Horne Lake Cave

After Hornby Island, we knew we wanted to drive to the west coast of the island, but there were still a couple of places to see on the east side.  So we went to Cumberland, and Courtenay, and Campbell River and Port Alberni.....and camped at Miracle Beach..........and didn't take pictures of any of it.  Hmmmmmmm......

But Miracle Beach is very pretty!! Here's a picture of it from the web

(why do we take our own pictures, again??)

OK, so fast forward to the next day to our drive to Ucluelet

 (which the locals call Uke, "u-key")

On the way, we went by Horne Lake Cave, which is 12 km down a bone-shattering gravel road.  But I'm glad we went....caves are cool!

 And, by "cool", I mean small, dark, and wet.  Boy, was I out of my comfort zone!!  See that dark area in the middle of this picture?  That's the opening.  There are three caves in the park.  Two are self-guided and of course those are the two we explored because they're....freeeeeeeee!!!!  Also, we opted out of renting miner's helmets.  Once we got inside the caves, we realized the importance of the helmets.

The caves are not lit, and there are many tight spots.  And there're lots of hard, pointy rocks waiting to bop you on the head.

 We used our own flashlights.

 This ladder led up to a small crawl space which led to......somewhere we didn't go!!

 Any more cheese and I wouldn't have been able to fit through this opening!

 Closer to Uke was Sproat Lake Provincial Park.  These rock carvings (petroglyphs) are a mystery, but it is thought they depict some sort of ancient water monster.

Water monsters.....cool.  Maybe we'll see some in Uke!!