June 13 Campbell River to Nanaimo, BC

Well, today started off very promising with bright blue skies and warm weather. They really need some rain here.

One of the things we really wanted to do was to spend two days exploring Pacific Rim National Park which is on the other side of Vancouver Island from where we are now. There is a limited choice in roads across the mountains that make a spine the length of the island more or less and one must go through Port Alberni to do so.

As we found out once we got to the turn off at Hwy 4 over to Port Alberni, the road was closed due to a wild fire at lake Cameron that was still burning out of control. All roads were closed to public access. The only way to get there was via escorted convoys that took a torturous route across gravel roads and private property and not suitable for vehicles such as ours…. and added 4+ hours to the trip. Then there was the added complication of getting back.

Our 2 days on the Pacific just evaporated. What to do now? It was almost noon hour by the time we worked out the go or not go situation. We had lunch in Qualicum and discussed last minute alternatives and how to plan 2 nights on this side of the island instead. It is almost time to do laundry again and I had planned to do this on the Pacific side as our campsite had facilities. We decided to not camp tonight and find something else as a change. We ended up renting an AirBnB with a gorgeous view in Nanaimo for the first night.

We had to wait until 4 pm before accessing the house so we spent the time exploring nearby Neck Point Park. We had a beautiful walk around the point, along the driftwood beaches and through the redwood / cedar trees.

Since our destination on the island before heading back has always been Victoria, not much changed in any case. We found a Provincial Park near Victoria that still had a few sites available so the second night is now looked after and we have a list of things to explore along the way… things we were going to drive right by on our return trip to Nanaimo to catch the ferry to Vancouver later in the week. 0ur grampground hosts on the Pacific side refunded our reservation for 2 nights.

So tomorrow we will relax a bit in the morning so we can plan our route / reservations for the return home, which starts when we take the ferry back to the mainland. We can also explore Nanaimo a bit as well.

Having the opportunity to do laundry here, I took advantage and washed everything! Showered and changed, we went out for dinner at a local Greek / Mediterranean restaurant and then went back to the house to enjoy sunset.

Nanaimo is a city of about 100,000 on the east coast of Vancouver Island, in British Columbia, Canada. “The Harbour City” was previously known as the “Hub City”, which was attributed to its original layout design with streets radiating from the shoreline like the spokes of a wagon wheel, and to its relatively central location on Vancouver Island.

The original economic driver was coal mining; however, the forestry industry supplanted it in the early 1960s with the building of the MacMillan Bloedel pulp mill at Harmac in 1958, named after Harvey MacMillan. Today the pulp mill is owned by the employees and local investors and injects well over half a million dollars a day into the local economy.

The main campus of Vancouver Island University is located in Nanaimo, which brings many international students, mostly East Asian, to the city.

The Nanaimo bar, which is a no-bake cookie bar with custard filling, is a Canadian dessert named after Nanaimo. It consists of three layers: a wafer, nut (walnuts, almonds, or pecans), and coconut crumb base; custard icing in the middle; and a layer of chocolate ganache on top. Many varieties exist, consisting of various types of crumb, various flavours of icing (such as peanut butter or coconut, mocha), and various types of chocolate.