We left Tofino on a morning when the rain wasn't pelting down; it was more a really penetrating mist that left you soaked and soggy like a cookie that broke off in the milk. It made it a little easier to head home, though we wished for another beachcombing walk among the driftwood and the shells.

Last thoughts, and a few words on costs:

A mussel shell on driftwood at Wickaninnish Beach.

TOFINO, B.C. -- Watch for wolves? Are they kidding?

Around this busy summer tourist destination, where packs of rental RVs roam like hungry predators searching for empty campsites?

No kidding.

Signs posted at the beach access trail at Wickaninnish Interpretive
Centre in Pacific Rim National Park Reserve warn of wolves and bears.

TOFINO, B.C. -- Clayoquot, as in Clayoquot Sound, was an Anglicized spelling of the name of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations people, a branch of the Nuu-chah-nulth (formerly Nootka) tribe. ("First Nations" is a term used for native people of Canada.)

Visitors to Tofino can look across the harbor to see the Tla-o-qui-ahts' tribal village, Opitsat, on wild Meares Island, a site believed to have been occupied for at least 3,000 years. The Tla-o-qui-ahts played a major role in blocking the logging of Meares Island when the chief declared the island a Tribal Park in the 1980s.

Getting tuned into that native culture is a good way to get the full flavor of this place.

Fishing boats set out in the morning across Tofino Inlet, with Lone
Cone Mountain and the tribal village of Opitsat in the distance.

TOFINO, B.C. -- Some people say Tofino's Hostelling International hostel, Whalers on the Point Guesthouse, is more like a resort hotel than a hostel. Um, I wouldn't go nearly that far, but it's a pretty nice, lodgelike building, on the waterfront within a few minutes' walk of everything in town.

It won an award for "Best Canadian Hostel" in 2001, but a lot of backpacks have been dragged up the stairs since then. The wear and tear shows.

There's more than one hostel in Tofino, but only
Whalers on the Point is affiliated with
Hostelling International, the leader in the field.

TOFINO, B.C. -- Two days ago it was pouring rain here hard enough to worry Noah. Yesterday afternoon it was blowing like stink, with whitecaps marching across Tofino Harbor. And today, when we set out kayaking on Clayoquot Sound, it was bluebird skies, light breezes and flat water.

That just about sums up the predictability of weather here on this ragged edge of the continent. You book your trip and you take your chance.

And sometimes you luck out, I thought, as Lilli and I worked our paddles like syncopated butterfly wings and pointed the bow of our double-seater sea kayak toward the giant trees of Meares Island, a place famous in the recent annals of British Columbia timber wars.

Clayoquot is pronounced "CLAY-kwat" by the locals.

Lilli here:

Over the years, I've eaten all manner of bizarre snacks, partly due to travel and partly due to "Someone Let Papa Go Shopping Alone" syndrome. (You never know what he'll bring home.) Today, I was in for a combo of the two. I let him go into the Save-On-Foods store by himself, and he came back with a big bag of Old Dutch All-Dressed potato chips.

Brian:

In my defense, I have to ask: How else are you going to stretch your palate if you don't try new things when you travel? And it's double the fun when you have no idea what you're buying.

Here are Lilli's notes from the long and winding road to Tofino:

-- We stopped to walk through Cathedral Grove, a grove of old-growth Douglas firs in MacMillan Provincial Park. The largest was more than 800 years old, and we debated whether that could be termed the early phases of the Renaissance or not (hey, I took European History way back when I was a sophomore, which feels like at least 800 years ago!).

Visitors try in vain to wrap themselves
around a Douglas fir in the Cathedral Grove.

UCLUELET, B.C. -- Our first encounter with the Pacific Ocean on this trip couldn't have been better, thanks to a bunch of people we don't know and never heard of, but who deserve their praises sung to the highest hills of Vancouver Island.

They are the members of the nonprofit, all-volunteer Wild PacificTrail Society, who have created a wonderfully accessible and well-designed trail that puts visitors close enough to this rugged and surf-splashed coastline to get saltwater in their eye.

Before the road's end in Tofino, we took a short detour south to Ucluelet because we'd heard about this new trail -- still a work in progress -- and let me tell you why we were glad we did.

Barkley Sound and the Broken Islands as seen from the Wild Pacific Trail.