June Adventures

As most vehicle owners know, keeping your transport running is often a never ending battle.  In the past two years we have been waging a parts war with the old dodge truck; Paul's replaced the alternator, the fan clutch, the starter, both of the batteries, the clutch and the power steering pump.   It very fortunate that Paul can do all the work himself, but it has meant a lot of hours under the truck and no small cost to us.   Again, the first few days of our trip started off with Paul up to his elbows in grease out at his parents place but now the truck is running great and has gotten us all the way out the island without any major issues (just small job to fix the leaky transmission).  

It's been a casual trip so far thanks to the ease of having our home with us where ever we go – we have yet to pay for camping or a meal and we are able to stop whenever it works best for us.   The first day we made out lunch stop up at M Lake, went for a short hike and took in the sights with the rest of the tourists and then we made it just past Golden to Quartz Creek to spend the night in a snowmobiling staging area.  Then we were off to Revelestoke to do some laundry, make some lunch and browse a second hand store (got a great baby carrier for $10!) and decide where we should go next.   After consulting the weather in an A&W with free Wi-Fi and finding that it was raining throughout the interior, we went south to Nelson.  An afternoon there the next day and then a quick stop over in Osoyoos before we went up to Penticton where we finally found hot (high 20's) weather.   

Skaha, is a surprisingly large collection of cliffs and rock outcrops up on the hill above Penticton and one of our favorite climbing destinations.    With a lot of baby friendly crags, we found it fairly easy to manage the little guy and still get a few climbs and a lot of hiking in each day.   The last day we were there we got a little more hiking in then we anticipated; we had slogged into "Claim it all" one of the furthest crags for the parking lot with an hour approach, did a climb each before the rock became too damp for the light showers and then decided to take a different way back to the truck.  After taking a 'scenic alternative' off the main trial we found ourselves cliffed out and having to back track over hard ground to get back to where we had started our detour. You would hope that it would be clear sailing from there, however the main (loop) trial is no walk in the park, especially in the back where it does not see a lot of foot traffic; there is a lot of steep elevation gain and loss as you go over passes between valleys, the faint trail fades off and before you know your bush whacking and then there are sections of boulder fields that we had to picking our way through and the path took us through the Shady Valley and under some impressive overhung walls.   Cam couldn’t of been happier though- he pointed, cooed, babbled and made all sorts of other noises as he took it all in from his backpack.  He fell asleep right at the end of the hike and by the time we made it back to the truck we were both more than ready to do the same.  I am not sure how far we hiked but I would be surprised if it was around than thirteen kilometers.  At least we were ready to sit in the truck for a while.

After a visit with Lowelle, Heather and their little one Brier in the Greater Vancouver area and then a quick stop to see Paul's Great Aunt in Naniamo, we are now in Courtney (good to be back here!) getting a few last minute things done before we meet up with the rest of the crew and take off into the back country for ten days.  Paul's brother Jason and his partner Jen as well as our friends Lisett, Kyle and there 2 little ones Finn (2 1/2) and Lily (1 year today) will be meeting us at Strathcona Park Lodge later this afternoon and we  are going to have a chance to organize gear, pack boats and go over our trip plan.  Tomorrow morning will be our first day of the extended Sayward Forest Canoe Circuit, which will have us paddling over 80 km of lakes, doing 10km of portaging over 10 days and should be a heck of an adventure with 6 adults and 3 kids under 3.  We will be taking lots of photos and I will be doing an update when we return.  Till then, wish us good weather! 

I will post photos later - no time right now!!