We’re just back from a four-day trip to Tofino, on Vancouver Island.  I had high expectations for this holiday, it being our first family holiday since we went camping in September 2008, and the fact that I’d been wanting to go to Tofino for years and years.  I had very high expectations.

Sadly, most things that start out with high expectations end up with some kind of disappointment.  Usually I expect the worst and get to be pleasantly surprised, but this was our first holiday in a year.  It just HAD to be incredible, right?

Turns out that there is no holiday from parenting, no matter how idyllic your destination.  This is something that I always knew, but didn’t really want to fully admit to myself.  In fact, travelling with an infant and a preschooler is probably MORE work than taking time off and staying home, where you are fully set up for your life, your routines and expectations stay in place and you know where you like to go and what sort of things you know are possible to do together.

Don’t get me wrong, we had a nice time.  We stayed in a cute little cabin right on the beach, with better weather than I ever expected.  We watched the sun set over the ocean each night and the sun gradually brighten the soft gray sky each morning.  We saw two Black Bears, five Grey Whales and several trees that were about 800 years old.  It was far from terrible, but it wasnt what I expected.

What I expected was wilderness and old growth forest, untamed nature and long, winding trails that alternated between wild west coast beaches and deep, cathedral-like trees.  I expected long hikes and few people.  I suppose I was subconsciously hoping to recapture a trip that Tom and I took out to the island over the new year in 2001, when we traveled across Vancouver Island from Nanaimo to Port Renfrew on a logging road in December in our trusty, rusty Toyota van.  That trip is forever etched in my mind because we saw so many unbelievable things – totally pristine island lakes, ice-covered waterfalls beside the road, untouched forest covered in hanging moss and lichen.  When we got to Port Renfrew and discovered that it was nothing more than a government dock and a century old hotel/general store, we decided to stay in the ancient, slightly falling-down hotel and went down to the lobby, built a wood fire and drank red wine into the wee hours.  The next day we went on an epic hike along part of the West Coast Trail, saw three people all day, and had an incredibly spiritual experience hiking between the rugged rocks and crags of the coast and the lush, soft, ancient trees of the old-growth forest.  This is what I thought the entire west coast of Vancouver Island was like.  This is what I was expecting.

The truth is that long hikes have gone the same way as movies in the cinema, nights out dancing and lazy sundays spent sleeping in and reading on the couch.  Now that we have one child that is too little to walk and one that is too big to be carried, we can only walk as far and as fast as Beatrice is able.  I thought she’d be happy to walk in the forest with us, but it turns out that she would FAR rather play in the playground.

The old-growth forest is pretty much gone too, and what is left in the Tofino area is: 1)very small, 2) accessible only by an expensive water taxi, or 3) totally over-touristed.  Cathedral Grove was a total disappointment.  A sign in the parking lot said, “This forest is a priceless national treasure, please do not smoke.”  There were even fences protecting the “priceless treasure” from the trampling feet of thousands of tourists who pass through there each year.  Never mind the fact that you’ve just driven through 100 kilometers of  “priceless treasure” that has, in fact, been cut down and sold to the highest bidder.  This tiny patch of trees that has been benevolently saved for you are so priceless that we’ll have to fence them off from you.  There was a Mercedes Benz limosuine parked beside us in the parking lot.  Not exactly the spiritual experience I was hoping for.

Oh, and I also got sick.  Blech.

So, in the end, I think that if we ever go back to Tofino again I’ll certainly have a clearer picture of what we’re going there for.  Chilling out beside the beach, going on slooow walks through the forest, getting away from the big city for a while.  Most of the things I’d REALLY like to do in Tofino, like kayaking, whale watching, taking boats to neighbouring islands and going on gruelling wilderness hikes, are really not family-friendly activities and I suppose I’ll have to wait a few years before we even think about taking that kind of holiday again.

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