Adventures at Mussel Beach

Mussel beach is kind of a remote spot, it takes an hour or so from Tofino, off the beaten track down a long and very bumpy old logging road. It's a beautiful beach with stunning views of the Broken Group Islands and the mountains of Vancouver Island beyond and it's covered in big hunks of lovely driftwood ( I like driftwood). We went there in search of Grey Whales and boy did we find them! All we had to do was look out at the water and wait a few seconds and they'd be blowing all over the place :) Apparently they like to come up close to the beach so that they can rub themselves on the rocks to clean off the barnacles from their skin, basically it's a Whale Spa! Some of them were about 10feet from shore, oh it was amazing!

We camped overnight at Mussel Beach wilderness campgound, so no power and thanks to a leaky pump on the bus, no water either. It's a pretty big campgorund with about a mile of sites along the shore but we had the whole place to ourselves! We picked a really nice spot that opened up right to the beach, it also had a cool Tiki hut bar thing made of driftwood where Neil immediately set up his BBQ :)

The weather was beautiful and waking up on the beach in the morning was breathtaking. There were some whales really close to shore and as we were sitting in the sunshine, in pyjamas, munching our bacon butties we could hear the air shooting out of their blowholes. Magical!

Before heading home I went for a walk (or should I say stumble) along the shore and through the tide pools with my camera. My pictures really don't do it justice, the water was so perfectly clear and the little fishes and other creatures were so colourful, maybe there's some special skill that I'm lacking about taking photos though water, just take my word for it, it was all too beautiful for words!