What an Island! What a vacation! When my wife Jenifer and I set off for Vancouver Island last August I brought with me childhood memories of afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel, walking through the most beautiful garden in the world, camping at Pacific Rim National Park, seeing my first totem poles and marvelling at the largest trees I had ever seen.

Nearly three decades later with our golf clubs in tow instead of a camper trailer we set out to discover the Vancouver Island Golf Trail. We booked tickets on line with WestJet for a direct four-hour morning flight from Toronto to Victoria and settled into The Westin Bear Mountain Victoria Resort & Spa ready to play golf that afternoon. There is little doubt that this new resort with its Jack/Steve Nicklaus co-design is the biggest and best thing to hit Victoria in a long time. The good news for golfers is a second Nicklaus course at Bear Mountain is slated for a soft opening this fall.

Bear Mountain is an $18-million golfing masterpiece that tumbles through a rugged alpine setting. Shooting up Mount Finlayson, with glorious views of Victoria at the top, the layout is extremely challenging, with extreme being the key word here. It's a tough track with receptive fairways but severe bunkering and if you're not playing the appropriate tees you will pay the price very quickly. Green fees range from $85-$145 depending on booking date and time of day, but if you can play it for less than $100 it's a steal.

Morningstar, also a Les Furber design, appears to be spending more money on the course and the improved conditioning is paying off for a course that once held Canadian Tour events. It's a great walking layout that winds through forest area and uses natural ravines and wetlands as its main defences.

Pheasant Glen resort has undergone a major transformation over the last couple of years. The course has come a long way with a rebuild of most holes, while teaching guru, Brent Morrison has developed an academy that is one of the leading teaching facilities in the country. It's a great place to work on your swing for a couple of days. We certainly both found our time with Brent productive and Jen talked about him for the rest of the summer!

We took a little detour off the golf trail here and headed west to Long Beach and the Pacific Ocean. On the way, we stopped and hiked through a preserved old growth forest called Cathedral Grove – a must see moment for everyone. A couple of nights at the Wickaninnish Inn would be decadent for your average golfer, but anyone who enjoys experiencing five-star accommodations and service needs to stop here. I would recommend at least one evening meal at the Pointe Restaurant where you can watch the sunset if you time it right.

We spent an entire day with Majestic Ocean Kayaking paddling The Broken Group Islands in Pacific Rim National Park and its 100 islands – simply one of the best days of my life! On the 45-minute boat ride to the park with Subtidal Adventures, we enjoyed more whale watching with some memorable humpbacks doing their thing. The good news for golfers is a new resort community called Wyndansea is being developed along with a Jack Nicklaus signature golf course that's scheduled to open in 2009 or 2010.

Well rested, we headed back to the Vancouver Island Golf Trail and Crown Isle Resort, which houses an antique car collection worth well over $1 million in the basement of its clubhouse. A must see even if you're not into antique cars. Architect Graham Cooke sculpted a superb track that is easily walkable and ranked among Canada's 100 best by SCORE Golf magazine.

Our last stop on the trek was Campbell River – a community known for it's world-class salmon fishing, but when you can try something new like that and combine it with golf how can you go wrong even if you need to wake up at 5:30 a.m. for fishing. Our guided four-hour fishing tour left Painter's Lodge in a 17-foot Boston Whaler to fish the salmon rich waters of Discovery Passage was breath taking. Jen hooked into one salmon on the first day - we had a few get away. I enjoyed it so much I tried it again the next morning while she slept in and caught four (the limit). In the afternoon we teed it up at Storey Creek GC, another Furber design carved out of wilderness. There are no homes or communities overlooking this 6,700, par-72 track that crosses creeks and meanders through a magnificent mixed forest in isolation from the rest of the world. It's a great place to golf with Mother Nature. With green fees in the $55 range, shot for shot, it may be the best value on the island.

The island experience is much more than golf alone – it's about whale watching, salmon fishing, hiking, ocean kayaking, spectacular scenery, wineries, award winning resorts, hidden gems, mountains and, of course, golfing. When you combine them you'll quickly discover that Vancouver Island is a Pacific Paradise - no wonder Travel and Leisure Magazine has named it as the #1 Island destination in North America and #3 in the world!

For more information on golf on Vancouver Island contact: www.golfvancouverisland.ca tel. 1-888-465.3239, www.island.bc.ca tel. 250-754-3500 or www.helloBC.com tel. 1-800-435-5622.

Brent Long is a contributing writer to The Traveling Golfer and owner of Longshot Communications. He can be reached at brentlong@cogeco.ca