A Mini-Guidebook to Cycle Touring with (Two) Young Kids
Four years ago I wrote a detailed mini-guidebook to cycle touring with a baby/toddler. Since then we have had a lot of changes in our family, and two major additions. The first addition was our second son Kai who was born in 2018. The second addition was our cargo bike, a bright yellow Bike Friday Haul-a-Day (AKA Big Bird), that joined our family shortly after. In addition, time goes by, and our older son Neil (now almost six) grew and started riding his own bike most of the time. Two important additions, a baby and a cargo bike! In 2019 we did two overseas bike tours in three different countries.…
Hiking the Juan de Fuca Trail with Two Kids in Tow (Video)
Hiking the Juan de Fuca trail with our two kids was mostly type two fun. Meaning that hiking the trail didn’t really feel fun, or at least some sections of it. In fact at times it felt more like a survival trip, but in retrospect it was a lot of fun. It was a tough journey for us and the kids – especially for our five year old who hiked it all by himself, but we all came out of it stronger and proud of what we achieved. We all tend to appreciate or want certain things when we don’t have them any more, or can’t have them for a…
Discovery Islands: It’s a Wild World (Video)
This summer we’ve done a lot of local trips around our province of British Columbia, Canada. At the end of summer we set off on an eleven day biking trip. It was a loop starting in Comox on Vancouver Island, and on to Quadra and Cortes Islands (AKA the Discovery Islands) and down the Sunshine Coast from Lund to Powell River and back on the ferry to Comox. This trip was a natural continuation of a bike trip we did three years ago further south. If there is one thing this year has taught us, it is that it’s a crazy world. But it’s also wild and beautiful and there…
Alouette Lake: Finding Franklin
When is summer officially over? Is it at the end of August? Is it after Labour Day, when the kids go back to school? Is it on September 21st, when autumn officially begins? Or is it on the last weekend when you can still happily wear shorts, go on a weekend bike tour, and swim in a beautiful lake? This year it felt especially important to keep summer going as long as possible. So in early October we found ourselves packed up and ready to go on a very local overnight bike tour, but still in an area that was completely new to us. It was the suburbs of Vancouver…
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…
Cathedral Park: The Fairy Tale Lives On
If there was one trip I knew for sure I wanted us to do this summer, it was going to Cathedral Park. I remembered it being a magical experience with fairy tale landscapes when we were there four years ago. I also remember that we didn’t end up doing all the hikes we wanted to do and that there was so much more to see. With a five year old and an almost two year old, catching the ride up there seemed ideal. Alas, every time we called to try to arrange our ride up we were told a different reason why we shouldn’t come up. For early July we…
Salmon Arm: Tipi Getaway with a Rainbow
When we booked a tipi on a farm near Salmon Arm we didn’t really know what would be involved. The Airbnb posting had limited information and photos, but the description sounded nice enough and the price was reasonable. In addition, it was the only place available – of course, we only checked a week before we wanted to go away, with a driving distance that still sounded somewhat doable with two young kids. So on a Wednesday morning we found ourselves driving east. Neil was so excited about the trip, it’s not every day that he gets to sleep in a tipi, so he didn’t eat much for breakfast and…
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…
Viewpoint Beach: The Perfect Early Season Hike
We hadn’t left the city in three months and as much as we had started to get used to our new very local lifestyle we were also starting to get some cabin fever. COVID-19 restrictions were starting to slowly lift and BC Parks and campgrounds had reopened. We refused to take part in the BC Parks crazy camping extravaganza reservation system which crashed as soon as it opened and some very frustrated people were on their computers at 7am trying to book sites. So as usual we just decided we’d play it by ear and see where the wind blows with our summer plans. The first weekend in June was…
