After a great breakfast with our friends we started the next leg of our journey northward on Vancouver Island. Our first stop was at the Malahat Skywalk. This attraction features a walk through the forest partly on an elevated walkway with a number of art installations including several sculptures of native wild animals.

The walkway ends at a large circular structure that one can ascend for magnificent views of the surrounding area including a sweeping panorama of Mt. Baker, Finlayson Arm, the Saanich Peninsula, and islands in two countries.

The middle of the tower has a spiralling slide that takes you down on a mat in 8-10 seconds. Alternatively, you can walk down. Martin took the slide and Ruth did the walk. Although the slide was only a few seconds it did produce some dizziness.

A non-dairy ice cream help regain stability. We prefer the real dairy stuff though.

Off we went to Cowichan Bay were we found a the Cowichan Bay Maritime Centre and Cowichan Wooden Boat Society. They were celebrating their annual wood boat festival but didn’t really engage with us.

We walked around the harbour a bit and thought sailing would be a nice thing to do sometime on our trip.

Chemainus was our next stop and here we found a wonderful bead store that was closing with 40% discounts. Ruth was in her element. Pearl earrings, fresh water pearls, semi-precious stone beads and some clasps came with us. Lots of material for future projects.

Hwy 4 to Tofino currently has construction work going on and is closed for many hours each day so we wanted to get closer to be able to get through in the morning before work started. Our idea was to stay at Little Qualicum Falls Provincial Park but their last site had just been taken and we thought if we have to stay in a parking lot it might as well be a free one.

Port Alberni, on the other side of the construction has both a Walmart and the fabulous Little Bavaria Restaurant with authentic food. Well worth the visit!