After two nights in Victoria it was time to head northwest, up the eastern (inland) side of Vancouver Island. Shortly after leaving the city I immediately I started to see huge highway signs warning of Elk. Not deer. ELK.
Oh, they have deer too, mind you…
… but Elk are much larger and pose a greater risk to motorists. Oh, and they bears up here too. Black bears AND grizzly bears. I brought two cans of bear spray for this trip. A small black bear ran across the road well ahead of me the other day at about 10 in the morning. One must always be vigilant when driving.
Soon after leaving town I stopped as a rest area near Malahat. I didn’t need to rest, but wanted to take in the scenic view.
And for those of you with eagle eyes, yes, that is snow on the distant mountains in the upper right corner of the photo.
When I texted that photo to friends and family members I said that it was the mountains in the Olympic National Park in northwest Washington State. That is not correct. It is actually Mount Baker, and other mountains, still in northwest Washington but further inland, up near the Canadian land border, looking east from this vantage point, not south.
Another lake I could see from another scenic overlook just a little ways up the road:
I got back on the highway and soon arrived in the little town of Duncan. Duncan is known for it’s totem poles. There were lots of them scattered around town but the visitor center there wasn’t open yet and I needed a map to find them all. It was also early in the morning and the sun angle was not conducive to taking great photos.
Here are a few that I was able to find:
And I spotted this big guy across an intersection, in front a round office building.
It is called Cedar Man, and is the widest totem pole in the world, measuring 5 feet, eleven inches across. The carver is a man whose “English name” is Richard Hunt. He is a member of the Kwagu’l indigenous tribe and his given name is actually Gwe-la-y-gwe-la-gya-les. I got that information from the small sign at the base of the pole, which is present at each pole in town.
Indigenous words are all presented in a very elaborate font which I can’t replicate here, but when I start posting more photos of totem poles and their carvers after I have researched them in more detail I will show you photographic evidence of what I’m talking about.
A little further north of Duncan I turned off to head over to Mount Prevost, which promised fantastic views of the area.
I left the house in the photo to give viewers some reference of just how tall the mountain is (2,585 feet). I drove up the road towards the parking area but the road was closed before I got to it and I could tell it was still quite a climb to the top. I am not a hiker so I turned around and left. There is quite a view, though, based on photos I found online.
As I was driving back to the main highway I saw this sign which shows the current fire level risk in Vancouver Island.
I read this morning that the fires in Manitoba province are getting worse and even more have been detected in just the last week. They have already experienced three times the average amount of land loss to wildfires, and tens of thousands of people have been evacuated, mostly by air (not many roads up north). Think about that. Tens of thousands. There are still large, out of control fires in northern Saskatchewan province, too. All of them are producing dangerous smoke and there are health warnings in many areas well south of the actual fires.
This area has been under a huge high pressure dome the entire week I’ve been here. That’s good for me, nice clear days and pleasant temperatures, but bad for residents of those two provinces because high pressure keeps the smoke close to the ground. The weather forecast indicates that that situation is fixin’ to change here in a few days and hopefully that will help clear some of the smoke out.
I am going to resume booking my Airbnb’s along my original route and will make a bee line for Saskatchewan province and get that portion of the trip done so I can focus on Alberta and British Columbia. There are always new fires popping up and the situation can still change on short notice. Canada has excellent resources for monitoring all of the various fires so I will be well informed as to their status.
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