As I mentioned before, after Tofino my own journey begins. My goal was to drive to Strathcona Provinal Park, the oldest provincial one in British Columbia. It is located in the middle of Vancouver Island. To get there, I need to go up the east coast of Vancouver Island. It is a nice country area, nice to see, but not what I want to have. That is why I drove just through it and started my Strathcona week from Campbell River. After this week I will enjoy some more days in Campbell River.

Strathcona Park has lots of mountains with hiking trails and a big lake in a nice valley. Sounds exactly like what I want, so lets go for it! I packed in enough food for 8 days and drove in two days over Buttler Lake Campground to Ralph River Campground on the south end of Buttle Lake. On the campgrounds will be no tab water, only water from a pump. No power, no cell and the best: not to many people or traffic around.
While driving through the park you had a nice view over Buttle Lake surrounded by snow caped mountains. The mountains are up to 2000 Meters high, on some are glaciers. May has just started and even if it was a mild winter, there is to much snow on the mountains for me to reach theire peaks. But at least I can go quite high and have a nice view.
My first big hike was the Flower Ridge Trail, there are supposed to be many wild flowers, but obviously I am to early in the year. I had a nice walk through the typical west coast forest, here and there a small foretaste of what I will see on the top: Long valleys covered by trees and the peaks full of snow. After two hours the forest became thicker and thicker and suddenly you found yourself in a sub alpine forest. Small grown but old trees, many rocks, some alpine plants and a really nice view over Buttle Lake and the Valley. That view was gorgeous, it was what I wanted to see.
The trail continued along some little lakes and climbed slowly higher. After a while I had no choice then to go back. I had reached the snowline, it was to deep and the weather looked like it might rain in the next hours. The time was running short too, and I had what I wanted to see, so I had no problems with going down even without reaching the end of the trail.

The next day was a rest day, I had a big hike with 1200 elevation meters and four days of all day long biking in my legs. I decided to go to the south end of the lake and enjoy a view on the Lower Myra waterfalls. On my way back to the tent I saw a bear 50 Meters in front of me. Five minutes before I stood somewhere around that area and talked to a guy with his dog. First I mistook him for that dog, but soon I noticed, he is not walking like a dog. My way leaded closer to him back to my bike. I knew what to do, be calm, don't run. Surprisingly I was really quite relaxed, but it was a strange feeling to start speaking to a bear, so he recognizes me as a human and not prey. To that moment he had not seen me. I spoke some words to him, he turned his body in my direction and after some seconds he went his old way again. I am not sure, he didn't hear me proper or he was just a relaxed bear. Roy, a park worker, called them teddy bears, nice and afraid of humans. That was one of the reasons why I was quite relaxed. I went further away to a bridge where I hoped to see him again from a safe distance, but I couldn't. Roy was quite a character, he was British, relaxed and had a good sense of humor. I told him every day where I will go just to insure at least one person knows where I am in such an isolated area.
Thanks to a nice family from the Netherlands I could stay one more day on that campground. I had a lot of bread with me, but my hunger was bigger. They gave me some more bread, and so I could spend my last day on a trail to Bedwell Lake.
This trail changed quite often from nice mossy forest to really steep uphill rock climbing to some metal stairs and through some meadows. On the top I found Bedwell Lake and its “baby” lake. Nearby the Baby Bedwell Lake was a campground for a small amount of people. To spend there a night was some nice people would be really fantastic. It was really isolated and located in a small valley, nice sub alpine forest, a small lake, view to some big mountains and probably no light pollution and so a perfect spot for starwatching.
I had my lunch on a small view point on Bedwell Lake and went back. On the way I saw again some sort of a pheasant and some really fresh cougar footprints. I still didn't saw a cougar, and I am not jet sure if that is good or not. They can be quite big … and on the campground on Campbell River, which is located in a city, there was a cougar 10 meters away from my tent while I was resting in it. I didn't saw him, but a local did and informed the manager.

After all these amazing days and hikes I needed to go back, leaving a very nice area and a very nice campground. I have seen one or two really nice campgrounds around Vancouver Island so far, but this one was fantastic. Lots of nice and private camping spaces, surrounded by tall trees covered by moss. The campground itself was in a valley which means no long sunsets. And as well very cold nights! On my way back to Campbell River I was really surprised how warm it became in the last days. I had a really beautiful week, perfect weather and lots of time to relax. Now I really want to go back, get new fresh food, a hot shower (damn that river water is cold ...) and find my next place to stay.