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Published: June 14th 2007
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Waking up to a rainy day with a car out the front of the house is entirely different to waking up to a rainy day and looking mournfully/wistfully at a 10 year-old gortex jacket that does not really work any more. Actually, maybe I’ll put a new rain jacket on my MEC employee shopping list. But, anyway, my point is, we had a car and we planned to use every last one of our “free” kilometres that came with it. So the fact that it was raining on our third day on the island did not deter us. We just hopped in the car and went on a road trip to explore the island.
We decided to head up towards Gold River, through Strathcona Provincial Park. Stopping via Miracle beach, elk river falls and a big graffiti-clad boulder on a beach. As much as I appreciate Canada’s natural beauty, I really find it hard to appreciate flat and grey pebbled or coarse-sand beaches. I just have to think of them as something other than beaches, ‘cause I always find myself silently and unreasonably expecting fine white sand and turquoise coloured surf. The road signs leading us to Miracle Beach
Miracle beach
and me doing a classic tourist pose (jono took this one - obviously) helped feed this stupid fantasy - beach towels and umbrellas and waves. I think the view of mountains across the water on a clear day is quite amazing… but we could only see clouds. So I wasn’t blown away by what we found, but it was pretty, in a grey and flat kind of way. The Elk River falls were spectacularly and satisfyingly big and the amount of warning and danger signs about the place was amazing! Even with all the signs (some of which I have included) they even employed two security guards to stand at the start of the trail and hand out paper warnings. We thought the boulder on the beach right near the highway was pretty cool, even though it’s natural beauty was a little hard to spot under the glaring and ugly graffiti. How it got to be sitting on an otherwise flat beach, with no escarpment in sight is pretty cool. Despite the pose for the photo, there were not really any potential bouldering routes on it. Though we both thought that it would be the perfect training boulder if you lived near by. You could just chip holds into it (since it is
already trashed with graffiti).
STRATHCONA PARK, though, IS AMAZING and we are definitely returning as soon as possible. By the time we got to the park, the sun had even made an appearance. We checked a climbing area on Campbell River which looks awesome. Again, basalt, so mainly bolted routes… but right on this beautiful river in a provincial park. It would be the perfect place to just have a week-long summer camp. When not climbing, you could be walking through the forest or playing in the rapids. There are quite a few accessible camp grounds, which are either free, or very cost little. The rock was luckily wet (lucky because we did not bring our climbing stuff and would have got very grumpy with ourselves if it were dry.) But we looked at the lines dreamily and planned a future trip. We even went for another invigorating swim. Brrrrrrrr…
We also squeezed in a two hour walk along the elk river trail. We did not see any elk, but the forest was beautiful. There are quite a few mountains, and potential alpine climbing routes to explore in this part of the park too, which we are also
lots of sand
Miracle Beach (I think I took this one) concocting plans about. I have a desire to spend one or more nights mid way up an alpine climb before I go home.
Just as the day was coming to a close, and we had started driving home, we saw a black bear right by the road, eating grass and doing it’s thing. Far from the mad crazed thing of horror movies, it looked adorably cute and fluffy. I was glad to be in a car though. It was a good place to be for my first encounter with a bear. Very exciting. Just after I took this photo it moved its head up, took a step towards us and my heart jumped momentarily. But then it just started chewing grass again. It was indifferent to our presence. Such a beautiful creature. Tehehe. Even though we were in a car, it was cool to see it in a national park doing its thing, rather than in a zoo or a circus. It was the first time I had seen a bear since being here, and Jono's second. But this one was bigger and better then his first one!
The next day, we had lunch with Colin and Julie
Another quick dip
in Campbell River, strathcona Provincial Park (and I took this) and actually got to chat with them a little, which was great. They invited us back later in summer, so we may just have to take them up on it.
Oh, by the way, I started trying for the first time to note who had taken each photo in this blog, and then I gave up, deciding that it really didn't matter who had taken what. That's what a partnership is about, right? Each person contributes what they can when they can, and there's no need to keep track. Sorry for the second spout of soppyness to appear in a matter of days on this blog, but... I couldn't help it.
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