Saturday was another wonderful Ucluelet day. We headed into the Pacific Rim National Park where we walked in the unspoilt temperate rainforest. We probably have too many photos of green trees festooned with green hanging moss and lichens - they look like they should be photogenic but prove to be very difficult to photograph. We'll only bore the blog with the very best one or two. We moved on to the quirky Tofino Botanic Garden for a picnic lunch stop. This was really quite lovely - completely different in style to the 'English' bedding plant gardens of Butchart and we rather liked this one. It had a number of interesting sculptures. We particularly liked the work of Jan Janzen, see the photos of his Gazebo and Story-Telling Hut. We spotted a largish blue bird that we think we have narrowed down to be a Jay - probably a Steller's Jay - but the local we asked didn't know.

In Tofino, the small town at the north end of the National Park Dave found a replacement for his dead walking sandals. For the afternoon's exercise we took a lengthy stroll along Long Beach - miles of sand, rocks and waves. And we listened to Long Beach radio in the car - Dave has designated this as the best radio station in the world. It is good but..... well you can decide for yourselves as it broadcasts online. Then it was back to Ucluelet for fresh fish and chips (with coleslaw instead of mushy peas so you know for sure that you are in the States not UK!) from one of Ukee's institutions, the Jiggers mobile fish and chip van. We were lucky to get served as only a couple of orders after ours they announced that they had run out of fish and would be closing early. We rounded off the day with a sunset walk around the Wild Pacific Trail. Although we'd only been there the previous day it was worth revisiting for the dusk atmosphere (see photos).

Waking back to our cabin we were planning the drive back to Victoria and had a "four candles/fork handles" moment all of our own: Dave said it looked like another warm sunny day tomorrow so it would be a 'shorts day' for our visit to Qualicum Beach - Jill heard 'short stay' - much confusion until we worked out what was going on!

Sunday was the long drive back to Victoria with a couple of stops on the east coast to break the journey. We headed 37km north of our route to take in the coffee (highly recommended by a friend) at Fanny Bay. Given the distance we were amused that we found the wrong cafe bar but still had a great coffee! Down the coast we had a butty lunch at Qualicum Beach where the waters were warm enough to persuade in a few hardy swimmers. Needless to say we didn't join in.

Back at base in Victoria Jill had great fun with the blender whilst trying to make soup for tea. Somehow the base came away from the blender jug and instead of blended soup she had soup all over the kitchen - eventually all (well most) was rescued and we did manage to eat soup that evening. Back to reality from paradise!