Ucluelet/Tofino.

Alright, I now have more places than a tent somewhere in Kananaskis that I want to live. I was just up in Ucluelet, or Ukee as the locals say, and Tofino for a few days visiting my good friend T.J. and loved every minute of it, even the 6 hours spent being sick on a boat in the ocean.

My journey started after work at 2pm. I zipped home to pack really quick and head on my way. However, while I was packing I got a nice surprise text from a good friend, Jocelyn Arnason, from Calgary that I hadn't seen in a long time. So I went and met her and her boyfriend on the patio of Canoe Club for a chatski and a quick bite to eat. I had never really spent any time with her boyfriend, so it was really nice to get to know him a bit and to spend time with her. Not to mention that it was an absolutely gorgeous day outside. It was just a little preview of how epic this trip was going to be.

I left Canoe Club around 5:30 and hit the road. I had talked to a few different people before leaving and had heard mixed reviews, some said the drive was almost 6 hours, some said 4 hours. It ended up taking me just under 4 with stopping for A&W and getting pulled-over once. Luckily I got a really nice RCMP guy and he only gave me a warning. If you have never done it before, the drive is a lot of fun, and beautiful. The road is pretty easy going until you get up passed Nanaimo and get off Highway 1 and turn into the 14. Once you get there it starts to get a bit windy, but this is also where it starts to get really pretty. The forest becomes a lot more dense and you drive passed some really pretty lakes and coves. I got to see an amazing sunset. I turned around a corner and all of a sudden there was this gorgeous little bay. I debated pulling over for a minute to watch, but it was getting late and I was unsure of how much father I had. I kept driving and just took as many peaks over as I could, which wasn't many because I was going down a pretty steep windy hill. As the sun went down, the fog rolled in which also made for some pretty cool views. Finally around 9:30 I arrived at the Canadian Princess Resort, which is where T.J. works. He still had awhile until he was off so I just sat and chatted with people and had a couple beers. Once T.J. got off we just headed to his house and sat for awhile catching up and having a couple more beers then went to bed.

In hindsight staying up that late and having that many beers was probably a bad choice. We had to get up around 05:00 because we headed out fishing at 06:00. We got up, had a quick cup'o'marnin' (aka coffee) and headed to the boats to start our adventure out on the old salt chuck. We were going for a pretty long run out into open water. The capt'n said there was some good fishing about 2hrs out. So T.J. and I poured ourselves a cup of tea and prepared ourselves for a long boat ride. I made it about an hour until I started to feel kind of queasy and about another 30mins until I start ralphing. As soon as we stopped I stumbled my way into the wheel house, laid down on a bench and that was game over. That bench became my little resting spot for the rest of the trip. Anytime I tried to open my eyes I immediately felt sick, so I just kept them close and tried to sleep as much as possible. At one point when I was awake and could hear people talking about whales, apparently there were two swimming right beside the boat, and one father out that totally breached the surface. I was pretty upset about that, I mean I was upset about the whole thing, but especially missing the whales. Luckily the fishing trip only cost me $20 instead of the regular $140 because Teej works for them.

Once we got off the boat I felt almost normal. We stopped on the Princess and had a big lunch to replenish everything I left out there on the chuck. After lunch we headed back to T.J.'s and had a 30min nap that turned into a 2 hour nap, clearly we needed it. Once we got up we had a delicious dinner of fresh Halibut that Teej had caught that morning with potatoes and salad, so good! After we finished the scrumptious dinner we headed out to do some rock climbing. We made a pretty sweet little boulder problem which neither of us could fully solve. We then enjoyed a nice cleansing ale on the rocks while watching the sun set, headed home chatted and then headed to bed.

We woke up with the plans to have a quick breakfast and hike out to a WWII Canso bomber plane that crashed in 1945 with a few of T.J.'s friends. T.J.'s brother-in-law had other plans however. He made us a huge fantastic omlette and bacon breakfast. Instead of heading out around 11:00 like planned we started the trip around 13:30. Other than taking a few tries to find the trailhead, the hike was flawless and a lot of fun. The bomber was amazing and we had a lot of fun climbing on and exploring the plane. After the hike we headed into Tofino so that Phil, one of Teej's friends, could buy some new fins for his surfboard. I wanted to stay and bum around Tofino a little more, but we just headed back to Ukee to have a BBQ and Phil and Dave's. Which pretty much brings an end to that night, we just hung out, had a BBQ and a few drinks and then called it a night.

The next morning T.J. and I went surfing, which was really fun. It was my 3rd time ever surfing. The waves weren't exactly the best, but I managed to catch one really good wave which made it worth it. Unfortunately Teej had to work at 15:00 so we didn't have too much time on the water, but after we were done we went to a nice little restaurant for lunch. We got a table with a good view of the beach and had a nice little man-date. After I dropped T.J. off at work and said goodbye, I brought my surfboard back and decided to head into Tofino to explore a little more than the day before. Coinsidently Laura Mitic, Julia Tschanz, and Adrienne Attorp had just arrived in Tofino from Victoria. I made plans to meet up with them and wandered around with them for awhile. And then finally it was time for me to head home. It was a sad realisation. I really enjoyed my time up there, it didn't even feel like I was in Canada. But within a mere 3hrs45mins later I was back at home and in the real world once again.

This trip is definitely on my top 3 favourite trip list. It was hard for me to leave. I had the urge to just pack-up everything and move out there and be a huge surf-bum and grow a big gnarly beard. Now I have a decision to make for once I'm done running, a tent in the mountains being a climbing-bum, or somewhere up in Ukee or Tofino being a surf-bum...