My parents drove D and I to the Park’s Canada office at Gordon River the day before our first hike day. (Thank you Dad, Mom and daughter for making the trip.) We wanted to take the mandatory Parks Canada orientation at 2:00pm. Orientation can be taken at 10:00 am the morning of your reserved booking day or the afternoon before your hiking day. At the orientation, we learned of expected trail conditions, animals that we could come across, tide schedules and how to get help if required. This is where they give you a waterproof map of the trail.

This is us all squeaky clean the day before our hike.

D and I stayed at Pacheedaht Campground, next to the Gordon River South trailhead.  I really liked this campground and would definitely recommend it as a place to camp with no scheduled hikes.

We camped right on the beach with a view of the next day’s hike and unbeknownst to us day 1’s campsite.

My parents dropped us off so we had no vehicle to take us into town for dinner. The campground staff will take you into Port Renfrew and pick you up for $5/person/ way.  We decided to go to Bridgemans West Coast Eatery. It’s located next to the marina.

Across the way from Bridgemans is our campsite and the trailhead.

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Fun Fact 1: Port Renfrew is so remote that data is basically unheard of unless you can catch a signal from the US.  You can get wifi at the campground for a fee, but you have to stay close to the office and it isn’t always on or working. There is wifi available at Bridgemans.

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Once we were sufficiently full, we called the campground to pick us up and stopped to get snacks at a convenience store.  We bumped into a group we later called the engineers.  The seven of them were staying in an Airbnb.

We also saw a beautiful heron on the single lane San Juan River bridge.

Back at camp the parties around us began to ramp up as everyone got ready for the August long weekend. I managed to get some sleep.