Campbell River, Quadra Island & Cortes Island
March 7th 2022
As part of exploring the northern coast of Vancouver Island we headed up to Campbell River to catch a ferry over to Quadra Island. Exploring various island communities has been an adventure for us having the opportunity to experience the difference and lifestyle of each island. Our first stop was in Campbell River to get a cup of morning tea and a triple berry muffin at the Java Shack. The muffin was delicious but the tea was far from the best thing we’d tasted. From there we headed to the ferry where we took a quick ten minute ferry ride on the Powel River Queen over to Quadra Island. The Powel River Queen is set to be retired later in 2022 so it was very nice to be able to take a ride on her before the end of her life. Quadra was a much larger island than the islands that we had visited previously with several town centres compared to the one small town centre. After pulling off the ferry me made a stop at the local Grocery store and saw a cute red Japanese fire truck from Takamatsu, Japan. From there we went for a long walk out along Rebecca Spit Marine Provincial Park where Cielo had to remain on leash as he was unable to listen due to his excitement of exploring a new place. After a bit of googling we discovered that there was an old gold mine that we could visit called Lucky Jim Mine. The journey took us inland up some active logging and industrial roads where there was also no cell reception. We searched around but were unable to find the mine. On our way back down the road we came across a man who was living in his camper with his cats and dogs. We got out and chatted with him asking if he knew the way to the mine. It turned out we had just not gone far enough down the road so we turned around and headed back the way we’d come. This time around we did find it and it was pretty cool exploring the area. The open mine shaft had been capped off but we could still see down through the cracks in the grate.
After exploring the mine we decided to take another ferry ride over to Cortes Island. The sun was shining and the views from the deck were absolutely spectacular sailing through the Salish Sea. On Cortes we briefly explored the town and found yummy ginger, rice and tofu bowl that had just been made which we purchased for lunch. We took our food down to Mansons Landing Provincial Park and Cielo tried to eat a clam. After a short walk along the beach we made the half hour drive back to the ferry. On the way back we were the very last truck on so we folded down our tailgate and had a front row seat all the way back to Quadra. We got a little wet on the way back as the waves kept crashing over the bow of the ship.
Once back on Quadra we made a stop at the other grocery store on this island, this time to visit Emily’s former Assistant Manager who used to work with her at Whole Foods. We chatted for about an hour followed by some grocery shopping for dinner and started making our way back to Vancouver Island. We stopped at a lighthouse by the beach for some last views and hopped on the ferry back. We drove back down to Denman stopping in Comox to fuel up with diesel for our truck and propane for our RV. We caught the last ferry back to Denman and went straight to bed as we had gotten up at 5:30am that morning.
