Monck Provincial Park: Last Minute Surprise
We were looking for a last minute camping destination. Popular wisdom here says that you must book everything months in advance. I hate it… How am I supposed to know what I’m going to want to do in a few months time?! In this case, my dad was visiting on a last minute trip, and we wanted to do a few nights of car camping within a few hours drive of Vancouver. BC Parks’ new website allows one to see vacancies in all the parks in the province easily. I checked it a few times for our dates, but there were no reservable sites available. There are actually many first come first serve sites in BC Parks, but given that we expected to arrive in the evening, that seemed like a recipe for failure. Luckily, after a few failed tries, a vacancy finally showed up! It was one of the best sites at Monck Provincial Park, by Nicola Lake, near Merritt. Bingo!
The site we booked was a double site, but still, we didn’t hesitate to book it. It was then only natural to look for some friends to join us, which wasn’t too hard. We loaded up a Modo mini-van with way too much food, camping gear, and our canoe, and left sometime in the late afternoon. We made our usual stop in Hope for the kids to burn off energy at the excellent campground there, and ate a mediocre pizza. Why is it that we can never find anything good to eat in Hope? We walked around a bit and found some beautifully carved wooden sculptures that we hadn’t noticed on previous visits. There was a particularly memorable one of Rambo. It turns out that the first Rambo movie was filmed in Hope – their claim to fame.
We arrived just as it was getting dark – gotta love the long summer days! Still, in the twilight we could see the great view of the lake from our site and knew we had a winner. Kai had already fallen asleep for the night, so we set up our tents quickly and fell asleep easily. Why is it that we sleep so much longer and better when we’re out camping? I guess there isn’t much to do, but we’re also typically pretty tired by nightfall.
Over the next two days we explored the campground, which is surrounded by beautiful ponderosa pines. We checked out the two playgrounds within the campground, the sandy beach, a host of resident marmots, as well as some saskatoons on a trail by our tent. We canoed a short distance down the lake where we saw a black snake swimming – it had its head out of the water and seemed to just move the bottom part of its body fast from side to side. It was neat but eerie, I guess that’s how snakes swim! It stopped on a log to warm up in the sun, and we took a closer look. Other than that, we enjoyed some good relaxation time and naps in the sun, plus some good food.
Before leaving my dad and I canoed across the lake to the other side where we had spotted a golf course, a strange sight in the dry surroundings. We packed up, and headed off, just to get stuck in a construction zone on the Coquihalla Highway, and then some slow traffic near Abbotsford. We managed to sneak into Hiko Sushi despite it being full by asking if we could sit at the bar (all five of us). By the time we were done the traffic was still about the same, but it was late in the evening and time to head home so we sucked it up. It was a fun few days!
