May 23-26, 2025.
After a (too) brief visit to Oregon, Aaron planned us a two-week vacation to Vancouver Island, British Columbia. I did absolutely no research about this stretch of the trip, so each stop was a wonderful surprise. Our visit to Ucluelet was one of the highlights, so I’ll write about some of our stops here. I had never heard of this place before coming here, so there’s a chance you haven’t either!
First tip: learn how to pronounce it. It’s a good first question when you arrive at the visitor’s center. But you can practice now: you-CLUE-lit. You can also say “Ukee” for short. Whatever you call it, Ucluelet is a quaint, beautiful little coastal town with plenty for visitors to do.
On the drive into town, I did a quick search on social media to see if there were any events happening during our visit and BAM! We had made it in time for Biodiversity Discovery Days. How lucky could we get? We participated in several activities, including a BioBlitz on the Wild Pacific Trail, learning about salamaders from a local scientist, clearing out invasive yellow iris at a seaside park and visiting the Ucluelet Aquarium for free.
Ucluelet Aquarium
This is Canada’s first collect-and-release aquarium, something I did not know existed. What does it mean? During winter, aquarium staff go out into local bay and ocean sites to collect the critters, rocks and seaweeds they’ll hold in the aquarium for that year. They set up the displays and open to the public on March 1. Visitors can see what magic lies beneath the sea until November 30, at which point the aquarium shuts down. All the collected specimens are returned to the exact spots where they were retrieved and the cycle continues the following year. You can learn more about this process on their website.
I absolutely love this concept and I hope to see more of these on my travels! Aaron and I were both amazed by the diversity in the ocean off Vancouver Island. Each tank contained a surprising number of interesting and colorful living things, accompanied by some educational facts displayed on the walls. We carefully visited each tank to see if we could find everything inside. The aquarium staff and volunteers made themselves available to answer any questions or to help you find particularly secretive creatures in the tank. The aquarium also has a small gift shop featuring beautiful products made by local artists and other sea creature-themed items and books.
Wild Pacific Trail
On this quick visit, we were able to visit multiple sections of the Wild Pacific Trail. This grassroots project began in 1999 as a way to provide public access to Ucluelet’s stunning natural areas on the rugged coast. Today, it is composed of six sections that brings visitors to a rocky shoreline, sandy beaches, a bog, an interpretive center and a lighthouse. There are many scenic vistas and benches where you can relax and take in the nature around you.
We did the short Bog Interpretive Loop as part of the BioBlitz, where we identified as many different plants as we could find. I recorded 35 species in iNaturalist; you can see what I observed here. A naturalist and a scientist attended the walk to help point out things that we overlooked and to help identify things we didn’t know. We spent a lot of time on that tiny trail and learned a bunch about the local area and bog ecology. A fascinating stop!
Aaron and I also hiked the Artist Loop section on a particularly nasty weather day. Although it was probably par for the coast for Ucluelet, we had enjoyed exceptionally nice weather for several days before. By the end of the hike, we felt pretty waterlogged and chilled, so we got into dry clothes in the van and made mugs of hot chocolate. However, the trail was gorgeous. I enjoyed the big ocean views, plant diversity and hunting for slugs.
Tidepooling
While staying in Ucluelet, we went to several spots on the rocky shoreline to look for tidepool creatures. Big Beach is the best spot we found in town, but there are many more options along the coastline between Ukee and Tofino. Our favorite tidepool spot was Tonquin Beach in Tofino. Walk directly to the broad, sandy shoreline and then take a left. If you catch it at a low tide (we happened to be there for the lowest tide of the year!) you can walk comfortably on the sand while exploring the craggy rock features. Each crack, pool, nook and cranny hosts tens, hundreds, thousands of creatures. You won’t have time to spot them all before the tide comes back in!
The most important piece of information you can have before you go out tidepooling is the tide chart. There are plenty of websites you can get this data from, but my favorite is tide-forecast.com. You can enter any city you’re headed to and it will give you the times and heights for the high and low tides of the day. In addition, you can see a helpful graph that visualizes the tide changes for that day and for the rest of the month. When we really wanted to catch low tide, I’d use it to plan my day to arrive at the tidepool site as the tide was getting close to its low point. I hate feeling like I’m racing the ocean, so it’s helpful to know when it’s the safest to be wandering around the rocks.
Pacific Rim National Park Reserve
On the drive between Ucluelet and Tofino, we stopped to visit Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. We parked at the Kwisitis Visitor Center and hiked to South Beach. It was a short, beautiful hike. We immediately gravitated towards the craggy rocks where the waves were crashing down. Tidepools! Grateful for the sticky rubber on our Bedrocks sandals, we carefully followed the edge of the waterline and kept our eyes on the incoming tide. As we poked around in each little treasure chest, we discovered new and exciting things. Anemones, squid eggs, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, barnacles, mussels, algae…the list goes on and on. It’s incredible how much life can squeeze into a tiny pool that gets hammered by crashing waves. Nature is wild.
And the waves really were crashing in. I was a little stressed about tides, so when I’d had enough I encouraged a return to the empty beach. There, we sat watching ravens play in the freshwater creek and the ocean’s churn push stacks of foam against the sand. I pulled out my painting kit and captured the scene in an appropriate medium: watercolor.
When we returned to the parking lot, the visitor center was open so we took a peek inside. It was just the beginning of the season, the movie projector was broken and the staff were just getting trained up. So, we wandered through the exhibits and learned a bit more about the wildlife, native people and history of the park. It’s a place worth more than a quick morning stopover, but that’s all we had time for.
I loved our visit to the west coast of Vancouver Island! It was fun to not know what I was getting into every day, since I’m usually the one doing all the planning. Aaron did a great job of finding a wide range of activities to do and places to visit. We got to see so many interesting plants and sea creatures, meet friendly people, learn some science and take many walks on the beach. It was a great little May getaway.