TRAVEL DAY
From:Port Alice Oceanfront RV Park, Port Alice BC.
To: Cluxewe Resort and RV Park, Port McNeill, BC.
To: Marble River Recreation Site, between Port Alice & Port McNeill, BC.
Day 295 – Well, today did not turn out like we thought it would! We thought we’d have a short drive before settling in at our next campsite. We departed Port Alice RV Park at 11:25 a.m. after fully dumping tanks there. It was 66 degrees and mostly cloudy.
We drove east on bumpy, curvy Highway 30, then south a short distance on Highway 19 to Cluxewe Resort RV Park in Port McNeill, arriving there at 12:10p.m. It was 62 degrees and partly cloudy. Just in time for lunch.
We checked in and found out there was no drinking water at the campground. The closest place to get potable water was at a gas station about 10 minutes away. Oh well, we’d just unhitch the Honda tow car and leave it in our campsite, not even unpack at all, and go get water first before unpacking.
This campground, like all others in Canada, was chosen and booked online rather than driving through and scoping it out first. We’d picked our site from a map of the campground, which had shown us available campsites at the time we reserved. There’d been one site available and we’d considered ourselves lucky because it was pictured as being in a single row that was not in a crowded area, on the water. We have come across this before, where the campground was not as it was shown online, but they weren’t too bad when we got there. We drove to our site, driving by maybe five great sites on the Ocean. We thought, oh this looks good!
Driving on, past those on the Ocean, we weren’t even close to our site number when the campground road turned away from the water and into a very crowded, busy loop of maybe 20-30 sites next to each other, across from each other, and behind others. We found our campsite, disconnected the RV and backed in. The campers next to us had taken every inch of their campsite to put in a large trailer, several vehicles (one taking up a little of the road and a little bit of our site), and had installed tents and tarps to create a little party compound with numerous chairs set up, right on our already-small campsite border. Oh-oh. And we’re going to be here 5 days and nights? We let the girls out and unpacked enough to give them and ourselves some lunch.
Then we left things not unpacked and set up, put the confused girls back in the bedroom travel area, and left the Honda at the campsite, driving to Port McNeill to fill the RV tank with drinkable water. We were not happy. The girls were not happy – they thought we’d arrived, yet they were still cooped up and swaying around in their bedroom.
We found the gas station, filled the RV tank with gasoline while we were there, and got permission to use the water spigot, filling the water tank with potable water. We returned to the campground and an hour after arriving, let the girls out, and told them to hang tight; we’d be back later.
We drove in the Honda back the way we’d come earlier to near Port Alice. Days before on a drive around the area, we’d gone through a campground at Marble River Recreation Site, adjacent to Marble River Provincial Park. We’d liked this campground; it was quite wooded with private campsites, free of charge but primitive with no hook-ups at all. We’d stayed in campgrounds like this before, we had just filled with drinking water, we have solar panels for electricity, they are no reservations/first-come, first-served; maybe we could find a campsite there and move back towards Port Alice?
Yes, we found a great site that we liked. We took out the screened tent and chairs, set up the tent to show “ownership” of the site, then drove back again to Cluxewe Campground. Back at Port McNeill, we stopped at the campground office, told them we were checking out and cancelling our reservation, and went back to the original campsite to get the RV and girlies.
The campsite on the other side of us was now occupied (the people seemed nice). The lady on the crowded side of us was feeling quite crabby, complaining to her husband about how close we were to their party area. She was complaining to him the whole time we were getting it together to leave their neighborhood. She even stamped thru our campsite checking to see if we had room to move further away from them. (He was reading a book and not paying any attention to her.) Good luck to the next people who get this site.
We departed Cluxewe after putting the poor, dismayed children back in the bedroom encampment and hooking up the Honda to the RV once again. With all kinds of complaints from the inner sanctum, we happily drove away from Port McNeill and their Ocean view.
It was 3:50 p.m. and 66 degrees when we arrived at Marble River with sighs of relief. We finally unpacked and set up. The girls settled in immediately, but at first they were looking around saying, “Are We There Yet”? Eventually, we made strong margaritas and relaxed. We could see nothing but trees from our campsite. We were nestled into a totally private site with the only sound we heard being the Marble River rushing by. Deep breath, all is well.
