Crazy amount of stuff for two nights!
Eric took out a chair and put down a carpet for Isabel, who rode in style! Do I ever love the mini-van for road trips.
Tonquin Park.
Girls loved having Gramma and Grampa with them.
View from our room. Unfortunatly it was foggy the whole time and it was hard to see the ocean most of the time. We lucked out with the weather, only rained at night.
Permissions to surf and promises not to sue.
How cute are they?!!
What a happy face.
Part of their audience.
Good luck Girlies!
Jia refused to stay warm and dry. Kids. I ended up taking her in and Eric and Mom stayed out to watch the big girls.
Jia was so happy they came out of the water, they were just walking back down the beach, they kept drifting further along with each ride in.
LOVE this picture!
$304 a night and this is how the kids had to sleep :)
Amphitrite Point Lighthouse in Uclulet.
I think I may have mentioned a while ago that I won a trip to a resort in Tofino. Raffle ticket for the Cowichan Caregivers Support Society. Anyways...Eric and I aren't totally thrilled about the other side of the island. Loud crashy waves, cold, wet, just in general not our idea of a relaxing good time. But free is free, so gave one of our three nights to my parents and booked our weekend for Mom's 65th Birthday. It's a staggering amount of work to pack up for a weekend. Same amount of work for a week or two as it is for a day or two. I wish I could blog about upcoming events, the packing, the planning, the anticipation, which is all half the fun but for safety reasons, I try to just blog after the facts which isn't as much fun to write about. So, last time Eric and I were in Tofino was 17 years ago, we arrived at an rv resort and our truck and camper wouldn't fit in our spot, it was busy so ended up at the golf course overflow. Experienced our first theft from a campsite (lawn chairs from a set). Had a mouse come up through our stove, eat some of Eric's Birthday cake and then ran over his face while we were sleeping. Ya', that didn't go over well and he spent the rest of the night hunting the mouse. Then we went for a tour to an island with a hot spring on it with an advertised 15minute hike. The boat we were on was really rough, I was a couple weeks pregnant and miscarried on the boat (this was during our time at the fertility clinic in Victoria). Then the hike was actually two hours, finally made it to the spring and it was totally sulphur, so almost unbearable. The temperature was too hot for both of us. Then on the ride home the people running the tour decided to show us some whales and proceeded to follow them relentlessly, which I just couldn't stand. We were pretty happy to get the hell out of Tofino to say the very least. So, for this trip, we weren't expecting much. We packed a ton of food and lots of things for the kids to do in the room. We were very pleasantly surprised to see that the old fishing village has become all about surfing. Lili said right away that she wanted to try. So, we looked into lessons and the price was steep but Gramma was with me and offered up half. Turned out the price was for the instructor, who was willing to take both kids for the same price. Fei wasn't thinking she wanted to do it but she went along with the plan and I think was pretty happy by the time they got out there. We didn't know for sure if they would be allowed to have the lesson, they needed to check out the water conditions before they would let kids out there. We went to town and then to Tonquin park for a hike. We didn't hear that they could go out until after lunch. There is nothing cuter than my sweeties in wet suits!! Their instructor was awesome. Shout out for Ryland and the Long Beach Lodge Resort. Both girls did exceptionally well. Strong legs from all that Highland sure helped. They said they were plenty warm in the water for two and half hours. Mom and I both got our boots filled with water trying to take pictures of them and were freezing. It took hours for our feet to dry and feel warm again. We took a ton of pictures. It was hard to pick a few for the blog. We didn't get any of them up on the boards but they did get up and they caught a few good waves on their own. It was very cool. They both totally want to go surfing again. I still don't love the big waves and Jia thought it was too loud too. I do think I'd like to try going back in the summer, warmer weather and blue skies would help. Perhaps in our RV, which is so much easier than packing up to a hotel. All in all, a good time was had by all of us. I can understand a little bit what others have seen in the stormy West Coast.
