Day Two Comox to Port Hardy and Cape Scott

We left the hotel in Comox at 1015am and headed further north to the town of Port Hardy. On the way we quickly viewed the town of Campbell River as Tyler knew some people who grew up there and he wanted to see if what they said about the town was true – and it was. To know just what that is, you will have to go there yourself!

We wanted to find a campground near Port Hardy and on the highway we saw a sign for Cape Scott. It said it was just over 60km from the highway. Tyler was impulsive and immediately headed for it without a second thought. We quickly discovered that the road was only paved for the first kilometre or two. After that it was a gravel road that was maintained better in some spots than others. Our little Nissan Cube was then put through its paces. It handled the rough spots fairly well. Some points on this road could be a little dangerous so if you drive it like we did, please take care. And you may want to take a four-wheel drive vehicle for a smoother and possibly safer ride. The weather was still very warm and sunny.

After about an hour and a half we arrived at the campground where we meet Grizzly Adams! It wasn’t actually Grizzly Adams, it was a very nice fellow by the name of Doug Desjarlais. Doug showed us around his property and showed us the way to the trail to get to the beach at Cape Scott. Unfortunately it had obviously been raining in the area quite a bit in the recent days, or else the drainage was very poor as the campground was a soggy mess. Everywhere you stepped you sunk into the ground and your shoes quickly became very wet. The camp spots also had no prepared gravel pads for such a circumstance. Catherine made the good point that our camera and sound equipment would be at risk in such a wet environment. It was also unnaturally cold and dark as compared to everything we had just drove through. We decided to head back to the town of Port Hardy to find a nice clean and dry hotel. But the surprise was on us!

We quickly discovered that all the nice hotels were long ago booked solid. This left us with only one choice in this very small town. This hotel that we checked out was surrounded by a pack of drunken and loud locals. We both had a very uneasy feeling about this so we had another choice to make. Tyler knew that there was a ferry just outside of the town centre, which goes to the town of Prince Rupert. We headed for the ferry terminal hoping to catch a ferry there sometime soon. But alas, the terminal was nearly closed and empty. There was one camper van in the waiting line, and we found only one staff member. The time was 7pm. The staff said the ferry left the next morning at 7am. We had a 12-hour wait or another decision to make. Tyler felt bad about being so impulsive about Cape Scott, so the choice of action was left to Catherine.

Catherine made the decision to head back towards Victoria and to catch the next ferry back to the mainland so that we could take care of some personal business that we didn’t do before we left but should have. We arrived at the Nanaimo ferry terminal at about midnight, and we had of course already missed the last one. We slept in the car until the next morning where we caught the first ferry at 6am back to the mainland. Our sleep in the car was not the best so we were both a little tired and grumpy.

Tyler says of day two – I should be more like my stunningly gorgeous wife and actually plan things instead of just going and doing. I screwed up and I apologized to my new wife and gave her full and complete power to decide our next courses of action. I much enjoyed the time together and the scenery that we were able to see on the way to and from Cape Scott and Port Hardy. I wanted to wait for the ferry to Prince Rupert, but Catherine showed me that we could get much more needed things done in the meantime. We will still head to Prince Rupert and the Queen Charlotte Islands but it will have to come later in our adventure together.

Catherine says of day two – I really admire that Tyler was humble in recognizing that he was overly impulsive. We are a new couple and we are still learning many things about each other and it is important that we make decisions together. It is good to have a mix of being impulsive and planning without going to one extreme or the other. Port Hardy has much natural splendour, but the town itself has not much to offer a visitor. The hotels were stupidly expensive even though they were fully booked and not really that nice or impressive to begin with!