Vancouver Island Nature Tours

Although it isn’t part of the trips I do, I took some people to the Carmanah Valley last week. I don’t go there very often. But when I do, I am always impressed. It is home to the largest tree in Canada, a Sitka Spruce 95 meters tall. Although the trail to this tree is [...]

In my spare time I also write a column on tourism in the local newspaper. The local community is in transition from a logging and milling town to something else. What, we don’t know yet. But tourism is likely going to play a much larger role in the economy in the future. Anyway, I will [...]

It’s not often you find a guest who demonstrates to you how much he and his family enjoyed their trip with Rainbird Excursions. But Micheal Pratt has done just that. He sent all 130 of his photos to me. And some of them are really nice. So I thought I would share them and his [...]

It has been a very busy period here at Rainbird Excursions. So I haven’t had time to sit down and write a few notes about what has been going on. This year there have been Dutch, Germans, Australians, Americans and even Canadians enjoying the trips. The weather that had been pretty mediocre throughout June has [...]

Last Friday I took a drive up to Labour Day Lake. For those who don’t know, Labour Day Lake is a fairly high elevation lake that is the source of the Cameron River, the River that runs through Cathedral Grove on Vancouver Island. I wanted to see how much snow was still around. We had [...]

Recently a friend emailed me a surprising file. It was a PDF file (That’s Adobe Acrobat to some) of an old trail booklet of the Alberni Valley. Greg had kept this booklet, which is really just photocopies of drawn maps and of typed descriptions, for many years. Recently he scanned it and sent it to [...]

Edit 5 August 2008:
This is one of the most popular pages on this blog! So I’m asking you to tell me why you are interested in the Nahmint. And if you went there, were the directions good? Was it what you expected? Write a comment below.
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I have been to the Nahmint Recreation Site a [...]

I have been working for two years to get a tour to see the Vancouver Island Marmot going. Primarily, there was resistance from the British Columbia Ministry of Environment (MoE) because these animals are so rare.However we have reached an agreement that they will address government concerns and the tours will go ahead starting in [...]

It’s Good Friday today. This morning I hiked up to the Alberni Lookout. From Coombs Country Candy on Highway 4, it’s only about a 40-50 minute hike, depending on how fast you go. I’ve been hiking up regularly because it is a good bit of exercise. The weather was cool and foggy. But the [...]

Given my interest in birds, this is something I should have done a long time ago. But over the next few weeks, I am going to change this oversight.
For those who aren’t birders, a site guide is a way to guide a person around a park or public place from the point of view of [...]