Tofino

We're on the last day of a two-week stay in Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. This is our 17th year staying at Chesterman Beach Bed and Breakfast. When we first came in 1995, it was a back-up plan to an earlier attempt to stay in another Vancouver Island town. We were looking for a remote ocean-side area, and it looked like somewhere around Barkley Sound would be ideal. Looking through Northwest Best Places (no internet searches or Trip Advisor then!), we saw an interesting lodge in Bamfield, on the south side of Barkley Sound. I tried calling a few times and got no response. Finally, shortly after Christmas, we got a call from the new owners of the place. He said that he and his partner had just bought it, they were doing some remodeling, and they hoped to be up and running by summer. And they were pretty sure they'd have food. Well, if you take a look at where Bamfield is - here's a link to a map: http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&tab=wl - we thought we might want to try something a little more secure in the food area. So, going back to Northwest Best Places, we checked out the other options. We read about Chesterman Beach Bed and Breakfast and thought it sounded pretty good. We called and made a reservation. For these 17 years now it has been our ideal vacation place.

This is the first B and B on Chesterman Beach. The original owner, Joan Dublanko, came to Tofino with a backpack from her home in Michigan in 1972 and stayed. She had various jobs, including commercial fishing. She was briefly married and had a daughter, Angela. She bought this property on Chesterman Beach - miles of beautiful, sandy beach - and first built a small house. This is now the Garden Cottage, and is where we are staying on this visit. She then built a house nearer the beach, eventually turning that into another guest accommodation (Ocean Breeze) and building on top of it for her own residence. In 1984 she started her B and B business. She added another building, a garage with another smaller accommodation off the top floor of the house. That's Lookout, and is the place where we normally stay. Lookout doesn't have a kitchen, so when we stay longer than a week we rent the cottage with a full kitchen.

In 2003 Joan sold the business to a couple from San Francisco, Todd Byrnes and Lynda Kaye. We were worried when Joan told us she would sell, fearing the place would change too much under new owners. But they have been just perfect, updating the facilities in character with the whole place. From the get-go they have been active and supportive members of the Tofino community, which we greatly appreciate. So it is still a delight to come here year after year.

This year Larry has been writing a book about the history of the Environmental Test Labs at Boeing where he worked for his career. We usually bring work and projects, and find this to be a fine place to do focused things like write. This trip I've been doing computer file clean-up (ugh) and totally immersing myself in Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins novels. (See previous post.) Very dangerous books if you want to accomplish anything else!

We enjoy Tofino for still being a small fishing/timber/First Nations town, and the way those things have accommodated a burgeoning tourist industry. And there are lots of lovely places to eat - there is great cooking in Tofino! We always eat once at The Pointe, an excellent place at the upscale Wickanninish Inn. This year we've enjoyed Spotted Bear for breakfast, the really good food at the take-out Wildside Grill (owned and run by the two guys that catch the fish!), and the new Red Can Gourmet which has fab pizza and the best Nanaimo bars I've ever eaten! We collect Northwest Native art, and Tofino (especially the House of Himwitsa) has been a wonderful source for our collection.

Most times we've done hiking and kayaking and a boat trip or two, and sometimes golf at the Long Beach Golf Course with its deer and bear rules! We enjoy watching the loads of surfers on the beach (this is big surfing territory), and every day has at least one beach walk, whatever the weather. Sometimes we've coordinated our stay with the tide table to make sure we're here for very low tides so we can really explore the ocean life. We haven't been able to do that this year (one low tide was +6 feet!) but we enjoy the beach every day. Here's a beach sunset picture Larry took on this trip: