It’s been a traumatic week! Rosie had a dentist appointment on Tuesday to remove a wisdom tooth that had come through and was interfering with her bite. As a surprise, the dentist also took out another wisdom tooth that hadn’t come through yet in case it caused problems in the future. She is feeling much less wise now and also a little bit puffy like a chipmunk.

In a fit of excitement/recklessness, we managed to book an appointment for our COVID-19 vaccinations for the following evening! Rosie hadn’t realised that she would be on prescription medication… The dentist suggested forgoing the steroids (to control the pain and swelling) as they also suppress the immune system, potentially making the vaccine less effective. The staff at the vaccine clinic also told her off for booking the appointment so soon after the procedure, as it would be difficult to tell if a fever was due to the vaccine side-effects or due to an infection in her face. She is still taking the prescribed antibiotics though and no fever so far!

We were told by Rosie’s parents that the vaccine would give us superpowers. So far, Rosie’s superpower appears to be nausea and Ollie keeps hearing the Windows 10 start up sound when he yawns.

Before all the trauma, we did go out for a walk last weekend. The snow is still here, it is slowly melting and revealing a winter’s worth of dog poop.

Rosie is not allowed any alcohol, food with seeds/bits, spicy food or fun. So she will mostly be sulking this weekend. Ollie will probably be laughing at her chubby cheeks.

We haven’t done a vlog for a while… so here is one about a haul we got this week.

We hope your weeks have been as exciting and as miraculously free of food poisoning as ours. This weekend is bringing us sun and scorching 20°C heat, Rosie is going to be sweaty!

We started last weekend with a walk on the Coquitlam Lake View Trail, which began peacefully next to a hunting club firing range and involved zigzagging through multiple mountain biking trails. Unfortunately, this didn’t last for long and we were left on the trail with no man-made sounds or other people. There were three waterfalls and some weird foam stuff. We assume the latter was caused by algae… the water looked pretty nutrient rich (i.e. brown). As noted in last week’s post, Rosie struggles to stay upright sometimes and this week she slipped on some roots and now has a bruise covering most of her bottom (that is a big bruise!)

On Sunday, we took part in several chaotic birthday quizzes for Rosie’s uncle, Stefan, and learnt that almonds are seeds, not nuts.

Ollie’s mountain biking course started last Monday. He learnt how to make his bike move at different speeds, using things called gears, and how to stop it when needed, using things called brakes. Next week is all about making your bike go round corners, using things called handlebars. Rosie doesn’t need any lessons, as you can see from this video.

We still haven’t planned much for this weekend. Ollie wants to get some practice with using gears, ahead of his next session, and Rosie wants to let her bottom recover from 5 days of sitting on it. Have a fun weekend everyone!

The rain is back. Sigh. We went out for a walk anyway last weekend. We decided to revisit Norvan Falls (where we went on Ollie’s birthday). There was no snow this time, but there was a fair bit of mud! The walk is mostly undercover, so we didn’t get too wet. It seemed like most other people on the trail were running it, which Rosie always finds impressive as she is at constant risk of tripping up even at walking pace.

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As well as being damp and muddy, the trail was also pretty stinky because of all the skunk cabbage. This plant looks a bit out of place – almost tropical. It gets its name from it’s smell. We’ve never smelled a skunk before, but we’re not too keen to after smelling this plant. Apparently bears eat it as a laxative when they come out of hibernation (we’re sure we’ve told you this before…), we didn’t see any bears or bear poop this time.

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The rest of the weekend was mostly used to catch up on boring stuff, but we did make an excellent vegan pizza on Saturday night. We’ve given up eating North American cheese, when there is a company down the road that makes a vegan version that tastes the same.

There isn’t much else to report, apart from some new travel restrictions that have come into effect in British Columbia. Cases are still increasing, but apparently we will be getting our first dose of vaccine in June.

The province is split up into five “Health Authority” regions for health care administrative purposes. On Monday last week, we were told that we would only be allowed to leave our health region for essential reasons. We live 1km from the boundary between two of these regions. Being banned from the neighbouring one would mean being separated from our usual supermarket, not being able to go into downtown Vancouver and being banned from most of the mountains and nice walks! Ollie was booked on a mountain biking course with a company 10 minutes away who tried to cancel his booking. However, by Friday the government changed their minds and merged ours and the neighbouring regions for the purpose of the travel restrictions. So now we are restricted to the light green area on the map below (we haven’t been outside of this since staying in Sun Peaks anyway).

Ollie’s mountain biking course has now been reinstated. He has already got in two practice sessions this season (thanks to Thom and Hannah for lending him their bikes!). He was glad for the second one, as he needed his confidence rebuilt after an ungraceful fall in the former session. He blames Thom for letting him lead the way.

We have another rainy Saturday to look forward to, but Sunday looks better at the moment. It’s a birthday weekend with Sam, Ollie’s youngest brother, on Saturday and Stefan, Rosie’s uncle and our #1 fan, on Sunday. A happy birthday to both of you!

We’ve had another week of Sun! Don’t be too envious though, it’s now raining again as far as the weather forecast stretches.

Our friends Thom and Hannah are back in Vancouver after their hiatus to slide down hills every day (why???) at their place in Sun Peaks. We were very pleased to be invited to spend Friday night with them on Mount Seymour. We had already booked a campsite by the beach at Porteau Cove, luckily this was just for Saturday night… Double camping!

Below is our summary of Mountain vs. Beach camping, you’ll have to read to the end to find out which is better.

Ease of Access

We drove most of the way up Mount Seymour, but then had to carry all our stuff the rest of the way up the snowy hill (about 200 m up). The snow was warming up and getting soft. Rosie was the only one wearing her snowshoes and was certainly falling into the snow the least! Once we got up there, we had to trample down the snow to create a flat place for the tents. Thom and Hannah didn’t help… Perhaps that’s why they invited us.

We also drove most of the way to the beach campsite, but did have to carry our stuff the last 50 m to the tent. There were no hills involved.

Mountain 0 : Beach 1

Views

This is a hard one to judge. The mountains are pretty spectacular, but the beach has both mountain views and watery views… it’s got to be a draw.

Mountain 1: Beach 1

Temperature

Our sleeping bags are not good enough for snowy camping. On our last expedition we were camping close to the car, but this time we didn’t bring our duvet as well! Rosie had ordered a new sleeping bag, rated to -8°C, but it didn’t arrive in time. Rosie was freezing! Ollie described it as chilly.

The beach was much warmer during the day, and only slightly chilly overnight.

Mountain 0: Beach 1

Peace and Quiet

Apart from the occasional aircraft, the mountain was silent and very peaceful. Once the sun went down, we had the place to ourselves – just how we like it.

The beach campsite was not peaceful… Everyone was crammed in together and we were stuck between two big groups up chatting until 11.30pm. They then got up at 6.30 am to continue the conversation!

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Mountain 2: Beach 0

Activities

Snowy mountains are rubbish for activities. The beach has swimming!

Mountain 0: Beach 1

Company

Thom and Hannah’s company is always top quality, no complaints there!

At the beach, Rosie only had Ollie for company (aside from all the noisy people).

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Mountain 1: Beach 0

The Results

Drum roll please…

Mountain has scored 4 points and Beach has… also scored 4 points!

Damn, it looks like we’ll have to do them both all over again to figure out which is best.

It’s finally not raining in Vancouver! So that means we have had a busy week walking around outside.

On Saturday morning we woke up, looked out of the window at Grouse Mountain and thought that this was a good place to start.

There is a gondola to take you to the top, but it’s expensive and the fully booked with skiiers, so we walked. It was warm at the bottom, but the ice and snow began about 1/3 of the way up. We saw lots of people in just trainers who had to give up at this point. We had our spikes strapped to our boots though, so it was a breeze… Well not really, it was still 800 m of up in about 2.5 km.

Two hours later, a sign said that there was still nearly 5 m of snow at the top. It’s going to take a while to melt! We had walked up with our snowshoes strapped to our bags so that we could go another 260 m up to Dam Mountain. It had snowed the night before, so this was lots of fun. The weather was a bit too good and we forgot the sun cream, so now have owl-eye tans.

After walking back down to the bottom, our legs were pretty tired and we didn’t manage much else that day. On Sunday we thought we’d go for a relaxing flat walk around Buntzen Lake. Unfortunately, so did everyone else in a 30 mile radius. We intended to go slow, but kept overtaking people and so had to keep up the pace for fear of them overtaking us later on (embarrassing!). We didn’t have time to stop for photos, apart from this one of the opening of a 3.6 km tunnel. Constructed in the early 1900s, it goes all the way through the mountains to divert water from another lake into Buntzen Lake for hydroelectricity purposes.

We’ve been out lots in the evenings too: into downtown Vancouver to sit on the beach, to Dog Mountain (again) and Bowen Lookout (near where Ollie has been skiing). We stayed for the sunset on both occasions – Ollie complained about his bum being cold.

We have two camping trips planning this weekend, one on a snowy mountain and one on a sunny beach – we will let you know which is best next week.

Hopefully the stressful suspense last week has not killed off too many of our readers…

We did go camping!

Rosie severely overestimated the hardiness of the non-indigenous Canadians, only two other tents joined us in the snowy campsite at Manning Park last weekend. It was only -5°C! What wimps.

We arrived late morning, picked a camping spot (always a difficult task with Ollie who struggles with commitment) and then headed out on a gentle walk around Lightening Lake.

The big flat area is Lightning Lake itself. Although it seemed to be currently frozen, it won’t be frozen forever – as Rosie kept reminding Ollie. In fact, you can see where it had started to thaw in some shallow and sunny areas. After Rosie got over her fears, we did have a lot of fun playing with our new snowshoes.

Before cooking our dinner back at the campsite, we opened our camping wine and enjoyed a cup or three by the lake (they are small cups). Camping dinner was very very spicy Korean instant noodles we found for cheap, then we retired to our camp fire with our single camp chair. We got it for free a while ago and somehow neglected to buy another one… regretted that.

It was pretty cold overnight but, as the campsite wasn’t far from the carpark, we had brought our duvet as well as our sleeping bags. We were very cosy, if a bit restricted by the weight of all the layers.

After we gathered the strength to emerge from the tent and put on our boots (which were frozen solid – a painful surprise which we should have really expected) we set off to walk up Windy Joe.

Windy Joe is a small mountain (1825 m) named after Joe Hilton who worked in Manning Park from 1946 to 1975. We spent most of the way up discussing whether Joe thought it was windy or windy. There were a few switchbacks, but we wouldn’t say the path was notably windy. But equally, it was fairly still at the top, not notably windy. Perhaps Joe ate a lot of beans?

Anyway… the path was mostly compacted, it was easy enough to walk up with the microspikes on. However, on the way down, heavy footed Rosie kept falling into the snow up to her knee with one leg (known as post-holing), so she was grateful to have the snowshoes! At the top there is an old tower which used to be used to spot forest fires. These days they have aeroplanes for that, so the tower is mostly used for eating houmous sandwiches in.

Also we saw this fearsome squirrel… You should have seen the other guy.

We decided not to stay a second night and headed home for a relaxed Sunday in the warm before going back to work – Canada don’t get Easter Monday as a holiday.

We are going camping again shortly, but are staying put this weekend. No cliff-hangers this week folks!

A year ago today we were getting the ferry to Gabriola Island with no idea that we’d end up staying there for 4 months! We have only just realised this, so it was a slight coincidence that Ollie made varenyky last weekend – which we first tried when our Russian friend made them for us on Gabriola (featured at the end of this post). Ollie’s dough was a little thick, and he made far too many, but not too bad for a first attempt.

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We are writing this from the past – on Thursday night. We’ve just packed the car for a trip to EC Manning Provincial Park tomorrow. We want to try out our new snowshoes – which we purchased last weekend. Rosie persuaded Ollie to buy an old pair, from a second hand shop, that were still in pretty good condition. Sadly there were no other decent second hand pairs to be found, so she had to treat herself to a shiny new pair. Fun fact – you choose a snowshoe size based on your weight rather than the size of your feet. The heavier you are, the more surface area you need to stop you sinking. Perhaps after all those varenyky we should have gone a couple of sizes up.

As it is a bank holiday this weekend, we are leaving it a bit late to find a camping spot. We’re not sure how popular it will be, as it is pretty cold… But the Canadians will do almost anything to get out of Vancouver especially on a long weekend. We were a bit rushed getting ready today though and we wanted to stay another night in the warm. We’ll have to risk trying to find a spot tomorrow. If the campsite is full, we can just drive home again after sliding around in the snow for the day. We will be simultaneously camping in the cold and tucked up in our warm bed until you collapse the wave function by reading our blog next week.

Our take-away bento boxes tonight were better than camping dinner anyway.

Apparently it is snowing again in the UK, just in time for your long weekend of sitting in gardens with your friends and family. We are sure you are enjoying it anyway. Happy birthday to Rosie’s Mum, we hope someone made you a dense fruit cake!

Saturday – Rain
Sunday – Rain
Monday – Sun
Tuesday – Sun
Wednesday – Sun
Thursday – Sun
Friday – Sun
Saturday – Rain
Sunday – Rain and repeat…

Who told Mother Nature about our capitalist overlords and why is she punishing us using their arbitrary pattern of free and indentured time!?

We had a bit of a sulk last weekend (excluding zoom gigs and catch-ups!) but luckily it’s getting lighter in the evenings. On Monday, we snuck off work slightly early and walked up another hill near Dog Mountain, Brockton Peak. This one was a bit steeper and Rosie did lots of complaining, but forgot she was grumpy once we got to the top!

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This one is right next to the Mount Seymour ski resort, you essentially walk up alongside others on the chairlift. You get more sweaty than them, but it’s free! We saw lots of back-country skiers “skinning” up and heading into the scary looking avalanche terrain, but we stayed on the safe flatter bits.

Most people walk up to watch the sun set over the pacific before sliding back down in the dark. Rosie had packed the head torches, but Ollie doesn’t like sunsets, so we went down before the main event.

The board game shop benefitted from another rainy weekend. We are exploring the escape room genre, moving on from “Exit” to “Unlock”. So far, we prefer “Exit”. “Unlock” doesn’t seem as smooth and you have to use an app, which isn’t required with the clever “Exit” mechanism. But we’ve only played one so far, so will reserve judgement.

Next week is Easter and we get the Friday off (but not the Monday, no fair!). We might brave some snowy camping – not sure if we’ll have phone signal so we apologise in advance if your update is a bit late. Until next time!

Well we made it back from our trip up Dog Mountain (referred to in a hiking book we’ve recently bought as “one of the least technically difficult summits in BC, if not the world). We arrived at about 7:50 on Saturday morning and managed to get a parking space. The walk up through the snow was lots of fun and wasn’t too busy. There were plenty of people, dogs and hungry avian locals at the top though. Rosie was extremely annoyed that she forgot to bring fruit or nut based snacks for the whiskey jacks and opportunistic ravens. On the way back down it was getting much busier and we felt smug about our early start. We were back at the car in time for second breakfast.

The rest of our Saturday was less of a success. We had grand plans of another easy walk around the inlet at Port Moody, followed by a trip to a few breweries nearby. However, we hadn’t considered the consequences of the province recently relaxing COVID restrictions to allow people to meet up with friends in an outdoor setting. All of the breweries had outdoor patios… and very long queues. We gave up and went back home for pizza instead.

During the week, we re-set our hydroponic mini-garden and took the opportunity to make this highly informative video to entertain and educate our followers:

If you’re not sick of Rosie’s face after that, then I guess you never will be! Now we have a bottle of BC red to finish and another rainy weekend to plan… See you next time!