SOOKE, B.C. — My morning started with a panoramic view of the Olympic Mountains and a jazz soundtrack from KNKX. The clue that this scene wasn’t in Seattle? The Sunday paper splashed across my breakfast table was Victoria’s daily, the Times Colonist.
Across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Vancouver Island offers a fresh perspective on familiar vistas — like gazing south, rather than west, toward the Olympics — and a grandiose version of that treasured Pacific Northwest landscape where forested mountains crash into craggy coastlines.
Sooke is a small town 24 miles west of Victoria, but the short distance belies the remote feel once you leave the summertime surge of tour buses that throng Butchart Gardens and Craigdarroch Castle. The town is an ideal jumping-off point for a long weekend to wander the trails, beaches, swimming holes and locavore delights along the strait to Port Renfrew.
Along the way you’re liable to meet around-the-world adventurers, seaweed harvesters, hippie surfers, ancient forest defenders and engineers moonlighting as baristas — in short, anyone looking for a taste of the wild life on Canada’s West Coast.