At long last, it’s time to get out into the actual wilderness of the Pacific Northwest / British Columbia. If you hadn’t gathered, we are about to be in a remote part of the world. The map below will show our drive from the Provincial capital of Victoria to the sleepy little dot on the map known as Port Renfrew. It’s about a 3-hour between them, and we didn’t have cell service for most of it. It’s incredible just how quickly you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere when you drive this route out of Victoria. It probably seems like we’re not even that far away from civilization based on this map (and relatively speaking, that is true—Canada has a whole lot more wilderness to offer if you keep driving north) but it feels like you’re a million miles from anything once you get an hour or two into this trip.
The road to Port Renfrew follows the coastline pretty closely and is heavily forested. We were alternating between a wet, mossy corridor of dense greenery to sudden and sometimes fleeting views of the Salish Sea, across which the mountains of Olympic National Park still loomed steadily. The farther west we traveled, the less imposing these mountains became. Port Renfrew sits just about at the mouth of this straight, so we were never out of sight of the good ol’ USA—but by the time we rolled pasted the quaint, wooden “Welcome to Port Renfrew” sign pictured in the gallery below, we were pretty far off the beaten path. Here are some snaps from the drive.
What can I say about the town of Port Renfrew? Honestly, there’s not much to tell. I’m surprised it even merits its own dot on the map. It’s mostly a spread-out area of cabins, with a gas station and a general store nearby. The only thing I saw that resembled a “town” was a single street of residential houses that randomly ran parallel to the main road for a stretch. This street itself felt like a “neighborhood” but it was very out of place here in the wilderness of Vancouver Island.
Vancouver Island actually does have a few small-to-medium-sized cities. There’s Victoria (which we just passed through) and then there’s Nanaimo and Campbell River, which we’ll get to in forthcoming articles. These cities are all on the eastern coast of Vancouver Island, which has more favorable (flatter) terrain for development, and is more easily connected to mainland Canada (i.e. Vancouver). So, there are actual cities out here! But Port Renfrew is not one of them.
To give you an idea of exactly how isolated this place is—the one gas station in the area was out of service during our visit, so we had to drive 2.5 hours EACH WAY to get to the next nearest gas station. We had been advised to stock up on groceries in Victoria before coming out here because we’d have to travel similar distances to find a supermarket. Also, Port Renfrew apparently experiences random rolling blackouts from time to time. When the power went out on our last day, we stopped by a local hotel & restaurant that had a generator running to ask how long these blackouts usually lasted—they told us that the last one lasted 2 days. 🤯 Suddenly, the flashlights we found waiting for us in our Airbnb made a ton of sense. That’s part of the deal out here!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. In spite of the impending power outage, our accommodations really were extremely cozy. We had a fireplace and a deck that looked out over Port Renfrew’s inlet, which is known as Port San Juan. It was a very cool view. However, almost as soon as we arrived, heavy, cold rains moved in and drenched the misty landscape around us, ceaselessly.
But I did not mind one bit. A big part of why I chose to do this trip was to just fucking REST! I had really been struggling with anxiety in the time leading up to this trip, so the few days of travel that it took to get out here were pretty exhausting to me. But from here on out, it was going to be chill time and nature.
So the rains really forced some great chill time. My bedroom was attached to a bathroom with a skylight, which was very vibey and sleepy with rain hammering the glass above my head all night. The sound of rain is so relaxing to me.
SO, we got the fire going and enjoyed the fact that, in Canada, Parks and Recreation is still on Netflix. Here are a few shots of the view out the window as the rains swept in…
Over the course of the next few days, the rains came and went many times, each time casting watery goodness over what turned out to be an incredible view. We woke the new morning to a bald eagle perched in the tree just outside our window. There are a LOT of them up here. Here are some choice pictures from this balcony through the rest of our time in Port Renfrew.
Sombrio Beach
Okay, so as much as I had intended to spend at least 1 day just resting… that’s boring. TIME FOR EXCURSION #1
If there was an official list of “Things to do in near Port Renfrew,” I think Sombrio Beach would be at the top of that list. It was, by far, the most easily accessible place we visited. In the secluded, mossy parking lot, there were surfers unpacking their gear and hurriedly putting on their wetsuits to minimize the amount of time they were shirtless in the cold BC air. From there, it would have been less than a 10-minute walk down to the beach, had the mossy coastal forests not been so captivating that I stopped every 5 steps to take a picture. Here are a few snaps from the gateway to Sombrio Beach.
Sombrio Beach itself was actually incredible. Although much of the British Columbia coastline looks something like this, I had not yet been anywhere quite like it. It was rugged and picturesque. Beneath the moody gray skies, the seas were choppy and formidable. Across this imposing stretch of water, the westernmost corner of Washington’s Olympic National Park was still visible. Up and down the coast, a dark wall of towering, mossy evergreen trees dominated the landscape. The beach, which alternated between rough sand and small rocks, formed a narrow pathway between the rough waters and impressive trees. Massive logs of driftwood could be found scattered chaotically up and down this beach, rearranged each day by the tidal cycles. It was a far cry from the warm, gentle beaches I had visited in the past, but it was undeniably beautiful. And this was clearly not an unpopular opinion.
Scattered up and down this beach, lots of cool-looking people were enjoying the setting in various ways. There were, indeed, surfers out in the cold waters. On shore, their encampments usually centered around pieces of tidal timber that could serve as seating. However, there were also people who were trekking up this beach, many of whom had campsites set up along the treeline. These campsites literally looked like something out of a North Face advertisement. Apparently, there is a popular backpacking route that stretches from Port Renfrew all the way back to Victoria, all of it along or on the beach. It takes about 3 days to hike, and it has been in continuous use since the late 1800s when it was first established as a rescue route for shipwrecked sailors to get back to civilization.
Let me tell you, I would NOT hate doing this hike. I suppose the weather could put a damper on things (our visit to Sombrio was made during a brief break in the rains) but in a month or so, once summer has fully come to British Columbia, this would be very cool.
We walked much of the length of this beach, and on our return trip, which actually found a dead octopus washed up on shore. I’ve seen plenty of beached jellyfish but finding a full, adult octopus was a first for me. This just goes to show what a diverse ecosystem exists out here. I wonder what the story is behind this octopus. Like, how did it come to be washed up on this beach? I have to think this is somewhat abnormal, even out here.
That afternoon, the rains swept in again, forcing a welcome to return to the warmth of our Airbnb, where we got the fireplace going, cooked up some dinner, and turned on more Parks & Rec. This was is the kind of empty space I needed. And at this point, incredibly, the majority of our trip was still ahead of us. There was a lot more empty space headed our way, most of it without cell service.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter was born & raised in Columbus, Ohio, and started this blog when he moved from Boston to Hanoi (Vietnam) in 2014. After years based in Nashville working on his band, The Great Palumbo, he now resides in London, UK.
