I almost forgot to post about this: on May 9th Nuria, Lea and I went on a 12-hour road trip!

The day before, I planned out a route that was about 6 hours driving with help from Google Maps. I looked at all the highlights in our area of Vancouver Island and decided to start with driving on a road right next to the sea. After that, we could take the only road through the forest to cross the island and arrive at Lake Cowichan. From here on, we could drive back home via a few places/attractions.

When I showed the route to Katie, she told me the trip I planned out was the ‘Pacific Marine Circle Route’: a popular driveway that shows you most of the highlights and landscapes of Vancouver Island. That was weird, ‘cause I never heard of that route! It was pretty cool that I planned it out by myself, but it would have saved a lot of time if I knew of this route before…

Katie said it would probably be too far to do it all in one day, ‘cause normally people camp halfway along the route. But we only had one day off so we just decided to see how far we would get.

We were permitted to borrow the red Carolla, and around 9 am we left the farm. We started driving to ‘Hatley Castle’ in Langford. It was a beautiful building so I’m glad we stopped here.

After this, we went via a few beaches, some cafes, a cute lunch place, and a little boutique, to Port Renfrew. This was a little village with a beautiful view on the water and mountains (and our furthest point of the route). The way there was really nice: we rode all the time next to the water.

At Port Renfrew we had two options: we could drive the same road back, like Katie advised, or continue the route. It was only 3 pm, so we decided to choose the last option.

The road that crossed the island was pretty too: we drove right through the forest with the mountains in the background. Halfway we stopped near a huge spruce tree, which was over 80 meters tall!

When we arrived at Lake Cowichan we drove via a small village in the harborto ‘Kinsol Trestle’, an abandoned railway which is now used as a tourist attraction. It was definitely the main highlight of our road trip!

Around 9 pm we arrived home. It was a long day but I’m glad we did the whole route. We saw so many things I would never have seen without a car and we had a lot of fun. I posted some pictures of the trip, so check them out! :)