Venturing from Whidbey Island to Vancouver Island, b.c.

Tofino a small fishing village located on Vancouver Island, British Columbia is an artist dream for sketching and painting.  It’s lovely with pristine scenery that is undisturbed by other unpleasant objects; the ambience remains its wild self.  It has long sandy beaches for walking; small wooded and rocky islands near shoreline to explore or sketch; the weather can be warm and dry at this time of the year; thankfully it was for us.

In the small village the views of the near outer islands located in the protected sound are absolutely amazing.  My husband and I sat on a park bench  enjoying the nearby waterfront activity:  Float planes landing and taking off; kayakers, small boats, and barges heading toward the beautiful passages between the small dark forested islands; we could see a First Nations village on the waterfront located on one of the several islands in the distance.  It was difficult to get up on my feet to leave this serene view!

I have been wanting to visit Tofino for years so my husband decided to venture onto the beautiful Vancouver, b.c. Island where roads and people are not so many but plenty of wild rugged country and beautiful scenery.  We stayed in a comfortable ocean front cottage located on McKenzie Beach only a five minute drive from Tofino village.  During relaxing time I did some graphite sketches of the scenes viewed from our patio.  The below sketches are done on a soft light ochre toned rough paper in my sketchbook.

As the crow flies, Tofino may be less than 200 miles from where I live on Whidbey Island but to drive via car it’s 297 miles which is about 7.5 hours of driving including a two hour ferry ride from Tsassassen ferry port  to Duke Point in Nanimo.  The road from Aberni, b.c. gets really rough with winding curves and  lots of traffic during weekends and summer; but the trip is so worth it.  We loved it there!