Tofino

We recently spent a couple of days in Tofino, British Columbia, a small resort community on the west coast of Vancouver Island. You can find it  on the map almost due west of Vancouver. It’s almost 5 hours by car from Victoria. The segment from Port Alberni to Tofino is slow going, a narrow, winding road through a scenic wilderness but our destination was well worth the effort. Tofino is situated on a small peninsula just north of the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. The peninsula features rugged coastline, directly exposed to the Pacific Ocean. The area is known for its scenic beauty, including the coastline and its rainforest. It’s a haven for water sports enthusiasts, notably kayakers, windsurfers and surfers. It’s a natural too for hikers and photographers.

Today’s post will feature a variety of scenes I was able to capture, beginning with some photos taken early in the morning, along the beach before the fog had burned off. First, the ubiquitous log on the beach with fog shrouded Pettinger’s Point in the background.

The next picture features a row of western hemlock trees separating the beach from the bank above.

Up on the bank, I took these pictures of the stately hemlocks lining the shore above the beach.

Later the same day, I took a walk along the Wild Pacific Trail in the nearby community of Ucluelet. This trail meanders through a rainforest before reaching the rugged Pacific coast. Following are two pictures taken in the rainforest.

This first picture was shows the dense forest along the trail. The large tree in the centre is a Western Red Cedar, very old.

The sight of a brightly coloured fern caught my eye. It seemed to jump out at me, saying “Shoot me, shoot me!” So I did.

Of course, the photographic highlight of my visit to Tofino are the coastline shots. Following is a slideshow of pictures taken along the Wild Pacific Trail in the afternoon and at Pettinger’s Point in the evening. Click on the right to advance; on the left to reverse direction.