Blanca Lake: Before the Smoke Rolled In
Blanca Lake has been at the back of my mind for some years now. A remote area “near Squamish”, accessible via a short hike, beautiful lakes, surrounded by glaciers, off the beaten track? Sign me up! There was just one thing I didn’t quite realize. Although the hike is short, the drive is long… We did leave the highway near Squamish, but that wasn’t even the halfway point due to all the logging roads involved. The drive took us almost three hours, and we didn’t even make it to the trailhead! The final stretch was steep and loose, and there were water bars which caused us to leave our car…
- Cycling & Cycle Touring, Gulf Islands and Sunshine Coast, Trip Reports, Trips with Kids, Vancouver Island
Discovery Islands Loop: Minimum Planning For the Win
Trust that things will work out, and they will. I’m an insatiable optimist, and that’s really my belief, but Maya and I sometimes disagree on this… Surely, COVID changes things? or does it? Could we still head out on an 11 day cycling trip with our two kids, without knowing where we would stay every night? Would Warm Showers hosts agree to host us, despite these difficult times…? I really believe that not booking accommodation in advance, and in general staying flexible and not planning too much, opens up our trips to new opportunities that present themselves. As you’ll see, this is exactly how it played out. Our trip started…
Juan de Fuca Trail: The Mystical Trail
My backpack was VERY heavy. So heavy that lifting it required an orchestrated series of moves, which ended with an impossible to suppress grunt. So heavy that I chose not to weigh it so I wouldn’t know how heavy it was. Such is life for a family of four on a five (or six) day hiking trip along the Juan de Fuca Trail. Luckily our first day was short, and ended at the appropriately named Mystic Beach. Our mystical campsite, right on the beach, had wide views (of course), and a swing hanging from a precariously positioned down-sloping log, a waterfall going straight into the ocean, only accessible at low…
COVID-19 Days, Not So Bad, After All?!
Biking through old growth forest in absolute silence, not a car in sight. Stopping to pick salmonberries, arranged like gems in my hand, bright orange, yellow, red. Young kids and seniors (and the rest of us) biking right on the road, no worries of being run over by a car. Grinding up to Prospect Point to an awesome view of Lion’s Gate Bridge from above, and then zooming down the hill to Third Beach and downtown. This is Stanley Park in the time of COVID-19 – it has been closed to cars almost completely for three months or so, and it ain’t so bad! I feel only slightly guilty writing…
Taiwan (Part 1): Not Love at First Sight (Taipei to Taitung)
Taiwan wasn’t love at first sight. It started with our arrival to Taoyuan Airport. A bus took us from the plane to the terminal. But it took a roundabout route that passed through a series of dilapidated buildings. A taxi then took us from the airport to our Warm Showers host in the outskirts of Taoyuan. It was in an industrial wasteland, ugly, and with no shops or restaurants in sight. Looking for something to eat for lunch involved a long walk on the road that ended at the 7-Eleven. We did find a coffee shop that had tasty Australian Meat Pies. They were rather good, but that wasn’t exactly…
Japan (Part 2): Along the Coast and Over the Mountains (Shikoku)
We had been climbing for the past few days and were finally approaching the pass, at 720m. From there it would be all downhill to the other side of Shikoku. Our route took us up a small road, which turned into a dirt road and then a rough trail, hardly an option for us. Damn cycling app! When I started thinking about heading back to Japan for another cycling trip, I soon heard about the Shikoku Henro. It’s a pilgrimage circuit around the island of Shikoku through 88 temples. Most pilgrims walk the circuit, but some cycle it or even drive it. The cycling route around the island was the…
Sidney Island: Another World
Bus, SkyTrain, bus, ferry, bus, ferry. That bewildering series of six transportation modes was how we got to Sidney Island from Vancouver using public transportation. It took only five hours… Since we knew it would be a bit of an ordeal, we decided to go for two days. It helped to adopt a mindset that the journey is worthwhile, not just the destination. Still it was a bit tiring. Neil fell asleep on the bus to Sidney, and after we got off continued sleeping on the sidewalk, to the amusement of passerby. With difficulty we finally managed to wake him, with promises of a visit to the Sidney Bakery. One…
- Carfree, Hiking & Scrambling, Metro Vancouver & North Shore, Random Thoughts, Trip Reports, Trips with Kids
BCMC Trail: How to Get Kids to Go Farther
Do we hold our children back by making assumptions about their abilities? I think we do, at least some of the time. Our four year old son Neil recently cycled 30 kms, despite us urging him repeatedly to ride the cargo bike part of the way. This really surprised me and got me thinking. Perhaps by steering clear of experiences that challenge our kids’ comfort zone, we don’t allow them to discover where their limits are, nor to expand them. If we accept that, the natural question is: how to get kids to go farther? Leading up to this trip, I was curious to know where Neil’s hiking limits are.…
- British Columbia (and nearby), Cycling & Cycle Touring, Gulf Islands and Sunshine Coast, Trip Reports, Trips with Kids
Pender and Galiano: So Much More to Discover
We don’t plan much in advance. The reasoning is somewhere in between a spirit of adventure and an unwillingness to commit in advance. Anyway, when a friend emailed around asking who’d be interested in making a reservation for camping on the May long weekend, FOUR months earlier, in January, my first thought was “there’s no way we can commit to that” and then “we’re not the kind of people that book four months in advance”, and so on. But then I started thinking that maybe we should engage with our wilder side, step out of our comfort zone… Maya suggested the location – the newish campground at Shingle Bay on…
How to Pack Your Haul a Day in Two Regular Sized Boxes
Recently we bought a Bike Friday Haul a Day cargo bike and cycle toured with it in Greece for five weeks. We flew with United Airlines, which wanted to charge us $200 per bike, per direction. I knew that the Haul a Day frame can be dismantled, so I was curious if our bike could fit into two regular boxes or suitcases. This would allow us to avoid the outrageous bike fees. When we ordered our bike from Bike Friday, I asked them if they could ship it to us in two regular sized boxes. As I have experienced in the past, they make an effort to help their customers…
