Mt. Rainier National Park: Wilderness Behind the Urban Monster
Why? It seems to be the number one question recently when we set off on a trip by car. This time even more so, since crossing the border to the US, especially on a long weekend is brutal. Naively we thought that if we’d cross on Sunday, meaning the middle of the long weekend, the wait wouldn’t be long. We ended up waiting for an hour and a half… The only silver lining in the situation was that the kids miraculously slept through most of the wait. If they would have been awake I’m pretty sure we would have turned around. That would have been unfortunate since that first day…
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…
Darkside Lake: The Dark Side of the Duffey
Gili probably had this hike on his bucket list for quite some time and finally it was an appropriate weekend to go. But only as we started driving I realized how far we’d have to drive to get to the trailhead. I guess Gili kept that fact hidden behind “it’s a short easy hike”. We also didn’t get an early start even though for the first time our backpacks were packed and ready to go a day ahead of time. Driving out of Vancouver was brutal and the Sea to Sky had numerous accidents along the way including one involving a bike unfortunately. As we were getting close to Whistler…
Trophy Meadows: In the Clouds of Mosquitoes
Sometimes we only think of the big problems and forget the small ones. Prior to this trip we had heard that there was an encounter with a grizzly on the Trophy Meadows Trail, so it was closed for a while. We checked every day for updates online, and Gili called the ranger station a few times. That’s when we found out what the “encounter” was – a grizzly bear had charged someone… Obviously we were concerned. Eventually we heard that the trail was open again, since the grizzly had not been seen for a while. We made sure to bring our bear spray, which expired some years ago though, and…
- 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.…
Newcastle Island: Same Same But Different
I never thought we’d be the type of people who do things annually, but lately it seems to be happening more frequently. For the past three years we’ve gone to Big White around Easter time (trip 1, 2 & 3), and as of last year we’ve started going to Newcastle Island in June with a bunch of other families. I like the old saying that you can never swim in the same river twice as the water is always changing. So even though it was a trip to the same destination, at the same time of year, and with mostly the same friends some things were still quite different (and…
- 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…
Keats Island: From Kits to Keats
It was time to try camping with Kai. The forecast looked good, we had just purchased a four person tent and we had a destination. We decided to head to Keats Island, a place we had wanted to explore for a while. After a bit of research we decided there was really no point in bringing our bikes and that decision made our life easier. We packed two backpacks, put Kai in the carrier and off we went by bus. Our timing wasn’t perfect – we left Kits a bit too late and we arrived with just a few minutes to spare before the ferry to Langdale. We had to…
Big White: A Very Short Ski Season
Back in April, about ten days after we got back from our trip to Israel and Greece we headed to Big White for a few days. It became somewhat of a family tradition to spend Easter on Big White so we thought we’d keep it going even though our trip wasn’t exactly in Easter. We found a reasonable Airbnb on the mountain, rented a car and packed all of our ski gear + two kids and went on the five plus hours drive towards Kelowna. Our timing to leave in the early afternoon after Neil’s daycare was good and both kids were sleeping in no time. We managed to push…
Greece: Cycling Through Seven Islands with the Double Fours
Do animals have a belly button? How can a volcano be sleeping if it doesn’t have eyes? What do fish eat? Where is the shadow of the sea? How come the rules in Greece are a bit different? Where are our bike boxes? Why is Kai sad? Which side to ride on? Which side is the right side? This is just a fraction of the questions we got from our four year old while we were cycling together in Greece over five weeks. It didn’t matter how many times we told him he should be cycling on the right side, he still kept on asking about 500 times a day,…
