BC Chapter 2- Gold River

Riding into Campbell river, we stopped to ask some fireman out washing their truck where we might camp. They were a couple of really nice guys, eager to help us and gave us excellent directions. Just before we left, Joan asked where a good place to eat breakfast might be. "You know, a place with a $2.99 breakfast special," I added.

Without hesitating, he said, "The Quinsam Hotel. The place is a DUMP." Then he quickly added, "But it's clean. You'll like it." Sounded exactly like our kind of place.

The camp ground, along the Quinsam river, was great and in the morning, we indeed rode to the Quinsam Hotel for breakfast. Joan said the interior reminded her of a place called The Spar in Olympia Washington. Old logging equipment like two-man saws and things hung on the walls. The place lived up to our expectations.

We laid our map out on the table and discussed our future. Campbell River is sort of the end of civilization on Vancouver Island. There isn't another town on the island highway for about 100 miles although camping abounds in that section.

We both noticed though, that there is a road heading west out of Campbell River as well. It looked like a paved road that ended on the west coast at a town called Gold River. From there a dotted line on the map indicated that a ferry could take us though Nootka Sound and up some inlets to the town of Zeballos. From Zeballos we could ride another road back across to the east side of the island.

We got excited about doing this because we felt like we were missing half of the island. Most of the roads and people are on the east side and therefore that is where we had ridden. Also there is a mountain range that runs down the island that must be crossed. We had been seeing the snow capped mountains on our left the whole way up. I told Joan that there would be suffering involved with this plan but she was not put-off.

We ran endless errands after breakfast - film developing, mailing stuff, reading and writing e-mail at the internet cafe, buying some groceries, gear, and maps, and talking to the tourist bureau about our plans.

The tourist people and an outfitter in town, both told us that the "ferry" in Nootka sound is not a BC ferry but a privately run thing called the "M.V. Uchuck III". We got some brochures showing people being lowered into the water in kayaks. They say they will take you where you want to go, stop, and lower you and your boat in the water. We figured they could do something similar with us and our bikes, but of course drop us on dry land.

Joan tried to call but it was a long distance call and was going to cost a lot of money. Just about every phone call on Vancouver Island is long distance and requires large amounts of change and the phones don't take $1 coins! That was a constant pain. In some places, 10 miles was long distance.

We ate fish and chips at Picadilly, a double decker bus converted into a restaurant then headed out of town. It must have been 2pm. That seems to be a typical departure time for us.

You have heard the cliche "Ignorance is bliss." I have a new one, "Ignorance is adventure." When we left we didn't know anything about the 89km of highway over the mountains to Gold River and we knew very little about the Uchuck. If we had know more we would have changed our minds and headed north instead of west

Three miles outside of town is some of the most dangerous road I have ever ridden on. First we noticed a lot of trucks passing us. I mean a lot. And they were huge tandem dump trucks. The ones heading our direction were empty, the ones going the other way were full of rock and gravel. When one of these trucks wasn't passing us, a huge, smelly, tandem pulp carrying truck passed us. Then we notices that the shoulder of the road disappeared. So did the white line. The asphalt just disintegrated into a soft sanded "shoulder" that stopped your bike like a runaway truck sandpile. Then we started climbing this enormous hill. It must have been at least 8-10 percent grade for about a mile. We later heard they call this "General Hill."

That just sucked. We climbed and climbed and the huge trucks went just beside us, sometimes honking there big horns. It seemed to last forever.

At the top of a hill was an odd thing: a hot dog stand. There's no town or anything, just a mobile hot dog stand on the side of the road. We got cold drinks and the woman told us that she comes up on Fridays when there's more traffic. She also told us she moved her hot dog stand across the street because of all the close calls with trucks going to around the turn. This was all just great to hear.

Anyway, it turns out the trucks were carrying fill from gravel pits on the road to a new highway construction site.

One truck passed us really really close. It seemed to me he was threatening our lives and for no good reason. For a moment I was terrified. Then I was angry. I drew upon the profanity I discovered in myself during portages in Quetico to tell off the driver, who was way off by then.

As we passed the gravel pits the truck traffic reduced greatly and the white line reappeared. We felt much better.

We decided to take a logging road around Upper Campbell lake because it was getting late and there was camping marked along the gravel road.

Unfortunately the logging road got pretty bad at places with the large rocks that are suppose to be the road bed protruding onto the roadway at several places. I got 3 flats in the 12km or so we rode before camping.

We camped at a nice place right on the shore of the lake and had big fire using driftwood.

In the morning I got another flat and realized that I was almost completely out of patches. I must have misplaced a couple patch kits before we left San Francisco. After that repair, I had 1 patch and 2 tubes left. That was all. And we had 45km of gravel road to do leaving Zeballos. We were getting concerned.

The ride into Gold River in the morning was gorgeous and not as hilly as I expected. The pass goes though a deep valley with big cliffs and waterfalls on either side. We reached about 350 meters above sea level before descending into Gold River.

Gold River was a big disappointment. Joan didn't like it from the very beginning. It took me a little longer to not like it. First was the worst of all: we found out at the tourist office that the Uchuck only runs on Tuesday. This was Saturday. We got the number for a water taxi and the float plane service so we might try some alternatives.

But before doing anything else, I wanted to eat. So we went to Charlie's Family Restaurant. Charlie's is in a new building and has a very bland sterile environment. I don't even think there is a Charlie. A vaguely rude French Canadian women waited on us. The food was over priced and not that great. They wanted $2.35 for a root beer! That made me mad but Joan even madder.

After lunch we tried to track down the water taxi but every time we called we got an answering machine. This is worthless for people like us without a phone. The owner of the campground said he was very unreliable. I wasn't sure yet though. It was Sat. afternoon so maybe the taxi guy was just away for the day and the campground guy said he was a native (I'm still getting used to the language here. You can't call Indians "Native Americans" in Canada. The terms "Aboriginals" or "First Nation" seemed to be used.) Some people have one bad experience with an Aboriginals then forever say bad things. I held out hope we would track this guy down.

That evening we took a hike along the river that had been recommended to us by the tourist office. It was very pretty though the moss covered forest along the river but also very hard. The trail kept climbing the out of the valley and back in. At places you had to descend or ascend nearly vertical rocks with the help of ropes. It was only a couple miles long or we would have been there all night.

The next day we priced float planes. $276 to get us the 43 miles to Zeballos. We tried hitching a ride on a fishing boat but it wasn't working. A very nice lady at Nootka Air helped us a lot by making phone calls to price things for us.

The only economical thing to do was hang out in Gold River until Tuesday. Joan wanted a B&B. So we called the 4 cheapest places on the list we got at the tourist bureau. The best answer we got was, "my mom runs that. She's going to be gone until after dinner. All she has is a fold out bed in the livingroom." Other than that we got not home or an answering machine or call back later. We tried again later with the same result.

Sometimes a B&B in someone's livingroom can be great. You would really meet the people. But we were not in the mood to meet people. We were in the mood to rest and be left alone.

We decided to kill some time by getting lunch and some groceries and then try calling the other places again. We went to the Gold Nugget. Seemed like a nice place with outdoor seating. We asked for a medium pizza. The answer was, "Sorry, we don't start the oven until 4pm." I ended up with a BLT and Joan got something at the grocery store.

After lunch I tried to call the other B&B's but the payphone in the strangely laid out shopping center didn't work. There was a hardware store that we thought might have patch kits, but they were sold out. Then some jittery 20 something year old came up to us and hesitantly said, "I... I... need some change. I have... a dollar, I need, ahh... $1.50 more." I don't think he ever panhandled before. We had no problem giving him nothing. Later we saw a policeman talking to him.

We went back to the campground we stayed at the night before and setup our tent. That is where we are as I write this.

next: We get the hell out of Gold River.

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