Who Should Win An Awesome Trip To Tofino For The Clayoquot Oyster Festival?

Thank you to all who sent in their photos for a chance to win a trip for two to Tofino’s annual Clayoquot Oyster Festival. We asked our readers to submit two photos each to the Scout Flickr Pool: one of BC’s coastline and another of something delicious. The deadline for submissions was noon today, and we’ve accordingly selected 5 finalists. Please click the following links to view and help select the winner (the page with the most Facebook “likes” by noon on Friday, November 11th). Good luck to all…

FINALISTS

Kris Krug | KatieVancouver | CoffeeFoodies | StephCardwell | Mike Babiarz

FYI, the package – valued at roughly $1000 and arranged with the aid of our friends at Tourism Tofino – includes two nights of luxurious accommodation at the Pacific Sands Beach Resort (Nov. 18-19), two tickets to the Mermaid’s Ball, two tickets to the Oyster Fest Gala, two tickets to the Remote Passages Oyster Farm Tour, and an Oyster Trio for two at the award-winning SOBO restaurant.

“Clayoquot Oyster Festival” Photo Contest Finalist #1: Kris Krug

If you like these two shots, demonstrate as much by clicking the Facebook “like” button below. The Scout Flickr Pool contributor with the most “likes” at noon on Friday, November 11th will be declared the winner of our Clayoquot Oyster Festival giveaway contest.

OTHER FINALISTS

KatieVancouver | CoffeeFoodies | StephCardwell | Mike Babiarz

SWAG: Submit Your Photos And Win A Trip For Two To The “Clayoquot Oyster Festival”

We’re giving away a weekend for two to Tofino’s legendary Clayoquot Oyster Festival. The package – valued at roughly $1000 and arranged with the aid of our friends at Tourism Tofino – includes two nights of luxurious accommodation at the Pacific Sands Beach Resort (Nov. 18-19), two tickets to the Mermaid’s Ball, two tickets to the Oyster Fest Gala, two tickets to the Remote Passages Oyster Farm Tour, and an Oyster Trio for two at the award-winning SOBO restaurant. (note that transportation to and from is not included, but man is the winding drive ever awesome!)

To enter the contest, you need to do a few things…

1. Express your keenness in the comments below.
2. Visit the Oyster Fest’s Facebook page and “like” it.
3. Submit two of your own photographs (only two) to Scout’s Flickr Pool. Photo 1 should be of something delicious (it doesn’t need to be an oyster). Photo 2 should involve BC’s coastline in one way or another. Both should include captions detailing the what and the where, and both need to be taken by the person entering the competition (duh).

The deadline for submissions is this Monday, November 7th at noon, so get out there and start shooting! Our crew will narrow down the entries to our favourite 5 combinations that afternoon and then post them for our Facebook fans to “like” at their leisure until noon on Friday, November 11th. The person whose images garner the most “likes” in the time allotted will be declared the winner (and will have 7 nights to pack for what will likely prove to be a weekend to remember). In the unlikely event of a tie, Scout will cast the deciding vote. All clear? GO!

A few images from our most recent trips to Tofino to get your juices flowing…

The 15th Clayoquot Oyster Festival Goes Deliciously Down In Tofino Next Month

Ooh, Fall in Tofino is pretty awesome. We were just up there, and it was amazing, as per usual. The cool air is heavy with salt, the crowds are way down, the morning mists linger longer and the thousand+ shades of green are high-lit with the occasional autumn flash. Plus – my god – there are Oysters! And the good people of Tofino really know how to celebrate the bivalve. Their 15th annual Clayoquot Sound Oyster Festival will be proof positive of that: “Twelve oyster farms in the area produce roughly 50,000 gallons of oysters each year, and the festival is a chance for the farmers, chefs, the local community and visitors to come together to celebrate this bounty.” Events include oyster farm tours, oyster and wine tastings, educational seminars, the legendary Oyster Gala, and the Mermaid’s Ball costume party. There really isn’t a time of year when Tofino isn’t a great getaway, but the Oyster Fest makes a November excursion especially attractive. We’ll be there, and we hope to see some of our readers up, too.

The Mermaid’s Ball | Friday, November 18 | 8pm | Tofino Community Centre
Oyster Gala | Saturday, November 19 | 7 pm | Tofino Community Centre
Where to stay? Pacific Sands | The Wickaninnish Inn | Ocean Village
Where To Eat? Sobo | The Pointe | Spotted Bear

RANDOM SHOTS FROM SCOUT’S MOST RECENT TRIP

GOODS: The Vancouver Premiere Of Tofino Brewing Co. Going Down At Abigail’s Party

Kitsilano's Abigail's Party is located at 1685 Yew Street in Vancouver, BC | 604-739-4677 | www.abigailsparty.ca

The GOODS from Abigail’s Party

Vancouver, BC | Abigail is mighty chuffed to be hosting the Vancouver release of Tofino Brewing Co., Tofino’s only craft brewery, this Friday, August 19th. Our good friends from TBC will personally be delivering a full cask of their amazing Fogust Wheat Ale, to be tapped at 5:30pm. Fogust Wheat is a German-style hefeweizen brewed with Canadian Pilsen malt and Saskatchewan wheat. Fresh local raspberries are added to give a delicious tartness, as well as some fresh vanilla beans to give this cask a refreshing summertime feel. This natural, unfiltered beer is a light, hazy, pink colour with a bright off-pink head. Details after the jump… Read more

GOODS: Tofino’s “Shelter” Restaurant Has Joined The Growing Scout Community

We have invited Tofino’s Shelter restaurant to join our GOODS section as a recommended local company. They are now proud members of Scout, and as such we will be publishing their news front and center and hosting a page for them on our list of independent goodnesses. We’d like to take this opportunity to thank them for their support of our little website.

If you think your business would be a good fit for Scout, we want to know.

Field Trip #584: To Tofino For Fancy Book Writin’ And Oysters

I’m on the island tooling a new book for a week and then sticking around to MC the Clayoquot Oyster Festival). Posts will still be coming fast and furious, as I’m wired to the hilt for this trip and our contributors have their own keys. I hope to see some of you up there.

PS. We’ll be launching the new version of Scout shortly after I get back. Ooh, bells and whistles!

A Tiny Slice Of Tofitian Culture On The Edge Of New York City…

(via Laughing Squid) A killer short film about Rockaway Taco on a delicious corner of Queens, NY. Reminds me mightily of Tofino, only the waves are smaller, the buildings are bigger and there appear to be a lot more cops…

Field Trip Photo: On Packing Up And Getting Back To Work

Our annual late-summer winding road trip through the Okanagan Valley and across the breadth of Vancouver Island to Tofino has come to a close. However much I tried to regularly post via iPhone, reception was pretty spotty in most of the places we went. Admittedly, this was largely by design, plus I was having too much jolly fun to bother. I’m glad to report that dear Westy (pictured above at our Tofino campsite) survived its 21st long haul under our broods’ care and is still not the least bit worse for wear (400,000kms and counting). We have hundreds of lovely photos to compile for a post on our journey (coming soon), but in the shorter term it’s back to the magic grindstone of print deadlines and daily updates right here on Scout. Thanks for sticking with us.

Field Trip Photo: On Camping For Food And Throwing Up Rocks

(posted via iPhone) We’re still in Tofino, enjoying the last throes of this, our final expedition of a summer that has been blessedly full of them. Yesterday, after watching the kids try in earnest to dig to China and a healthy twirl through the skateboard park, we spent hours at the beachfront cabin of a friend enjoying a marvellous spread of barbecued spot prawns, freshly shucked oysters, beach-fire smoked chicken, sweet corn, addictive flatbread, local sockeye, cold beer and crisp wine. This was followed by a game of “Welfare Skeet Shooting”, a very sporting endeavour that sees one person throwing up a large rock and the rest trying to boozily pick it off in mid-flight with stones of their own to giggled yells of “pull!” (despite a few close calls, no one was injured). Sated and long-shadowed, we then went on a seriously tripped-out jaunt through the Botanical Gardens for this small but always enthusiastic town’s annual Lantern Festival. The citizenry really get deep into it with costumes, stunning mobiles that look as if they’re about to burst into dangerous flames, and enough rolled and aromatic recreational fun tubes to steer a herd of elephants into forgetting where they put their trunks. Today, everyone in my party is either going surfing, kayaking or engaging in something called yoga, which leaves me largely alone at our beach camp to drink hot coffee and write by an omnipresent fire that seems to have an appetite equal to my own. The weather, which has been drearily reported since we arrived, dawned mercifully wrong once again. The sand is warm and the crows are well-fed in a blue sky that is, at noon, nearly free of clouds. Beyond them, oppressive billions of stars float in waiting. When they pop for this one last time, we will quietly obscure them with our smoke, drinking long and happy and smelling of the place we loathe to bid goodbye.

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