Quadra Island - Blogabond

As we are making our way up Vancouver Island to Port Hardy to take the ferry to Prince Rupert, we had planned to make a stop at Victoria’s friend Barry who lives on Quadra Island just off Campbell River on Vancouver Island.

Waiting for the Quadra ferry

Barry and his wife Adrienne had graciously offered us (or perhaps we invited ourselves) to camp in their backyard. They live right by the beach with a stunning view of the sea.
Pre-camp phase II went a lot smoother in terms of setting up the tent correctly and getting all our stuff in order. There is still some fine tuning to be done as we are quite disorganized with storing things in the wrong places and not being able to find it when we need it, but practice will make perfect!

Camping in Barry's garden on Quadra Island

The first afternoon, Victoria and Barry went for a swim in the sea just off the beach. Clad in fashionable black wetsuits there was definitely some resemblance to seals and Victoria had a moment’s concern over being mistaken for a tasty meal by a straying killer whale or some other large sea creature.

Barry and Victoria ready to go for an ocean swim

Quadra Island is a very nice, beautiful, relaxed place with all the amenities and so close to nature. We took some time to do a little tour of the South end of the island. Barry and Adrienne did their best to make Victoria look for cougars under the bed before going to sleep (yes, we do have raised comfortable queen sized bed!) by telling stories about the animals on the island, but during the two nights the only wildlife we encountered was a couple of deer and a raccoon hiding in the blackberry bush.

Robert spent some time on Quadra fixing and tuning the car which is now our home together with our tent. The car is a 1993 Toyota Landcruiser which is receiving much love and attention from Robert’s capable hands. It has a diesel engine and can go really far on each tank. Just how far was something we came uncomfortably close to finding out when driving from Quadra to Port Hardy as SOMEBODY managed to miss the last gas station and we barely made it by rolling in on the last bit of diesel fumes to the station in Port McNeill. But what would life be without a little bit of suspense? A night along highway 19 in fog and mist would surely have been the real ‘pre-camp’ test with risk that this journey (and relationship) would have ended somewhere between Campbell River and Port McNeill.

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Victoria & Robert on September 2, 2009 from Quathiaski Cove, Canada

from the travel blog: the Canadian Arctic

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