Canada, Day 4

Ah, waking up in a bed. Seriously, the camping has not been bad at all, except it has been colder than I expected. I am almost embarrased to say we took our Aerobed, but that is only because we couldn't find our regular camping air mattress. So we have been living it up in style!

I just realized I haven't said anything about the tenting experience. Orion has slept amazingly well in the fresh air, although I was worried about him being cold. I was cold enough the first night I didn't sleep well, but the second night I wore a hat, which really helped. The other challenge has been space. The first night we decided to zip the sleeping bags together and put Orion inside with us. He usually hates to be under covers, so I wasn't sure he would stay there, but that part was fine. The problem was moving him from side to side, or moving at all! We were cramped in there! So the second night I decided to try using my bag solo with him. Same problem - really tight squeeze! My big plan for tonight is to put him inside his little sleeping bag next to me in mine. I have a feeling he won't stay in though, so I am going to add a couple extra layers under his PJs.

Anyway, back to the pictures.... Here is our little Motel in the morning. Just wanted to give a sense about how it is set on a hill.

Here we go down the Sunshine Coast! Random totem pole. We wanted to get a decent start because there was a hike I wanted to do after the next ferry.
Um, OK, wait, isn't that a picture of getting on a ferry? Where are the lovely coast pictures? As it turned out, this was my biggest disappointment of the trip. I had heard so much about how lovely this region is, but it is pretty much 99% private homes on the coast. So the drive I expected to be having lovely ocean views and places to stop and check out the beach was instead lovely views of mailboxes and gated driveways.

There wasn't even a restaurant the entire way to the ferry! Luckily there was a little roadside stand type of place we were able to get some eggs just before the entrance. That place turned out to be really cool. We met a couple from the UK, and the guy who runs it keeps a little book where people make comments and tell where they are from. There are indeed folks from all over the world coming through there. Maybe they all make the same loop drive we did, but I would stick to the island next time!

You can see how lovely the coast is from the boat at least!



One of our saving graces on the ferries - the food selection was pretty small, so we never expected to see chocolate soy milk! This line was on all the boats though! In general, Canada seems to be pretty environmentally and health conscious, which was a nice thing to experience. The only problem with these was telling Orion he only got one!


Hey look, getting off the ferry (only one more crossing to go!) I think part of the humor of this for me was talking to Orion about ferries for days before we left. When I first told him we were going to put our car on a boat, he exclaimed, "That's so silly!" So the whole thing seemed pretty trippy for a two year old, and I like to try to see the world through his eyes.

This is the road near an area I wanted to see called Skookumchuck Narrows. Now mind you, I did my homework pretty well for this trip. I knew what the hikes were like and what would be interesting to see. For some reason, I assumed this was going to be a viewpoint right near the road, but instead it turned out to be a 4 kilometer hike one way! Yeah, I know that really isn't that long, but when you have another ferry to catch and a small walker with a very unpredictable pace, it gets a big worrisome. So we missed that, but knew it would just give us more time to see things the rest of the day!
Boats in somebodies yard near Skookumchuck trailhead.

More funky yard art in the same general area. Definitely was a picturesque drive, so not a total waste!
Foxglove is one of my favorite flowers, and it just grows wild all over the place. Good thing I like it since that was the main view from the road on the Sunsine Coast haha.
However... this was the one beach you could get to, so when we saw it, we had to stop! Would you look at all those rocks!
It appeared to be a quite low tide, so we had lots of stuff to look at.
Now this was a comber's beach! Besides all the cool rocks, there were lots of shells, mainly scallop shells. So the big challenge became finding the totally whole shells. At first we were excited when we found one, then we had more than we knew what to do with!

It was amazing how much the tide came back in during the short time we were there. We saw these geese as we were leaving. I didn't know they would hang out in salt water. You know what they say... learn something new every day.


And then there was Gibson's. I had heard quite alot about this little seaside village, and indeed it was quite charming. Even the trashcans are pretty!

And the old folks are strong! Seriously, we thought to offer this lady a hand, but we weren't sure if she would be thankful or insulted.

Heading down to the dock. This sign was funny because of what it says at the bottom. We would have gone into to check this place out, but it was closed. :(
Floating flower house. Honestly, this is one of the most picturesque things I have ever seen, although you can't really tell it from this picture. We weren't sure if it was a house or a store or...? There were no signs on it, so I think somebody actually lives in there! (There is more indoor space off to the right of the first picture.) We met another lady who lives on the docks, so it wouldn't be that odd.

Cool building at the end of the dock. A bunch of the pieces were like this, as if they had followed the natural pattern of the wood to make the logs. Really awesome.

View from the end of the pier.

Orion had so much fun spotting "Maple Flags" that we had to buy him a little one. That was a big hit!
Famous floating seafood store. We had to buy a few things here!
Crazy plants growing out the top of pieces of wood.
If you look closely, there is a seagull in its next on top of the piece of wood in the center.

Other side of the same sign on the way up the hill. Thanks for letting us know!

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot, we had lunch at a really neat place. I have never seen so many cuisines in one place - Indian, Greek, Italian and more. Apparently these types of places are not uncommon in Canada. Great idea in my book! And they had a play area for kids!

OK, OK, it's the last ferry!
And look, I didn't even take any pictures on the boat! We are already getting off.
Up the Sea to Sky highway we go. First stop, Shannon Falls, and... wow! This was just the first glimpse through the trees, so we realized how huge it was. We were still quite far away at this point.

Front view of the falls. It is hard to get a sense of how tall it is because the tree in the foreground kindof thows off the scale. But if you can see the fullsize trees near the top, you can get some idea. It is 1105 feet tall! We stayed there for the longest time just stunned and looking at it. Ron thought it was the best fall we say by far, but I still think the first Englishman River one was pretty close.
Hollow trunk in the Shannon Falls parking lot.


In camp at last! Alice Lake was our home tonight. We really didn't get to spend hardly any time in our campsites. This was more of a road trip than a camping trip... I do see Ron's point that a balanced approach would be better, but it is so hard for me to go to a new place and not want to explore everything there is to see!