Natural selection
We didn’t want Disney. Nothing plastic or make-believe. We wanted natural, kid- and toddler-friendly, and we grown-ups wanted to stay sane on our family vacation.
Aha! Tofino … west coast Vancouver Island. This is a family vacation circa 1960, the kind of place that draws folks for 30 years while the kids graduate from sand castles to forest hikes and surfing.
Our adventure started with a sailing trip by Clipper ferry from Seattle to Victoria, B.C. Normally, we’d just slog on through to Tofino on the same day, but not with a 6-year-old and a toddler. So we scheduled an overnight stay in Victoria to break things up.
Discovery No. 1: The Victoria Clipper has a family area at the bow, with seats at tables for mom Tami and dad Mitch, plenty of crawling room for 21-month-old Dory, and Legos on a floor mat for 6-year-old William.
Two and a half hours later, we walked off the boat, turned left for one block and found our hotel, the Grand Pacific. It’s not the cheapest spot in town, but it has a children’s package: a welcome bag for William with a camera and free video game privileges, passes to the Royal BC Museum, and milk and cookies at night.
Victoria is one giant kid’s fantasy land. The waterfront is magical, with jugglers and mimes, magicians doing escape tricks, artists drawing caricatures, musicians and Native carvers. The inner harbor walk is large enough to keep your interest and small enough so a toddler won’t get exhausted.
For girls, there’s street jewelry — the kind you stack on your wrist and wind in your hair. For boys, there’s foam dinosaurs and knotted balloons, and for everyone, horse and buggy rides along the waterfront. And we did it all.
The next morning it was off in a 42-foot, hand-carved Native cedar canoe with George Taylor, Kwakwaka’wakw man-of-all-talents. He paddles. He arranges native dance groups. And especially, he mesmerizes young William.
“Give it here, William,” he boomed. He and William clasped in a special “Native” handshake.
The trip around the harbor took us past docks with giant starfish, past funky houseboats (one had a BMW motorcycle outfitted with moose antlers). And best of all, as far as William was concerned, past a ferry full of amused passengers.
As we drifted by, waving our paddles over our heads, George and his assistant David chanted and pounded a drumbeat with their paddle handles. Several dozen ferry passengers waved back and William was thrilled to think they believed we were all Natives heading out on some serious tribal business.
When our stay in Victoria was done, we picked up a rental minivan (drives like a bloated whale, carries enough luggage to supply a city — the perfect family vehicle) and headed for Tofino. Local folk estimate the drive at about four hours, but islanders tend to fly low and aren’t hauling two young children.
There’s a freeway up the east side of Vancouver Island these days, and even the first half of the cross-island road isn’t bad. But beyond Port Alberni it winds and climbs and twists. The mistake maybe was eating burgers and shakes in Port Alberni. Twenty minutes later William announced, “My stomach feels funny.” We quickly pulled into a rest area, a perfect excuse for William’s introduction to Northwest woods.
Ten minutes later, his stomach totally forgotten, he piled back into the van, wide-eyed: “Slugs! They were all over. Bigger than my arm! And they were hugging each other.”
Um, yes, hugging. We left it at that. Total drive time, including burgers and slugs: five and a half hours.
We checked into our resort, settled into a surprisingly spacious two-bedroom apartment with full kitchen and view of the beach, and hopped into Tofino for $150 worth of groceries (never shop on an empty stomach, especially with kids).
Pacific Sands Beach Resort has been around 30 years, one of the oldest and most popular resorts in the area. It’s tailor-made for families with kitchens in the units, barbecue pits scattered around the grounds, a long, wide beach bordered by rocks covered with thick tidal life, and its own mini-swatch of rain forest.
Owner Dave Pettinger keeps up with the times; he’s building 22 fancier units (private barbecues, hot tubs) for a more upscale crowd. But mostly, he wants things to stay the comfy way folks have known for decades.
The next morning was the regularly scheduled tidal walk, timed for low tide when all the underwater critters are exposed. William immediately set about trying to peel a starfish off its rock. One finally obliged, mostly because it was busy eating the inhabitant of a seashell. It curled one of its five purple legs and just went on eating.
We gently replaced it on a rock and moved on to a pool of palm-size green anemones which waved their sticky tentacles and closed magically when touched. Beyond the starfish, there were pools of water with thumb-size fish and boulders so covered with barnacles and mussels, you couldn’t see the rock beneath.
William’s favorite? “Everything!” he shouted with glee, heading off to tease another starfish.
Sunset that night was beyond breathtaking as the cloudy sky turned bright orange and reflected in the wide, glazed beach. The resort has a trail through the woods to a rocky point jutting into the ocean, and half the guests headed out to watch while surfers below rode the orange-tinged waves.
Whale watching is big here but instead of taking the small, high-speed Zodiacs, we opted for the larger, more toddler-friendly, 65-foot Lady Selkirk. We were supposed to be going out just for sea lions, since whales aren’t a guaranteed thing. But when we got out beyond the islands, there were spouts all around us — half a dozen humpback whales, including a mom and calf. They were gorging on fish, diving and breaching and slapping their tails and just having a blast. And so were all the kids aboard, who gleefully announced each tail as if it was the first they’d seen.
This went on for two solid hours, some of the whales coming close enough for us to hear the huff of their spouts and the splash of their bodies crashing back into the water. Later, the sea lions, draped across the rocks like so many beige rugs, were almost an anticlimax, as were the eagles and their enormous nest made of spruce and cedar boughs. Whales, spooky caves, eagles, sea lions and seals … what more could any 6-year-old hope for?
The rest of the trip included a rain forest hike with all manner of slugs. We know this because William pointed out every one, including the short black number busily sliming his way up and over a mushroom. Did you know slugs eat dead leaves and animal droppings? Yeah, well, neither did we but thanks to William, we do now.
The fishing was strictly a boys’ day out: grandpa Bill, son Mitch and grandson William. Guide Bob Kimoto, third-generation commercial fisherman, was constantly in motion, checking the fish finder, adjusting the downrigger depth, rebaiting the lines, leaping back into the cockpit for a course correction. He could tell from the movement of the lines and rods what they were passing through — weeds, rocks, schools of fish — and what type of fish had taken the bait.
While the girls went shopping, the guys hauled in two wild coho (catch and release), a 14-pound king (called Chinook in Canada), a 6-pound pink and a perfect-for-frying sea bass.
So what did William like best on the whole trip? The whales, definitely. And the slugs. And the starfish. And the waves. And the slugs. And the sand. And the fishing. And the marshmallow roast we did one night.
And did we mention the slugs?