Sunshine Coast and you'd better believe it

Maarten - Egmont...that's the start of Desolation Sound!!! The rocks you see were covered with Oyster shells and tiny crabs crawling everywhere.
View fromEarl's Cove
Luxury accomodation...pillows, doona!!
enjoying my book by the lake
Small lake walk...Inland Lake PP
Wild raspberries
Michel and I on Canada Day by the Library...that flag is hanging off the main postal building.
We went from Langdale all the way to Lund and back in 5 days stopping along the way to swim in lakes, camp in the forests, enjoy the views of secret coves and smuggler's hideaways, tried part of the Sunshine Coast Trail, set up camp in wonderful provincial parks beside lakes, cooking bbqs in the evenings over log fires. This is the life...cooking and sleeping under the stars... strangely enough we didn't see so many of those.

We ate kilos of wild cherries, raspberries, huckleberries, salmon berries... there was way too much wasting away..and plenty for the bears. We tried fishing, but thought the fish were too cute and then we got bored. We walked trails - one of them the Skookumhuck to see the ebb and flood of the waters.... we got the backend of the flood which was stunning anyway. We decided our camper will be called Skookum (meaning strong, Chuck meaning waters...although in our case we'd like to chuck as in throw it away ;)...sorry Skookum) and we're hoping after we pick it up from Princeton this weekend it will start to live up to its name. We tented out but we had all the luxuries of a nice pillows and duvets simply because all our camping gear was in the campervan.

5 days of fresh air, extremely generous (with their time and prawns) and friendly locals, reminded us of Ireland where we have to allocate extra time to get anywhere because once people stopped to talk to us we were there for ages. Maarten was sold on the sailing...there are just so many places we can access if we learn how to access one of those boats. A family from Dawson Creek comes into Desolation Sound every 2 years with their kids. We met Dutch people (Yann and Yennie from teh Veluwe and another farmer couple from outside Groningen) campervaning around, a Swedish Fisherman who settled in Lund 30 years ago, he gave us his address for prawns that were in his freezer, 2 Powel River motor bikers... he had worked in the paper mill that's now closed in Powell River and is now a photographer of wild plants for UBC.

We went to places like Dinner Rock, Madeira Park, Powell River (Including Cranberry, Townsite) where the paper mills are, the ferries to the white sandy Savary and Texada and Vancouver Island leave from, Egmont where people were fishing off the docks for pile perch, Sechelt with it's Porpoise Bay PP (with it's white sand), Robert's creek with all their artisan shops, Saltery bay where the Sunshine Coast trail beings/ends, Okeover where the Sound begins and many more places, Egmont with is great fishing from the pier, Earl's cove, etc, etc.

Note: Tried Discount Car rentals in the lobby of the Sandman Hotel on West Georgia street... they had great service and about the only car company with any cars left minutes away from the start of the long weekend.


Wine and Cherries Weekend

Guess where we went again and actually made it all the way... Okanagan Valley!!! 45 degrees! It was great to be back there to desert country.
Picked up the campervan (nice mechanic called Rob), went all the way to Oliver, bought blueberries, big fat sweet cherries and lots of Mission Hill wine. It was lovely to see the green lush valley in the middle of the desert.

We then drove all the way back to Manning Park for the night. I had to follow Maarten in the rental. It was a strange little car with the whole console in the middle of the car's dash so you felt like you were playing dodgem cars. Anyway...Skookum took it slow up the hills and banked up loads of traffic but I think we forced people to look around them on that highway # 3...it's a special road with amazing views and loads of opportunity to overtake and I think one of our favourite drives.

There's a couple of neat places we found this time called Bromley Rock, it's on the Fraser river and I'm sure the Salmon come up this way soon, there were kayakers practising some wild moves around the rocks there and the swimming hole is one of the best around. We had lunch on the banks down by the river. Another rest spot we found was Hope Landslide, sad story of the 1965 earthquake and the lives lost in the slide....but a beautiful place to rest in front of for long distant drivers. Oh and the van stopped again on Grandview and Renfrew Street so we topped it up with oil and made it back home.

The van update it that there is another leak... and the carberator has been readjusted so it shouldn't stop again. Hoping this is the last repair...and that it will make it to Prince Rupert and back in one piece on it's own 4 wheels.