Alouette Lake: Missing Goat
When does summer officially start? Is it on June 21st? Or when school is out? Or is it on the first sunny weekend when you go on an overnight bike-camping trip? This year it seemed especially important to start summer early. In mid May when the forecast showed sun and high temperatures for an entire weekend we felt it was time. Neil asked to sleep in the tent and honestly he was right – it had been too long. There was a strict travel ban meaning that we would not be allowed to leave our health region, so we had to stay close by. We decided on a variation on our last trip of the previous summer (in early October) – biking to Alouette Lake.
I guess like many people, I’ve been suffering from a bit of pandemic blues. Throughout the winter I often felt like all the colours were taken away from our life and all we were left with was grey. It was both literally and figuratively of course, as winter is often dark and grey here. However, what keeps us going most winters are those little getaways – at least once every winter we escape to a sunny destination.
This winter, in addition to not being able to travel, we were also not able to see our friends freely. We couldn’t have a proper birthday celebration for Neil, and I felt we were just living the day to day, grey routine. Waking up and stepping out of the tent and watching the lake and mountains and the boys run freely and happy, I felt renewed energy. and it felt like I was finally getting back what I was missing.
It was also the first bike trip we’ve done since having kids without the trailer. We recently started taking Kai on a bike seat on the cargo bike, so we had to rearrange the gear a bit. It felt a lot lighter not having the trailer with us. Kai also insisted on riding his own bike a lot of the time. It slowed us down, but we’d like to encourage him to ride of course. The route we took wasn’t completely flat and during the one big climb on the trip Neil said he was done riding. So now Gili had two kids on his bike, luckily it wasn’t too long before Neil was convinced to start riding again.
When we arrived at the campground there were a few cyclists there. Funnily enough, one of them contacted us a while ago about this trip through our blog. They were nice, friendly and quiet. Unfortunately we realized that perhaps this campground might be an unofficial party zone for boats. There was a party last time we were there and this time there was loud music going all through the night…
After dinner Kai was exhausted and fell asleep and Neil and us followed shortly after. The kids slept pretty well despite the music and honestly so did we. In the morning the fellow cyclists admitted that they slept horribly. This is where the beauty of sleep deprivation comes into play. If you are exhausted enough you can pretty much sleep through anything. Gili said he woke up around 3am to the sounds of a chainsaw. I never actually heard it although I did wake up a few times to the sounds of horrible music but quickly drifted back to sleep.
Ironically the morning was pretty quiet, I guess the party people were exhausted and fell asleep. We had breakfast by the lake, enjoying the views. The kids threw endless rocks into the lake, we watched a family of Canadian Geese walk by and then finally we packed and headed back. On the way we came across signs of a missing goat named Duke and the kids got a kick out of it. In the city we are used to signs of missing cats and dogs, but I have never seen a missing goat sign… For days after this, every time Kai saw a sign like this he would say “missing goat”? We hope that Duke managed to find his way back to his family herd.
We had our lunch break in a cute and deserted playground in Maple Ridge. Afterwards, we followed the 123 Bikeway till we connected with the dyke again. All the way back to the car we enjoyed stunning views of the mountains above us and the river below. All of this, less than an hour away from home. Yes, the colours are coming back to our life and we sure are lucky to be living here!
