Day 34- Cathedral Grove and Tofino

After our crazy adventure ziplining yesterday, we switched around the truck and headed out of Whistler. Luckily, I wasn't too hungover from drinking the night before so we had a good start to the morning haha. We went to Tims to grab some breakfast because we're running low on supplies again, and headed towards the B.C Ferry Terminal. We thought it was going to be around 3/4 hours until we got there, but after 2 hours through the twists and turns of BC's wild roads we were there and ready for our 2 hour Ferry ride. The Ferry runs from Horseshoe Bay in BC and departs every 2 hours. So if you don't make a reservation (like Melinda and I) you could potentially be waiting 4 hours before boarding to head to either Nanimo or Victoria on Vancouver island. Now if you've ever heard of our trip to P.E.I a couple years ago (where we were THE LAST CAR ON THE FERRY) that is essentially what happened today. We made it there just before the boat began loading cars and passengers. After paying our $93, we waited in line and then got moved to a separate section just before boarding... We waiting a couple minutes, in at the start of a new line, and then finally the guy waved us on.. We were the 10th last car out of 358 cars, so yeah we were pretty lucky. We also didn't want to wait the 2 hours with no reception so it was definitely a sigh of relief. After boarding we hopped out of our car and began exploring the ship. It wasn't too big so we started just before the back and ventured up and then back again, hoping to see any aquatic life. Melinda told me if we could see right at the base of the ship that we'd see sea turtles, but I think she just wanted to stay on the boat until we did. After about an hour we headed inside to grab something to eat. After grabbing some food (and of course a soft serve twist ice cream after Melinda spotted it), we arrived. Everyone on board piled back into their vehicles, started their engines and eagerly waited for the gate to drop like it was Daytona. After heading out,  I was feeling tired so I decide to have a nap so I wasn't a grouch all day. I awoke about half an hour later in a tropical paradise. We were in Cathedral Grove which is an 800 year old forest, home to some of the largest and oldest trees Canada has to offer. Getting out, there was a tree to my right which had a diameter of about 10' and too high to even guess. We strolled around the first trail on the right side that had the tallest tree in the forest. We walked in and out of trees, hugged them and took pictures of them. The coolest thing we noticed about this forest was the nursing trees. These are giant trees that fell over and died, but had 1 or maybe 5 new trees growing from the decaying one. It was a great visual representation of how the cycle of life keeps going even in death. After getting some really cool pictures, and being humbled by this ancient forest, we headed towards Tofino. The drive is definitely a lot harder when you're a passenger as opposed to being the driver because with the windy roads and hairpin turns, you kinda feel sick. We were starting to get a weird appreciation for Saskatchewan's long, very straight roads.

Onc we arrived in Tofino, Melinda just kept saying how cool everything was and all the differnet stores she wanted to check out, while all I could think about is getting some food in my belly. We decided on getting some food and after driving down 10 different streets we finally found parking. We went into a place called "The Shed" which looked like a pretty sweet patio pub. Unfortunately they only served burgers and beer, which sounds good, but we're getting a little sick of it at this point. Well the burgers that is hahaaha So we tried across the street which was called "The Wolf in the Fog". This place looked a little classier but we didnt want to eat pork belly with stonefruit, radicchio (I don't even know what that is, raddish?), Long pepper and sweet potato for $50. So we settled for some Big Daddy's Fish and Chips after walking to the other end of town to get cash out of an ATM (can you tell I'm not the craziest fan of this city). Don't get me wrong, city is beautiful and the surrounding area is amazing, but I definitely don't wanna live here lol.. anyways I had cod while Melinda had the halibut. Both were delicious and filled out bellies before finding a spot to crash for the night. Tomorrow we'll be beach bums around Tofino and doing a couple small hikes around the island.