Lily Haight

Vancouver Island Adventure Part 2 – Port Renfrew to Lake Cowichan

A raven croaking and trilling in the trees woke me up at China Beach campground on the second day of our motorcycle adventure around Vancouver Island. This would herald in a trend of corvids – either ravens or crows – waking me up pretty much every day of our entire trip.

It was around 8 a.m., which was the latest we slept in the whole week, but given the long day we’d had before, it felt good to take it easy in the morning. Besides, we did not have a ton of mileage planned for the day – only about 80 miles between our starting point in Jordan River and our final destination at a campground at Lake Cowichan. So, after a breakfast of oatmeal (the first of many) we packed our stuff back on the bikes (a process that was only slightly easier than the first time we did it) and hit the road.

Our first stop was Port Renfrew, a small unincorporated community, with a population of less than 300. Signs along the way let us know we were driving through land that belongs to the Pacheedaht First Nation. I later learned that “Pacheedaht” means “People of the Sea Foam.”

This name felt very connected to the place we were driving through – on the highway towards Port Renfrew, the sea crashed on rocky shore, and there were many spots where the road had cracked and been patched up – as if the ocean was just waiting to take all that space back. On top of that, it was a bit of a misty morning, and I took turns carefully on the wet roads.

We stopped to dry off and get a coffee at Coastal Kitchen Cafe in Port Renfrew. The place was absolutely packed with bicyclists, hikers, and other motorcyclists. I had one of the best breakfast sandwiches of the trip and also got good enough Wifi signal to learn that Biden had dropped out of the race. (yay!)

It was in the special motorcycle parking lot of the cafe that we spoke with a local rider who, when he learned of our plans to stop at the nearby Botany Bay, encouraged us that we could spend hours looking at the tide pools there. This was enough to convince me it was a necessary stop.

It was pure luck that the tide happened to be out when we decided to go to Botany Bay. The low tide allowed us to walk out onto the giant slabs of craggy rocks that jut into the water from the beach. It was a place where you could see erosion at work – the water crashing against rock over and over again, creating unique shapes and little inlets and pools where intertidal creatures like hermit crabs, sea stars, and chitons live. Beach grasses, sea weed, and eel grass in bright greens and yellows grew in the cracks between slabs of rock.

It was a bit tricky at times to balance on the shards of rock that had been shaped into slippery points. And as the tide came in, we saw the waves start to crash over these rocks, flowing through them like a waterfall.

By the time we got back on the road, it was nearly lunch time, so we were glad that we’d had two breakfasts. The main road to Lake Cowichan is paved, but there is an alternate route that would take us on some dirt roads. We had a few other stopping points in mind – one was Fairy Lake, where we thought we’d be able to see a small bonzai tree growing from a log in the middle of the lake, but couldn’t find, and the other was Big Lonely Doug, which we must have just passed by without noticing. But as soon as we hit the first dirt roads of our trip, all other stops were forgotten as we headed into the wilderness.

The first bit of dirt was aboslutely littered with potholes and I began to worry it would only get worse from there. But we soon ran into a couple of local dirtbikers who stopped for a chat and assured us that the rest of the route evened out into what they referred to as “a highway.”

On the route, I also noticed quite a lot of spray painted grafitti on rocks and trees. When I saw the words “roadblock” spray painted on a rock by the side of the road I realized we were riding roads that had been the site of a historic protest in Canadian history. I later googled and confirmed we were driving right through the site of the Fairy Creek old growth logging protests, which took place in 2020 and 2021 and was one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in Canadian history. I remember watching videos of protesters creating road blockades and climbing up in trees to prevent loggers from tearing down some of the last remaining old growth forests in Canada.

At the time, I could not remember what had happened as a result of these protests, but driving through I worried that the old trees may have been torn down. We passed many clear cuts on our way from Port Renfrew to Lake Cowichan. However, my cursory google later on informed me that as of June, the B.C. government extended the order to defer logging at Fairy Creek until February 1, 2025. I wonder if another blockade will take place next year if logging resumes. And I wonder if there’s anyone still out there, living in those woods we drove through, ready to protect the trees from loggers.

However, by the time we reached Lake Cowichan, these thoughts were no longer in my mind as our departure from the coast led us into some hot, hazy weather. By the time we arrived at our campsite, all I had in mind was a dip in the extremely refreshing looking lake.

The town of Lake Cowichan reminded me of a sleepier version of Washington’s Lake Chelan. Hoards of teenagers were jumping off the floating dock, gathering at the A&W for post-swim fast food, and families were getting out on the water to cool off on their speed boats and jet skis. It was much less busy than Lake Chelan and felt like a little hidden gem of summer recreation. We joined the crowds at the A&W for a dinner of burgers, then headed back to camp to drink hot cocoa and take a look at our planned ride for the next day, which would be our most intense day of dirt riding for the entire trip.