When you go hiking or into the wilderness here in British Columbia one of the animals
that you have to be aware of is the grizzly bear. And while I would not recommend you
going looking for one of these on your own because they're big and if they don't like you
you are in trouble, we did jump at the opportunity to go see the bears with some experts.
So here in British Columbia there are a number of grizzly bear viewing tours. We went with Klahoose
Coastal Adventures up in Campbell River and Campbell River is located halfway up the east
coast of Vancouver Island. Campbell River is a city with a population of over 35 000 people
and is known as the salmon capital of the world. To get to Campbell river from Vancouver
we took the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Nanaimo on the island which was just under two hours
and then we drove all the way up to Campbell River from Nanaimo which was another
approximately two hours but it was a really nice drive.
So we arrived in the evening in Campbell River and basically just went to bed
because it was pretty late. When I woke up the next morning I looked out the window
and at first I thought I was seeing like really thick smoke but it was actually just fog luckily.
It did lift later on in the day, because that was the day we were going to go see the grizzly bears.
We got our complimentary bagged breakfasts from the
hotel and then we walked over to Discovery Harbour Marina which is where we checked in for our tour.
So the tour is about eight hours long,
they do include lunch during the tour for you and so what that time is made up of is
two to three hours is spent on the boat ride to toba inlet which is where the bears are,
so the boat ride seems quite long but it is
actually a lot of fun because there is so much to see along the way. We saw so much wildlife,
the scenery was incredible so you'll never have a dull moment on the boat ride.
So
Toba Inlet is quite remote there aren't really a lot of inhabitants in that area
so what they have there at Toba Inlet is they've set up a bunch of viewing platforms
along the river and that's where you can watch the bears from. So Klahoose Coastal
Adventures is Indigenous owned and operated and specifically by the Klahoose First Nations.
The viewing season for the bears is quite short every year so this year it was about
late August to early October and it's really just coinciding with the salmon spawning season,
the salmon run. So we got there, we got on the bus that brought us to the viewing platforms
and then we waited.
And for the first hour, at least that's what it felt like,
we didn't see any bears, and they were like it's all about patience just be patient.
And then finally we saw a bear!
They
didn't really pay any attention to us even though we were quite close and I feel like they must have
noticed us but they just weren't interested.
They were just busy looking for fish to catch and so we saw a number of them catch fish
and eat the salmon and that was really really cool to be that close to a grizzly bear.
So just a little bit about grizzly bears they are a subspecies
of brown bears and they are recognizable by their brown fur and a hump on their shoulders,
a concave face and short rounded ears, because one of the other bears that you'll commonly find
here in BC is the black bear, and the black bear has a longer ears and its face isn't concave.
According to a 2012 report there are approximately 15 000 grizzly bears here in
BC which is about a quarter of the total population of grizzly bears in all of North
America so they are quite important in maintaining healthy ecosystems. They are omnivores,
but during the salmon spawning season they'll eat lots and lots of salmon. They will eat between
twenty thousand to fifty thousand calories in a day and an adult male will weigh up to or between
400 to 800 pounds and a female will weigh between 200 to 400 pounds, an adult female.
So after we finished with the bear watching tour we
walked over to a place called Beach Fire brewery
and we got a spot on their back patio and it was really cozy and they had a little food truck in
the back as well which is where they would make their pizzas so we had pizza and some beers.
So the next day we drove out to Elk Falls Provincial Park
so that's one of the major things to see in Campbell River and it's only a
really short drive out from campbell river downtown, so less than 10-minute drive.
So for lunch we went to Discovery Pier and across the street was a shop called Dick's
Fish and Chips so that's where we got some fish and chips to go and we took it on to the pier
and so Campbell River's tourism website says Discovery Pier is Canada's first saltwater fishing
pier. It's really cool you can see that there are lots of chairs that are for fishing with
rod holders and then there are tables along the pier for cleaning fish as well and of course there
are great views of the Discovery Passage. And there is a concession there where you can buy ice
cream so that's what we did after we had lunch. And with that we left Campbell River for Nanaimo
and along the way we made a couple stops.
We stopped at Qualicum beach which is this really cute quaint little town by the beach
and according to the 2016 census has Canada's oldest population
and then we also stopped in Coombs at the
Old Country Market which is also known as goats on the roof because
I thought it was a really cute little spot which I think normally, because we were there quite late,
normally would have all these restaurants and shops open so I would definitely want to go back
and check it out some more but I would definitely recommend you make a stop here if you are,
you know, road tripping on Vancouver Island because the goats are really cute.