathers surrounding the carcass told us. Crows and Seagulls crowded the feeding raptor trying to get a peace of what remained of the ex-gull.
Half an hour into our trip, and over 100 pictures of a few birds, we decided that we were cold, wet and in need of some hot chocolate. The wind started to blow harder. Towards us of course. The trek back to the car proved to be more wet than expected, and worse, we were out of milk. I believe that it’s not truly a winter storm until somebody lights the barbecue. So I did. Salmon, potatoes, peppers, dinner.
Time to leave, only 1 hour to checkout. Time to get out of bed. Incinerator Rock is where we stopped for our walk on a beach, sans rain. A beautiful beach with some great photo opportunities. We climbed up one rock formation to find about 5 black bodies floating in the surf, waiting for that wave to catch, fall off and swim back to the break point. Surfers seemed to be coming and going but only 5-6 were ever in the water at the same time.

Tofino was our next stop. We didn’t stay for long. We drove around, saw a few docks and from there we decided it was time to go home. Victoria bound. I’m excited to be going back to Tofino with school later this year for our travel photography course. We’ll see how many surfers are in the water then. And hope that it doesn’t rain.

All Images © Matthew Kerr