Rain and snow and who knew we'd need 4WD?

I am so excited to be somewhere with roads, and options for driving!  Even though we're on an island here in BC, it's a BIG island, and as it turns out you can drive all day long...which is what we did yesterday. 

I admit that I scoffed a bit at the rental car agent when he told us our SUV had 4WD...I thought, when will we ever need that? 

Turns out, this is when:

Super glad we had 4WD.

We left from Victoria at 8 am, heading for Tofino.  I'd heard it's a cool surf town sort of at the end of the road on the west coast of Vancouver island.  To get there you head north up the east coast of the island, then cut across the middle (through some pretty substantial mountains) then head north again to Tofino.  In normal weather, it should probably be a 4-5 hour drive (each way).  In snowstorm weather, it was probably 12 hours of driving.  There was only snow at the top of the pass on the way to Tofino, but by the time we headed back it snowed for most of the 'middle' section of the island, as well as parts of the drive back south towards Victoria.  And yes, we absolutely needed the 4WD.  There were a lot of cars stuck on the side of the road.

I'd love to bring Steve back here with the motorcycles though!  It was a beautiful, winding, roller-coaster-like road with very steep grade in some places (18%!).  It was sunny for early parts of the drive, but after the snow in the mountains, it was a torrential downpour in Tofino.  We stopped there for lunch, and stopped at a beach and watched the waves crashing on shore (from the warm, dry car). Tofino was indeed a super cute surf town.  In the rain.

Beach near Tofino.

And not many photos were taken that day.

This would be more fun to explore when it's not pouring rain.

On the way back to Victoria we met up for dinner with my Mom's friend's sister and her family (did you follow that?).  They met us at a pub not too far from the road home and it was fun to meet them.  We're meeting up again today to go visit the Royal BC Museum!