CATHEDRAL GROVE.
Day 270 – We got up early to beat the rush of people going to MacMillan Provincial Park/Cathedral Grove. Many times we’ve driven by and even from the road and thru the crowds, we could see there were some awesome trees in the Park. Traffic slows down on Route 4 several miles on either side of the Park as people jockey for a parking space.
There are parking lots on both sides of the highway. When those spots are gone, people start abandoning their cars, trucks, and RVs by the side of the road and park there. It’s only a two-lane highway. It is a zoo from about 9:30 or 10 in the morning until 4 to 6 in the evening (and you should see it on the weekends!). After giving up several times, we decided to throw caution to the wind and get up early, LOL.
We arrived around 8:20 and were some of the first people there. It was great. MacMillan Provincial Park is the official name of the Park; Cathedral Grove is what everyone calls the property. On one side of Route 4 you can hike through ancient, old-growth Douglas Fir trees. On the other side of Route 4 you can hike through ancient, Western Red Cedar trees. We walked both sides.
The ferns growing there were almost as tall as a person. In the Cedar section, most of the trails are fairly new boardwalks that traverse above the ground; the earth can be quite muddy or even full of water. Occasionally, the boardwalk veered off to encircle a particularly large tree. Really nice. The Douglas Fir area had well-maintained dirt trails throughout, but with so much rain lately, we were sometimes tromping through mud and muck. We hope they will build a boardwalk on the Douglas Fir side as well!
The trees were huge, on both sides – not actually much different than in the other rainforests we’ve hiked in here on Vancouver Island and in Washington state, but trees that have survived for up to approximately 1000 years really do deserve respect. This particular group of trees had a tough time of it in the 1990’s when a huge storm with heavy sustained winds came through. This storm which paralyzed the region for awhile caused so many of these trees to topple over or break off (and think of how many huge storms they had lived thru already in that many years). People say the forest here was changed forever. They still haven’t cleaned much of the damage up, and by leaving it for people to view, you feel very small. We really don’t have much control over anything – so much of it is bigger than us.
We did have control over lunch. We went to the Starboard Grill in Port Alberni. The main reason was to get some of that fantastic Salmon Chowder to go, but hey, why not stay and eat there, too. We sat outside on the deck overlooking the Alberni Inlet and the mail boat that we hitched a ride on a couple of weeks ago. Lunch was delicious, basically shrimp and caesar salads. We walked around the harbor and got a few pictures in the area.
Even though very cloudy, it was a beautiful day with a high of 66 degrees. On the way back to the RV we again saw Deer by the side of the road. (Several days ago I pointed out to Rob that we hadn’t seen deer since arriving in this area again. And sure enough, almost immediately we started seeing Deer by the side of the road or in fields or in someone’s yard.) Back at the RV, we didn’t see Deer, but we did see a little Rabbit, very cute and small, maybe a youngster?, chewing on plants and grass by our vehicle. No pictures, we didn’t want to make it leave.
We sat out in the screened tent, had our wine and beer, and went inside at dinner time. We enjoyed our Salmon Chowder, had it with garlic bread, and we were still marveling over all the huge trees.