hey guys welcome back to the channel this weekend we are road tripping from victoria to port renfrew
on vancouver island in canada if you're new to the channel i'm David i'm Cayleigh and we run
a travel vlog called made to explore we are passionate about activities to get you outside
and off the beaten path we've also got a ton of van life content so let's get into the road trip
make sure to stick around until the end of this video because we're going to be sharing with you
our favorite activity that we did in victoria and you can do it all year long
yeah it's kind of a hidden gem we didn't know about it till this time we went and we're really
excited to tell you guys about it so the drive from victoria to port renfrew is about two hours
each way it is along vancouver islands south shore and a lot of the stops are actually along
the juan de fuca trail which is a really popular hiking trail and they have a lot of parking lots
along the way so you don't actually have to do the full hike you can just do sections of it
and hit up a lot of these really cool stops three to four days is ideal for this
road trip with spending a couple like a day or two in victoria there's so much to do in victoria
after you leave victoria some of the towns get quite a bit smaller cell service diminishes
yes so it's a little more off-grid but victoria is a very fun and beautiful city to visit for a while
also victoria is a good place to stock up on cash because if you're going to be camping all the
campgrounds only take cash along that part of the coast so victoria and sooke is kind of your last
shot for that port renfrew has really not much in it so don't plan to be like having cell service or
getting cash there no first up is victoria so we were there for about between three or four days
but David was working for some of those days so you could probably get away with doing it
in i'm gonna say like two days yeah chinatown and fan tan alley in victoria were really neat
to see all of downtown victoria is kind of within walking distance so it's really easy
just to well we just stepped out of our camper and basically just started exploring downtown instead
of having to take like public transit or anything there's lots of cool shops especially in chinatown
lots of delicious restaurants and fan tan alley was actually like something we've never
experienced before yeah it's like the narrowest street in victoria i think it's just like a little
brick alley lit up with lanterns and lights yeah it;s kindof a neat place to walk through yeah for
street photography if you're into that it is an awesome place to go in the rest of downtown we did
i did some shopping we did some walking around make sure to pay for parking because we got a
parking ticket yeah just we were so excited we just parked we were like let's go and we didn't
even think about paying and being in this big white van we stand out quite a lot so i'm sure
they just watched us pull in and not anyways moving on other things to do in victoria are
fishermen's wharf it's a cool place to walk around for i would say you probably only need an hour
yeah go there hungry though yes because there's lots of fish and chip restaurants to stop at
their sense of little local restaurants there is some houseboats some tourist offices down there if
you want to go for a hike while you're in victoria mount douglas is the perfect spot you can hike
or drive up to the viewpoint it's about a four kilometer hike with 205 meters of elevation gain
it is not that difficult the path and the forest that you walk through are stunning and yeah it's
a nice little viewpoint overlooking victoria and the coastline if you are interested in plant-based
food we went for dinner at a place called virtuous pie i can't have dairy and it was like one of the
best dairy-free pizzas ever we had like garlic knots and pizza and like a big giant vegan cookie
if that floats your boat make sure to go and our last thing in victoria that we are really excited
to share with you you're gonna have to wait till the end the next stop is gold stream provincial
park i think it's only about 30 minutes outside of victoria and it's on your way to port renfrew
there are tons of hikes in this park it is gorgeous it's an old growth forest and it's
got a really really beautiful waterfall that only requires about half a kilometer hike in which is
amazing something to note is that this park used to have the gold stream trestles that were open
to the public unfortunately there was an incident there i think a few years ago now where someone
was badly injured and it is now close to the public so but still very much worth the trip
to see niagara falls and do some hikes in the area just before reaching sooke there is a really nice
little provincial park called mount manuel quimper there's lots of hiking and biking trails in this
area and we did the hike it's 10 kilometers and 478 meters of elevation gain it took us about two
and a half hours but the views along the coastline were exceptional and there are just so many trails
along there like if you're into mountain biking i would highly just suggest it because it looks sick
this is one of the best hikes in that area for sure so if you are into hiking and you
are looking to do one around sooke that is a great place to go you can also if you're
in a camper van sooke has a public pool that you can go to to shower and sit in the hot tub
or sauna afterwards or go to the gym yeah after after your hike you can hit the gym
next up is the sooke potholes this is somewhere that we actually didn't go to
because the day that we were planning to go it was monsooning outside and it was pretty cold
yes so i think in the summer it's a lot more popular we would really like to go and check
it out and it's been recommended so many times that we wanted to add it into this video basically
it's a bunch of potholes in a river that you can go and bathe in in the summertime splash around
if you're looking to get a bite to eat or a drink in sooke there are a few places that we went to
that were fantastic one was route 14 restaurant so good it was so good the food was good the drinks
were good it seemed like the hot spot in sooke it was super busy another spot for some beer tasting
if you're into that is the sooke brewing company if you are into more on the hard alcohol side of
things there is the sheringham distillery where you can go and get a cocktail Cayleigh's favorite
less of a beer taster and more of a distillery gal myself but it's nice that they have both
something very important to note which we kind of touched on at the beginning
after sooke there are very few options for food cell service atms anything like that so
if there's anything that you want to stock up on for the rest of your trip sooke is the place to
do it even gas like i don't even think there's a gas station until is there a gas station in port
renfrew i think there's a small one but to be honest the gas prices are probably super high
so gas food booze and cash stock up and sooke last night we stayed at french beach campground
we really didn't spend a lot of time there we pulled up kind of late and just stayed the night
it was 26 dollars now we are just a little further west on route 14. exploring sandcut beach
so this beach is famous for having a waterfall that goes onto the beach and into the ocean so
i think it's only about a 15 minute hike not a ton of elevation the forest is really beautiful here
Cayleigh is planning to go underneath the waterfall which you can do might be pretty
slippery she says she's a ninja i think it's the coffee talking we'll find out soon enough
all right so sandcut beach was awesome the falls were great you just go down to the beach and then
take a left and that will take you all the way to the falls next on our list is mystic beach which
you actually access from the china beach trailhead so it's the start of the juan de fuca trail
so this hike is four kilometers in total two kilometers there two kilometers back
and i think it's only about 60 something meters of elevation gain so nothing too crazy and the
forest here is beautiful they've got so far it's pretty well maintained with boardwalks and such
made it down to mystic beach just walking down the final set of steps the way back
is going to be pretty much all uphill which we're not looking forward to as much but it
looks beautiful down here it hasn't rained today it was in the forecast so that's really nice
and we are going to enjoy a little bit of time on the beach everywhere is so pretty coming from two
people who live in the mountains slash prairie the ocean shoreline is always a bit of a surprise to
us all right should we go find another beachfront waterfall to the waterfall to the waterfall
so David just hopped around the corner bailey followed and got soaked
the dog does not like to get wet if you can't tell come on
good girl
it's a little more manageable than the last one made it back to the van bailey
is really dirty not yet i think i mean i feel like she's just gonna get as muddy on our next stop so
that was mystic beach onto the next stop of our road trip
we just arrived at sombrio beach it is a little closer to port renfrew it is starting to sprinkle
a little bit hopefully that doesn't get worse but we'll see so when you come down to the beach go to
east sombrio and then walk along the beach almost to the end so you can't go
any farther and you'll see like a decent creek coming out and flowing into the ocean and then
you basically just follow the creek up there's like a trail beside the creek that you'll see
when you're walking down the beach you're gonna see this big set of logs the trail is just up
that way the waterfall's a few hundred meters up the canyon so we made it up to the waterfall
and it has been quite hard keeping the lens dry so hopefully the footage shows up okay
but it is so cool feet are going to get wet so wear some good hiking boots
so actually it was supposed to rain this entire trip but we got really lucky the
only rain we've had so far is last night it did start raining pretty hard when we were at
the sombria beach waterfall so we decided to go back today did another little hike sunday morning
we had it to ourselves for like an hour it was awesome which was really really nice and now it's
time to make some breakfast and then we're gonna head off to our next stop which is avatar grove
we just arrived at avatar grove which is a beautiful patch of forest yeah old growth forest
with like walkways the trees are huge yeah it's pretty incredible it is actually just
past port renfrew about 20 minutes outside pretty bumpy road but worth the drive
already so there's two different loops you can do the lower
is only 0.6 of a kilometer and it's easy to moderate and then the upper avatar grove is
only 0.3 of a kilometer but a little bit more difficult it's really cool to see
if you're wondering why we decided to come out to the west coast and dedicate all this time and
effort it was to find canada's gnarliest tree that's why we did it and here it is
bailey can't you read the trail end the trees are too big for her to get over after avatar grove we
drove back through port renfrew and went to the botanical beach which we loved actually yeah we
actually did not think that we were going to enjoy it as much as we did we are just on our way down
to the botanical beach and it is about one and a half kilometers down to the beach or
you can do a 2.5 kilometer loop if you'd like the big thing here is to show up at lowest tide
so you have as much beach to explore as you can when the tide goes out all the tide pools are full
of different sea creatures so we're coming kind of just before flow tide it's raining-ish so
we're gonna see how it is when we get down there it's currently march and there is a
low tide at around four o'clock in the afternoon the other low tide is really early in the morning
so the afternoon is obviously the best time but the tides will change throughout the year
so check online yeah we were hiking past all these families and were like oh no what have we
done like this isn't gonna be great well i was thinking that for sure and then we got to the
to the beach and we were looking at all the tide pools we saw starfish and we actually found a
little eel which was really neat oh my gosh yeah it's a little eel oh so cool oh my gosh
that's crazy cool find there's tons of crabs just a ton of little sea life cruising around all those
pools yeah we were like running around like kids so excited about all the tide pools okay guys i'm
gonna be honest this is our last stop on this trip and i was skeptical about it i was like i mean
walking around looking at tide pools it's really cool we're not huge into like
the scientific part of things usually but this is honestly a lot of fun
once you get into it kind of gets carried away and you're just going from pool to pool yeah
the closer you get to the water there seems to be like the more the more life is in the pools
so coming at low tide is definitely key so that pretty much sums it up that is the order that we
did it in you certainly do not have to do things in that order you can do some stops on your way
to port renfrew and some stops on your way back to break up the drive that wraps it up i think
we almost forgot to give them our favorite oh yeah thing to do in victoria sorry guys there's
something in victoria called the hot tub boat and basically it is your own private floating hot tub
and you can cruise around the harbor so much fun any time of year any weather too like when
we got there it was raining and to be honest the water's so hot like it is hot tub it's 100 degrees
it's really nice it keeps you nice and warm there's a little electric motor on the back
and then on the other end on the bow there's a wood stove which heats the water and just a blast
you can jump into the ocean like we did which is freezing but also still fun yeah you get back into
the hot water you're like okay that was good i think each boat can hold six people yes and it's
to yourself too it's very reasonably priced i think for the two of us it was 200 for two hours
so very cool thing don't miss it in victoria thank you guys so much for watching i hope you
enjoyed the video be sure to like it if you liked it and subscribe to the channel we would love to
have you around for the rest of our adventures we'll see you in the next one see you later