Return to Bowen + Barnston

November had some fine trips out, but are winding down the travels for now.

One self-imposed quest was to find some challenging geocaches around the northwestern area on Bowen Island, as this was tied in with the last sailing trip of the year it allowed only one day to try, so we soldiered on despite the rain. This was hard, downpour rain that washed out hiking trails, sometimes a fast-moving creek cutting across, and sometimes a long stretch of shallow flood as the runoff from the steep hill chose the trail to be its new creek bed.  Beautiful misty green forest, though we didn't stop for many photos.  As the west coast of BC is a rainforest we can't afford to be too crippled by the weather, nonetheless we were glad to return to the boat, peel off soaking clothes for a wardrobe change then head up to our usual rented 'Summer House' at the Union Steam Ship Company for a warm potluck dinner in front of a wood-burning fireplace.  I am usually stationed right in from of said fire.  An easy end to a gruelling yet triumphant hike.  We're usually only there in March or November, yet the locals insist that it is occasionally dry and sunny there if we came during the summer!

Beach of river silt, soft and fine like flour.

Remembrance Day fell in the middle of the week this year - I could devote a post or page to current events and politics and war, but I don't wish to join the deluge of the media storm, I'm sure you can find another blog for that.  I had a steak omelette at the Skyhawk Restaurant and watched the vintage warplanes take off for their flypast before 11am.  Here we had cool but mild autumn weather, and went cycling around Barnston Island.  I remember the last time we were here, I recall the circuit taking us a lot longer to complete.  This was a pleasant cycle with four geocaches (where I left toy soldiers, to follow the seasonal theme), and a quiet pause at each end of the island.  Ended the day at my brother's house for my nephew's birthday with the family.

Recently we also made baked a large lasagna from scratch, which lasted the three of us for several meals.  With the rising cost of cheese and a half bottle o'wine in the sauce, it's definitely a luxury.  The joy is not only in the eating but in the process of creating, and I think it's a good sign of a healthy friendship if you're able to cook together! 'Tis the season for warm hearty comfort food.

Be not afraid..?

Bear viewed safely from car, across a river with a zoom lens.

Thanksgiving weekend found me fleeing rain in Vancouver and heading back to the Okanagan to spend the holiday with my parents.  Great way to escape the rain for days on end, typical on the coast - in Oliver we just had a cloudburst of hard fat drops that was over briefly.  I was geocaching alone in a wilderness preservation area that edged the US border.  Despite being protected by law and blocked from town mostly by a ridge, I saw and heard no animals here.  Perhaps they were just laying low for the impending rain.
One geocache lead me to a cave perched atop a steep slope of wobbly rocks, and I psyched myself out with thoughts of bears and rattlesnakes.  Save for two ATVs that came and went, there was no one around for miles and only a few would know vaguely where I was if I ran into trouble, and I had no bear spray or gun.  I edged closer to the mouth of the cave where my GPS suggested - even if the cache was inside, I'm not going in there! Then the rain began - I don't care, I'm not going in there! I fussed outside along the slope awkwardly, listening for any sound that I didn't make, poking into holes (is that one lined with fur?? At this point I'd be terrified of a grumpy marmot).  The light and clouds shifted and illuminated further into the cave... which was no deeper than a few feet.  No dark recesses harbouring bears.  No holes for snakes.  Barely big enough for a closet.
With that pivotal information I then examined the area and quickly found the cache.  Having found what I had sought and having other places to be, I felt no need to linger there.
What I felt was not a familiar feeling; I recognized it as the come-down off of fear.  I am not afraid often, or if so it's more like a dull nagging concern, to be noted and weighed carefully.  I am not an adrenaline junkie or even particularly sporty thrill-seeker, I am not extreme (save for perhaps culinary experiences?).  So this made me think on the nature of fear; chiding myself for wasting time being afraid, and yet this wasn't an irrational fear, as there are still bears in the area, close to town fattening up on fruit while they can and I could've possibly encountered one.  My dad says this caution has kept me alive so far.  Perhaps it's better to feel fear than nothing at all - afterwards I noticed the awesome smell of the desert sage and antelope bush more sharply, the breeze on the ridge like a hug from the sky, and it's easy to smile.
For my next trick, stay tuned as I visit Churchill, Manitoba next year, on a quest to find polar bears! Those are much scarier, as they're fearless and will stalk you for miles if they're so inclined.

The next day had a great cycle trip along the river promenade - also saw no bears or snakes.  Easy trail, flat and either paved or well gravelled, with lightly dappled shade trees.  This is my kind of path.  We could see along the hills where the summer's brush fires had been, though the trees were remarkably resilient.  Part of the route back had us on a path that disintegrated at some point, and we let ourselves through into a horse paddock.  Two horses watched us intently and leaned in for hugs.  I ought to hang out with horses more often.

Pre-Thanksgiving peace at Gibsons.

We sailed to Gibsons, which I've discussed before here, for a small pre-Thanksgiving gathering.  Much of what we come for stays the same, though city has granted the proposal for developing a large housing/commercial/conference center along the waterfront, and residents are now moving to court action to protest it.  As a visitor there's only so much I can contribute into this, other than to advise all readers to visit the town before it changes too much (though they wouldn't dare ruin Molly's Reach).  We had dinner at our traditional spot, the Waterfront Restaurant where Art knows our group and is very good to us, then the famous Molly's Reach for breakfast.  We also tried a new café uptown and a Greek restaurant, both of which we were pleased with and would gladly revisit again.  We found a park of networking paths that joined the old waterfront to the 'new' town without the dusty main highway and gruelling slope, so had an afternoon walk in the woods.  I remind myself that I should do this more often.
The trip over forecasted a strong wind so we took the cautious inner passage around Bowen Island, and found it dead calm there.  The sky was a flat grey that blended into the hill islands of Howe Sound like a watercolor painting.  No waves, just water like a lake, broken by a silent seal head cutting through.  The return trip gave us a fine breeze all the way from one marina to another, we only needed engine to dock. 

Rafting down the Thompson

'Tis my friend's vacation time; he figured he'd take time off and yet had little desire to go or do anything far from home - while every other travel bug I know is screaming to get as far away from the daily routine as possible.  "Why sit by a pool drinking in Mexico when I can do the same thing here?"  Maddening, yes I know!
Yet he came up with this bright gem, to go white water rafting on the Thompson River up the canyon here in BC.  He'd never been rafting before.  I'd only been rafting once with my mother down Montana's Snake River when I was 14, so I was eager to go again.
Many were invited, yet only he and I went.  We departed at 6:30am to reach the Kumsheen Rafting Resort near Lytton by 10am.  It was nice to see the sunrise.  A few kilometers south of Hope we narrowly avoided hitting a bear as it ran across the highway, it ran into the truck behind/beside us but I didn't see it on the road so I hope it's okay.  It made me think that everyone everywhere should have a number for wildlife rescue saved into their phones, because how do you search for that quickly on a highway? Just out of Hope we encountered fog; deep river valley, autumn morning fog.  It slowed our progress, the turn of roads revealing just fragments of scenery like a story unfolding only as fast as a storyteller can tell it; a few close rocks or trees here and there, all that drop off steeply into grey below over the edge of the road.  I knew we'd have a different view coming back home the other way, so I enjoyed it for what it was.
We got to the rafting campground in time, set up tent, went rafting; we'd got the paddle+motor package and got both boats to ourselves since no one else signed up for that day, so we paddled the slower parts in the morning and had a great view of the sculpted canyon walls and green/grey water and it was still pretty quiet, some easy rapids.  We saw a lone female Merganser, one of the few waterfowl that don't mind the fast-moving water.  Saw an eagle, and a dying salmon that lingered near our oars.  It was a a gentle beginning to the day yet I felt giddy.  This is just so nice!
Lunch break was at their kitchen/dining hall facilities, simple make-your-own tortilla wraps.  Perhaps it would've been more elaborate if more guests had been there, but this was fresh and simple and one wouldn't want a heavy weight in their stomach going over the next stretch of white water.  I had tea and that suits me fine.

After lunch we were on the larger power boat, which just ploughed right through the cresting waves, I laughed so much I couldn't keep my mouth shut and kept getting a mouthful of water, tasted clean and wild.  Water held on my eyelashes that I could only brush away once we'd cleared the rapids, so much I saw with one eye open and just enjoyed feeling the bow of the boat drop and get pummeled.  My friend had a GoPro camera recording on his helmet so I trusted the footage would be fine to review later.  For now is just feeling the thrill.

The trip ended where the Thompson meets the Fraser.  I'm sure that had we paddled the silt-brown Fraser that water wouldn't have tasted as nice.  A van returned us to the resort.
The resort and town of Lytton itself is busy for the River Days on the labour day long weekend, but alas we were at the end of season.  The hot tub didn't seem as warm as I'd hoped, the restaurant was closed and we drove further onto another sleepy town of Spences Bridge to find food after 7pm.  Retired to our tent early for lack of anything else to do, but didn't sleep as the trains on either side of the canyon ran frequently as well as the large trucks with their engine brakes.  In the morning while we found a couple of geocaches in Lytton, a woman at the visitor's center confirmed you'd have to be quite far from town to escape the sound of the trains.

View from the back of our campsite, looking left...

and looking to the right.  Note how close the train tracks are.

As in our Sasamat lake floating excursions, we are always on the lookout to refine and improve for next time.  Next time we'd like to come during the River Days, when there's a live music stage in the center of town.  Next time we'd like to have more people to get the group discount and play cards with in the evening and make big-batch camp cooking worthwhile.  Next time we'd like to be far from trains. 
But I was happy with this time, just the way it was.

Out east to Nova Scotia

Thick sculpted clouds as our plane lands.

Late summer finds another trip to Nova Scotia began with a tight weekend schedule including a wedding on McNabs Island, followed by a casual reunion of high school friends, and then a mad dash across the province (yes it's a skinny province) to a small, beautiful old town, Annapolis Royal.

McNabs Island
Despite being in busy Halifax Harbour, McNabs Island seems like a very vast and remote space when you're there, quiet and wild.  Perhaps because it's only accessible by boat (limited ferry service, mostly private arrangements), and there's no facilities for visitors once there, just a simple tenting campsite and hiking trails.  It's a provincial park with rich history including a 1920s carnival, a soda pop factory, a cholera quarantine/cemetery, and several military bases.  The old building foundations marry into the surrounding nature like poetry, accessible to anyone who discovers them.  We had great weather for a friend's wedding and took a brief, easy geocache walk before ensuring that we were on the dock to then be on the dinghy to then be on the boat that would return us to shore.  Great way to start off our touring/exploring vacation.  Being a rather long island, we haven't hiked even half the distance so far so we will be sure to revisit sometime.

Annapolis Royal

                       
We stayed at one of the many bed+breakfasts here - the houses are gorgeous Victorian homes, many with heritage status, and I suppose the best way to keep up maintenance costs and property taxes is to turn them into businesses as well.  Annapolis Royal is in a geographically ideal end of the fertile Annapolis Valley (formerly apples, now increasingly wine) and a shallow harbour.  Annapolis Royal started out as a French fort/trading post Port Royal followed by a Scottish settlement across the water where the main town is now, both that have been fought over and captured by the French and English many times over.

After geocaching around the French Basin marsh, we had a very nice dinner that served local seafood with a European flair, hence I got scallops+spaetzle with gruner veltliner wine.

The highlight here was a graveyard tour of the garrison cemetery in Fort Anne, hosted by a high member of the historical society, who issued each of us candle lanterns and led us carefully around the grounds.  Easy walk on a warm night, this wasn't a spooky ghost tour, but rather a fantastic delivery that really brought the history to life through the stories told by these headstones.  Informative and engaging, this is a must-see to gain a full appreciation of the town, that really sets it apart from any other small town of funky boutiques and art galleries.


Then we had a day or two rest at our home base in Sackville, near Halifax. Time to chase around friends and family and scheduling and plannning our whereabouts, with a brief bout of bushwhacking geocaching.  Then onwards further northwest;

Spencers Island, Cape D'Or, and Joggins
I will treat all three of these together, as that visit was a very brief blur: we had intended to meet someone at home who wasn't there, and had commitments bookending this mini-trip.  It was late afternoon by the time we got to the Masstown Market, an excellent place for lunch, snacks, groceries, imports, crafts and gourmet foodie delights.  'Twas a hot afternoon I had spent geocaching, dehydrated and eaten alive by ravenous mosquitoes, so I felt instantly restored by a margarita ice cream.   Mmmmm, creamy limey goodness...

This is the last landmark as we depart from the main highway and take the old highway 2 then onto the old 209  that follows the coast of the Minas Basin.  Here are tiny towns all seemingly similar to one another with one road in/out, a church and volunteer fire hall, convenience store, and not much else.  Signs warned us to be sure we had enough gas, as the next stop wouldn't be for a long drive.  These were feeder towns to the larger town of Springhill that was a coal mining town.  The land is scrubby low-bush blueberries, I'm not sure if anyone owns them, and lush green forests over hills.  The shore drops off in cliffs of layered ancient geology that was once part of Africa, and we lost sight of the land on the other side of the Minas Basin as the sun softened the horizon.  It seemed like the end of the earth (the 'end' would be Cape Chignecto Provincial Park, where a friend was out on a camping trip at that time.  More on him and his mushrooms later).

We arrived at our B+B at Spencers Island - a small community on the mainland that views Spencers Island itself, which looks quite uninhabited - at around 7pm, the owner was friendly and helpful and there's no restaurant to eat in that town at that hour, or the next town Advocate Harbour, so she called ahead to a fella that runs the restaurant at the lighthouse and told him we'd be on our way.  "Be kind, he's understaffed tonight". What followed was a twisty drive on gravel/dirt road in dying daylight with the wall of fog rolling in, ending in a lighthouse that because of the foghorn we could hear more than see, and a restaurant that shined like a warm beacon for us.  The poor fella inside was indeed very busy but his meals were excellent, I had a poached salmon with dill sauce and vegetables, and shared a dessert of rhubarb crumble.

Looking west, same cliff, less spooky.

Looking west.

A hot steamy shower soothed my mosquito bites.  Bed felt good.
Morning was a homecooked breakfast and a walk along the rocky beach while the tide was out, then to drive again the road we took last night to the lighthouse to geocache and enjoy the view.
Back to the 209 as is comes away from the coast and skirts the provincial park and wilderness area, turning north.  Barely any other traffic, no wildlife, just green and a couple of small communities.  Onto Joggins.

Joggins is a slightly bigger town, with more than one road, and most notably a state-of-the-art environmentally green building housing the museum for the famous Joggins fossil cliffs.  We hit the beach and follow along - but not too closely - cliffs that are steadily chipping away with every season or storm, revealing more fossils.  Not every one is a dinosaur of course, this is from the Coal Age of ancient swamp and sea bed and our eyes adjust to the rocks we recognize what to look for, the darkish stains on grey that are patterns of grass or other plant structure.  Some were giant slabs we could walk on, these fossils are protected but there are many similar beaches around where I could just imagine some homeowner loading up her 4x4 with slabs of fossils to use as decorative paving stones for her walkway...
Minding our time we hit the highway and made it back to Sackville in time for dinner reservations for my obligatory Nova Scotia lobster dinner.  Love me some lobster.

After this we went to the cottage in Chester, and a cabin... in the middle of nowhere, sorta close to New Ross.  This is time to see family and had a great time moving slowly without much rush at all.  Biggest note here was the wonderful summer storm at the cabin, with much booming thunder, hard angry rain and a peculiar and uneasy hue of yellow in the sky that no one's camera could truly capture.  You just had to be there.

Lunenburg

A quick drive from the cottage bring us to Lunenburg, home of the Bluenose that graces the face of our 10 cent piece.  Once a great racer she's been resurrected for sailing tours at great expense and plagued by safety codes bringing an ancient icon into the modern age.  I got to walk aboard while she was in harbour.  Lunenburg was a main shipbuilding port for dories as well, the red boatsheds a famous landmark.
The houses are mostly heritage homes, all done in bright ice cream colors that cut through even the foggiest days.  We had good weather while we were there as the storm had passed.  We had beer+oyster happy hour at the Old Fish Factory then crossed the street for sushi at the Rumrunner Inn and Restaurant because they advertised a dessert that caught the eye. Alas the dessert was made daily and sold out by the time we got there at barely dinnertime, yet the sushi was fresh and well composed and the service was excellent.  I'll be sure to note them for my next visit.


(Big) Tancook Island

A small island community with ferry service but we took a private boat over, making great time in favorable sailing conditions.  I loved just listening to the gentle lap of hull cutting through water, I don't even need music or conversation, just that tranquil not-quite-silence.
Great weather for a walk and plenty of geocaches for all ranges of skill level.  The mosquitoes hid in wait for us in the woods just off the dry hot road.  Met two characters on the island that were as different as night and day.  Quirky, friendly island folk.  Had scallops+chips, in years past they'd been battered but are now just lightly pan-fried.  The primary restaurant serves no alcohol, so hope you weren't hoping for beer on a hot day.

Leisurely evening at the cottage, then found ourselves in an annoying gas shortage that had us scrambling to find fuel to get back to Debert - right near Masstown where we'd been just a week before - the only place  private/recreational pilots can fly from in NS.  We flew over the old 2 and 209 we'd just driven by car, but the further we progressed west we found more cloud.  By the time we had abandoned the planned route the cloud had found us and swallowed us altogether, much like someone who doesn't like dogs tries avoiding dogs, only to be pounced on by a friendly happy slobbery one.  Yep, we're in a cloud now.  We spotted land again over the Five Islands without crashing into them, and a good time was had by all!

Grand Pre

Bounce back across the province to Grand Pre, we're always glad to visit a family out there.  They have an old farmhouse that's been renovated just enough to be a beautiful functional mix of modern convenience and proud heritage.  Their yard is huge with plenty of gardens for veggies and herbs, grapes along the trellis, and chickens.  When I visit them I somehow rekindle the thought that I too can DIY from garden to table all sorts of ambitious projects!!!, though realistically I'm sure they just make it *look* easy!
The men went out shopping for local corn at one roadside stand and to get nice steaks from his favorite butcher, and we ladies left them to catch up on the year and reminisce about college while we went out geocaching.  We'd introduced their daughters to geocaching last summer, and they're a pleasure to have.  We found three geocaches and were foiled by a fourth before we returned for dinner.

This friend has gone camping at Cape Chignecto and came across wild chanterelle mushrooms, happily harvesting plenty an having them positively ID'd by the farmer's market expert, that was our highlight of dinner.  Lightly sauteed in shallots and butter and balanced on baguette rounds.  Then onto salad and corn barbecued outside, seated at the backyard picnic table.  Likely the most well-crafted dinner of our trip.
Even the coffee in the morning was foamy and strong and unmistakably _coffee_ that I wouldn't bastardize with heaps of anything-to-make-coffee-not-taste-like-coffee.  Breakfast was fresh eggs from the hens that lay more eggs than the family of four can eat, so we were sent home with a dozen as well as some of their homegrown garlic.

Our friend made many of the information signs posted around Grand Pre, we drove out to see them and it was great to see how much of this land that had been brilliantly reclaimed from the sea by aboiteau construction, likely the largest endeavour outside of Holland.  We sought a geocache that was at the historic site at Grand Pre, I'd never been there before but it's a beautiful spot loaded with the sad history of the Acadian deportation.  This was inadvetantly our third UNESCO heritage site on this trip.  Great to walk the grounds and enjoy the gardens, the church there is a very pretty token though isn't a functional church and I'm told it's about 1/5 the size of the original.  Someday I'll get around to reading Longfellow's epic poem "Evangeline".

So with a couple of days left winding down in our trip we retire to the home in Sackville and attended a lecture in the downtown Halifax library on natural disaster prediction (mostly flooding) and preparedness.  The library is a newer building, open and bright, and as I left the lecture walking past the small selection of books and magazines in foreign languages, it occurred to me that I like the sense of libraries.  In an age where media is pushing opinions on you and advertisements are pushing products on you, here is a peaceful oasis where no one idea/agenda demands any more attention than another.  They're all just spines of books facing you, not splashy billboards or glaring lights, and you have to seek them out for them to be discovered.  Books are displayed like offerings all free for the taking, that may or may not catch your fancy, ready to be found or smoothly passed by.  As well, lectures are interesting and free, and the staff are eager to help.  I should spend more time in libraries.  I tried relaying this on to someone else, who brought up that libraries will let you take e-books out on your account and they can be viewed straight from home, no need to come to the library at all! - I think he missed my point.
We ended the trip with a weekend at the cottage in Chester, the weather is sunny and we enjoyed the pool. Then I returned to Vancouver on the heels of a big windstorm, typical autumn weather. 

On the water in August.

Another quick post - places to go, people to see.  The first two weekends of August included a trip to Newcastle Island and Sasamat Lake, both of which I've posted entries here last year.  Some things change, but mostly stay the same, a sort of tradition.

Bright moon on a purple sky.

The sail over was fairly smooth for the most part, we had a warm night and a bright moon in Silva Bay after our hike/geocaching afternoon.  Our sailing trip to Newcastle Island was marked by a visit with guests from England on their tour of BC who joined us at the Dinghy Dock Pub for dinner, and by finally reaching a geocache up a tree that's been taunting me for my past two trips to the island - in plain sight and easily reached by brave+limber people.  This time we came prepared with a spare sailing halyard and too-skinny rope ladder.  I'm glad I had help for that one, I couldn't have done it alone.  And now I never have to do it again!

Sculpted rocks and sea asparagus.

We got two more geocaches around Protection Island, and I found some sea asparagus that is a salty burst eaten raw and a great addition to our foil-wrapped veggie packets we grill on the sea-BBQ.  We saw otters, raccoons, kingfishers and the ever-present purple martins, and spooked a deer on Protection Island.  We were next to the main party boat, and had a casual stream of people lounging around for beers and snacks.
The trip to Sasamat Lake had been moved twice this summer because of grey and/or rain, despite our hot blue sky weather coming unusually early this year.  Got the watermelon, and pineapple this year, sandwiches from Big Star Sandwich Co ("which will ruin you for sandwiches from anywhere else"), assorted snacks and chocolate-covered cookies that melted, beer+cider.  Music on ipod w/speaker stuffed in his sandal, timer on to reapply sunscreen.  Returned home for barbeque chicken dinner as good as any restaurant - my friend's a fantastic cook.

A hot and busy July

Oh July... what have I done..? Nothing!
Which is  to say, nothing grand or life-altering.  Just nothing particularly noteworthy to post here.  For my Mexico trip that lasted sixteen days, it took me four months to report on it in manageable chunks.  Let's keep this post brief.
July has been reconnecting with friends and family as much as I can.  I'm still missing some, our schedules just aren't lining up right.  Such is life.
I saw my friend who's been travelling for the past six months, we went for tea at our usual tea place Shaktea down on Main St.  The next weekend she and a friend prepared dishes from countries they'd traveled, namely eastern Europe and India, with exotic names that are lost on me now but all were delicious.
I saw my parents out in their desert - it's already hot enough everywhere in BC now, let alone a desert.  There I was hiking/geocaching for six hours along the White Lake/Mahoney Lake loop trail, a fine afternoon both challenging (the grade is a terrible grind if you go clockwise!) and rewarding.  I saw a bear.
I saw my friend in White Rock, a welcoming oasis from the city-life.
I hiked/geocached more up around Cypress mountain, finishing up a multi-stage geocache I'd been ticking away at for a few days.  I saw a coyote.
I attended a Pink Martini concert; brilliant musicianship and great vocals, of festive jazzy/bossa nova style that invited us to form a congo line onstage, and a Keb Mo concert which is probably the most positive/optimistic blues I've ever heard.
I attended a gathering of geocachers for a Winter Games - in the summer.  That was a fantastic time and I laughed and cheered much.  Kudos to the organizers for their creativity of these snow-themed events without snow (wearing milk jugs on our feet for a 'snowshoe' race?!)
I have emails trickling in from some faraway friends.  Hello out there!
Little trips and events, all enjoyable.  Now I plan and prepare for August, which will be travelling farther elsewhere.