I visited Tofino in October 2017. .. and just to clarify I am talking about CANADIAN Thanksgiving… pretty much the same… just in a different month. In brief, Thanksgiving traditionally celebrates the harvest, although nowadays is more about being thankful in general. Thanksgiving is commonly on the 3rd Monday in October.
The trip from Vancouver to Tofino is really no picnic. From Horseshoe Bay it takes around 2 hours to get to Nanaimo. Not having my own car, ( really you should get a car) it then took what was about 7 hours by shuttle with various stops in the dark and pouring ran. There’s really one road between Nanaimo and Tofino and it is long.. and bendy.
Needless to say I arrived at the HI Tofino Hostel at around 10pm, was alerted that there were a few bears on the lose and went to bed.
I hadn’t really planned what I would be doing whilst in Tofino, To be honest I hadn’t realised how secluded it was from the rest of the world it was and just how primitive that made it. In short, internet was poor, taxis didn’t exist and it was tiny. ( normally not an issue, but without a car.. this made things a little problematic)
Nevertheless, I went in search of Breakfast and my first stop was Rhino House Coffee, where as you can see below I sampled my first ever Maple Bacon Donut.
Then, and more or less out of the blue I decided to go Whale watching- I had literally previously thought about it and then completely disregarded it. However I found myself parting with my money and heading down onto a jetty. Things I liked about this trip:
1: the boat went fast
2: It wasn’t too cold
3: I got some nice photos of the surroundings
4: Saw about a third of a whale.
See the photos below…
That evening after googling the three or something restaurants I headed down to the Shelter, which was seemingly the nicest and ..the most expensive.the place was timber built and had lots of modern glass panelling. I had mussels and a glass of wine and was on my way home to bed.
The next morning I had breakfast at Tuff Beans coffee house. ( see bagel below ) 
decided to take a walk through the forest to get to the beach. ( unfortunately there would be no way of getting to Long Beach due to distance and lack of transport ) On my way out I bumped into some guys and proceeded to spend the rest of the day with them. We ate lunch at Tacofino and took some photos on the beach.. see below.
Upon returning to the hostel we were greeted by a huge Thanksgiving feast which unfortunately I have no photos of…. my bad.
The next morning, was brief because it time to head back to the mainland. If I though the journey there was long, it turns out that Thanksgiving weekend is the worst weekend in Nanaimo for ferries back to Van…
12 hours later…
Heres my final tips
– If you can afford to fly do..
– rent a car
– take a camera
- make sure its sunny …. well kind if impossible to do that – but I had an amazing weekend of weather and that definitely added to charm.
peace.
KATEVICTORIAPHOTOGRAPHY 