Seattle: Post Election Weekend of Urban Cycling Exploration
It was a stressful week with the US elections taking over everything and everywhere. For some reason, not in my worst nightmares, did I ever think Donald Trump would become the next president. I followed the elections a little bit (because how could you not), and after the second debate I just decided that there was no way this bully was going to win. I guess I am still an optimist inside, but sometimes you just fall on your face. We still decided to go ahead with our plans to go to Seattle for the long weekend. So the atmosphere on the streets wouldn’t be as cheerful as we hoped, but…
Travel Tips: How to Travel on the Cheap Side
The most common question we are asked about our travels is: “How do you afford to travel so much?”. Our usual response is that we don’t travel nearly as much as we’d like to… More seriously, here are some tips on how you too can travel cheaply for long periods of time. Most people think Hawaii is expensive, but our two week trip to the Big Island was one of our cheapest yet. We spent a total of $20 on our accommodations. How so? Well, we spent most of the nights camping for free at county campgrounds or on deserted beaches, and a few nights with hosts from Couchsurfing and…
France: Cycling in the Place Where You Can’t Go Wrong
We heard from several people that “you can’t go wrong” when going to France. However it seemed that in the beginning everything was going wrong. We arrived early in the morning to Paris after hardly getting any sleep on the flight. The flight was long but went well. We had an extra seat for Neil so it was a lot easier than to hold him on our lap the whole time. I discovered a while ago (or rather, he discovered) that stickers keep him busy for a long time, so I bought a dollar store worth of stickers to take with us on the flight. I think that by the…
Pacific Spirit Ride: Balance Bike in the Forest (Video)
Back in August we took Neil for a ride in Pacific Spirit Park. He is getting quite good on his balance bike, but it was his first ride in the forest and he had a great time. I created a short clip of the ride.
Yellow Aster Butte: 24 Hours Car-to-Car
Sometimes everything goes smoothly. After a few ordeals on trips this summer, this is not something to be taken for granted. After we got our car back from the mechanic in Whistler, we both felt it was time for a weekend hike, and we decided on Yellow Aster Butte, a place we had been to a few years ago. We left Vancouver pretty late, ensuring that we all got a good night’s sleep. There was a lot of traffic, a bit of a wait at the border and then we took a long break at the ranger station in Glacier to pick up a parking permit and blue bags (to collect our poo).…
Illal Meadows: Our First Families’ Hike
Our friend Line invited us and a few other families to join a hiking and camping trip to Ilal meadows. We’ve been there twice before and in fact we just talked about going there again with Neil since the access is pretty short. In fact, on our previous visit, Neil was already peanut-sized. There was a lot of interest in the hike and six families showed up just after 9am at a rest area on the Coquihalla Hwy. There were quick introductions, but mainly watching the kids so they wouldn’t get run over by cars. At least we wouldn’t need to worry about that for the rest of the weekend. It was…
Agassiz Farms Cycle Tour: How We Ended Up in Paradise
On Saturday last weekend we joined the Agassiz Farm Cycle Tour, a self guided tour, in which many farms are open to visitors and offer delicious food. The combination of cycling and food can rarely fail, so I knew we were up for a treat. I was excited about this ride because Agassiz is an area that we don’t know, and I am always happy to discover a new area by bike. A couple of years ago we did the Slow Food Ride in Pemberton together with Pascale and Ignacio. I think both Pascale and I were already pregnant back then (although it was probably still a secret, for both of us), so they were the first…
Cathedral Park: A Place from the Fairy Tales
Cathedral Park was one of those places we always knew that one day we would go to. We passed the sign on the highway on all of our trips to the Okanagan and even camped once or twice in one of the recreational sites on the logging road leading to the trail head. But we also knew that the access was either long and boring or short and expensive. Since for a long time we didn’t want to do either, it was left at the bottom of the bucket list. Now, after having Neil, we had the ultimate excuse to finally catch the ride and to explore this magnificent place we had heard only…
- British Columbia (and nearby), Hiking & Scrambling, Metro Vancouver & North Shore, Trip Reports, Trips with Kids
Saint Marks Peak: First Family Hike of the Season
Yes, we are a bit late in the game. I’m not sure how it happened, we probably just got caught up doing cycling trips and forgot to switch to hiking. We were also waiting for the new hiking carrier to arrive, and then most weekends in June were a bit cold and wet. Then there was this one day that we had planned on going to St. Marks Peak but Neil woke up sick, so we ended up hiking to the beach instead. So here we were on the last weekend of June, together with what seemed like the rest of Vancouver and their dog heading to St. Marks Peak.…
Allison Lake: A Short Return of Winter
We were heading towards Merritt. The rain was pounding on our car and it seemed like the wind was picking up. But we had hope. After all, many times when we’d driven east the weather was bad leaving Vancouver, but past Hope it would improve. And if it was still raining past Hope then immediately after going down from the Coquihalla summit, the sun would be shining, with no sign of rain. So we hoped. But the weather did not get better past Hope and it did not get better on the Coquihalla. In fact, as we were getting close to Merritt it seemed like the rain got stronger and the…
