Somebody has got to have a halloween story!...well here is one...I am sure some people here have driven through cathedral grove on the way to Port Alberni. You cannot go to long beach or tofino without passing through my home town. Cathedral grove is a old growth ancient forest. The trees are massive. Its always dusk through there, even in broad daylight...the place is kinda spooky, especially if you know trees have fallen on the road and killed a few people...Anyway every year after halloween is over people going up and down the hump drop off there pumpkins in cathedral grove. As you drive through there are craved pumpkins everywhere! This goes on for miles. Some are beside the road, some are up in trees, some are peaking out at you from behind the bushes, some are on top of logs...you get the picture...and there are hundred of them 8) After a few weeks if you happen to be driving through the pumpkin faces are melting, on their way to being compost...They look like that screaming face picture...it is very creepy and spooky especially if you have had a hoot!
You have to make your legends in regards to halloween...I kinda have one..sorta. The hump which is the name of the climb up and down the mountain to have to take to get in or out of Port Alberni is a very scary piece of road. You can tell right away if the person driving behind you or in front of you is a local or not. The locals can drive the hump blindfolded....anybody else is usually very frightened by her descent...although it has improved with the addition of exta lanes now. Anyway as you can always tell if the person behind you is a local by the way they drive, its always polite to pull over...as most time people from port alberni are in a hurry to get somewhere. Well a few days after halloween one year, I was driving down the hump, and of course a local came up behind me, so I slow down to let them pass....Well has he is passing I realize it is patrick a old classmate of mine. As I look over he looks at me with a big grin...and in the passenger seat sitting on top of something is a craved pumpkin looking over at me, with a god awful grin....It was the strangest sight that I have happenstanced upon in a long time....I had to pull over...I was laughing so hard....
Further down the road I stop at the whiskey creek store which is very well known for the best ice cream around...and the biggest to. I stop in get an ice-cream, like I always do. I come out and go to get into my car...and there is that pumpkin sitting in my passenger seat...I look around, up and down the road...nope he is no where around. So I get in my car and continue on driving...I use my cell phone and call Port Alberni to see where patrick was working these days. Well thats nice its right on my way....I stop off where Patrick works, he is not around but I put the pumpkin through the anntenna on his car.....A few weeks later...I got some pumpkin seeds from patrick in the mail...that summer I grew pumpkins from those seeds....come halloween time...I delivered a few to Patrick.....god I love halloweeen 8)