Hi all. More VI questions I'm afraid. Any suggestions greatly appreciated!

My wife and I are visiting BC/AB in August and planning a circle up the coast and down through the Rockies for 17 nights.

For the first part, we arrive Vancouver late on the 6th and plan to take the Inside Passage ferry from Port Hardy on the 12th (with car, night of the 11th in Port Hardy). How should we spend the time in between. So far I have:

6th: Arrive YVR late
7th: Day in Vancouver
8th: Vancouver till 4pm, get car and ferry to Nanaimo/Victoria
9th: ?????
10th: ?????
11th: ????? then drive to Port Hardy

I'm not too bothered about seeing Victoria (perhaps an evening and morning if it fits). For the other 2 nights - 9th & 10th - should we race to Tofino (with a long drive - 6/7hrs? - on the 11th) or take a casual trip up the East Coast.

My guide books all point to Tofino as the highlight of VI, but is it worth the driving for a 2 night stay. Will we see similar Pacific coastline on the IP ferry? I've seen other wildlife tips for Telegraph Cove / Port McNeil which appeal - is this then a better way to spend our time.

Thanks for reading! There's so much to see so as I said, I'm very grateful for any guidance.

Paul

Tofino and Telegraph cove are both superb but very different experiences. If you want to be away from it all and take in some great wildlife trips go to telegraph Cove. if you are after magificent beaches, interesting rain forest and more facilities go to Tofino. It depends on what you want and how much driving you want to do.

Assuming that your destination (or one of your destinations)is Tofino, you can effectively cut out 2 hours driving by catching the ferry to Nanaimo (from Horseshoe Bay/Vancouver) instead of the ferry to Victoria (from Tsawwassen).
We did just that a couple of weeks ago; the drive from Nanaimo to Tofino took us just over 2.5 hours.

Or did I misunderstand - did you mean the drive from Tofino to Port Hardy being long??

There is a big difference between the east and west coasts of Van Island. The east coast is somewhat protected from the prevailing weather patterns by the mountains mid-island, and so is fairly calm. The west coast is the edge of Canada with nothing between you and the Pacific Ocean; the series of crescent-shaped long sandy beaches are incredible (you can walk for miles and miles and miles. . . !!), and it'll be amazing if you DON'T see any wildlife!! I love it there, and strongly recommend it, plus there are some rather good restaurants in the area to feed that hunger after a day walking/hiking etc. - RainCoast Cafe has excellent food (sort of Thai fusion cuisine - but scrumptious). In Ucluelet we enjoyed the tastiest-ever fresh halibut burgers at a little place called Blueberry Bistro and Coffeehouse (Ucluelet is a hop, skip and jump south of Tofino).

My wife and I were in Tofino last May and loved it. The drive from Victoria is long but very beautiful. Tofino is a surprisingly lively place, and there's lots of good hiking, whale watching, etc. from there. Nevertheless, if you can only stay 2 nights, I might recommend saving Tofino for another trip.

If you _do_ decide to go to Tofino, I emphatically second Borealis's suggestion to eat at Rain Coast Cafe -- we really enjoyed our meal there. Good luck!

My family and I are planning a trip to Tofino next year and while I cannot speak from experience, it's based on researching and the wise people from this forum that gave me some great recommendations. The top three lodging choices in Tofino are the following: Wickaninnish Inn, Middle Beach Lodge and Pacific Sands Beach Resort. If you do a web search on any of these, almost all reviews are positive as I am sure others on this forum who actually stayed at any of these places will suggest one more than the other. Tofino does look beautiful and I was going to include in my plans this year upon going to Victoria, however, since I would only have a couple of days to spare, I didn't feel it would be enough time to fully enjoy the beautiful area so we going to go next year for sure. Hope this helped and good luck!

I will chime in with another vote for the fabulous Rainforest Cafe in Tofino. We stayed at Middle Beach and were very happy with our comfortable but spartan room. We did eat at Wickannish and I was very put off by the affectations of the servers. The food was good but I vastly preferred the Rainforest Cafe. Also a great lunch place in Tofino is the Common Loaf. Try the Tofino bars.

Thank you for the replys. As it happens, we have had to push our holiday back 3 days, and the IP sailing back 4 days due to schedules.

The obvious solution is to add an extra night on VI - not a bad idea from your comments. So it now looks like:

9th: Arrive YVR late
10th: Day in Vancouver
11th: Vancouver till 5pm, get car and ferry to Nanaimo
12th: Straight to Tofino
13th: Tofino
14th: Day in Tofino and then drive to Comox?/Parksville?
15th: More leisurely drive to Port Hardy

Closer to three days in Tofino seems more like it. Can't wait!