To start our trip from Day 1, click here:You're Doing What???
There is an on-going joke between Shane and I. Anytime there is some sort of drama - broken bike rack, lost route, horrible hills - I take a picture and say, "This will make a great story for my radio show!" Now, we all know that I do not have a radio show, but wouldnt that be fun!! It is more a reference to having stories for my blog. This was one of my favorite stories to read to the girls. Whiteblack the penguin goes traveling all over the world because he has run out of stories for his radio show. Along the way he has plenty of drama to share when he returns. I am just like Whiteblack.....I love a good story!
I KNOW what makes for a good story and it is NOT the mellow down days we have! It is not any surprise to me that the most popular posts are the ones that have been filled with DRAMA!!!! These are the top 3 from this trip...
The Sunshine Coast ends up being two extremes at once. There are plenty of drama moments, but LOTS of downtime, too. Depending on what you find interesting, this post may or may not be interesting to you!! I am pretty sure that this post will not be a high traffic post, but I'm gonna write it anyway. Plus, there are too many beautiful pictures to not post anything!
When we first planned this trip Shane and I got into an argument (yea, an ugly one!!!) He SWORE we cycled the sunshine coast back in 2002. I had no memory of it what-so-ever!! Now I know why.....I had BLOCKED OUT how torturous the hills are. Mile by mile it definitely came back to me....we cycled this road 12 years ago. I was wrong!
On Day 23 - July 8th - We get up and take our time getting ready. We are going to ride down to the cafe/market with Anne, who we met yesterday, so we have to wait for her to pack up. I have been dragging my yoga mat all over BC and I try to use it as often as I can. It really helps to stretch out all the muscles that are so tight from all the intense riding that we do. The girls sometimes join me in
When everyone is ready to go, we ride down with Anne. Luckily we are only going to porpoise bay today, so we only have a 9 mile ride. We all sit and have breakfast together and it is another chance to see how much the girls have grown. Both girls cannot stop taking to Anne...they have so many stories to tell and questions to ask her and it is so amazing to sit and watch them interacting so comfortably with someone they have just met. This trip has helped Alli - especially - to come even more out of her shell. What a joy to see.
After an hour of chatting the girls wander off to the water with Shane and I give Anne a list of all the awesome people we have stayed with along our route. She is going at WARP SPEED compared to what we have been doing, so she will be in Powell River by tonight and back down to Victoria within 3 days!!! WOW!!
We pack up our explosion (which occurs every time we stop, regardless of how long we stop for!) and head toward the detour route the local cyclist gave us yesterday. It was a smooth ride for 5 minutes and then it was a "walker", meaning that there was no way to make it up the hill without walking. It was probably a mile, in the scorching 85 degree sun...but we made it. The ride to Sechelt was an easy up and down after that.We spent a little time in Sechelt, eating bargain bin food for lunch, found a reflector vest for the back of Shane's bike at a thrift shop, and then rode the 3 miles out to Porpoise Bay Provincial Park. We were so excited to get there because they have a cyclist camp section. We paid $11 a night instead of $26, had a nice grassy area all to ourselves, and peace and quiet. The girls found the playground and the sandy beach area and were set for hours. We decided right away that we would stay for 2 nights. It feels so nice to not be in any hurry. I finally was able to put our hammock up and sit for a few wonderful moments. The downtime makes me overly relaxed. I go to bed at 8:45. The girls stay up playing with the neighbor kids until 10. I wonder if they will ever go to bed at 7 again???
Day 24 - July 9th - We all sleep until 8:30, WHAT!!!!!! We are getting pretty good at this relaxing thing. Alli gets up and is at the beach all morning, Shane and I are able to do NOTHING, the girls friends get up and then take them on a fishing
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| Jill is buried...do you see her? |
We spend some time on the pier/dock area, but it is so freezing that we find the library instead. What a wonderful thing that these girls can look at books for hour on end and STILL not want to leave when it is time to go. We stay there so late that we reach our "Hungry Hulk" state where none of us can think right and we are grouchy and hungry....none of us can stomach the idea of another meal at the deli bargain bin so we Yelp the local food and find Sergio's Pizza Place. For $20 the girls get pizza and we split the biggest salad on Earth (with meatballs added for good measure!)...we are happy again.
We make it back into camp and the family that was camping nearby has left us a garbage bag full of food and ice. There are eggs/milk/cheese! Guess we are set for breakfast. The cyclist camp also filled up with 3 other campers. They are all men, traveling by themselves. I feel kind of bad that we are camping next to them with our wild and crazy children!! One cyclist said, "As long as I go to bed after the kids, I feel like I stayed up late enough." I had to tell him there was no way he could way for our kids to conk out...they are like the Energizer Bunny! All 3 cyclists went to bed way before us, but they are usually riding 50 - 80 miles and we had ridden only 10 miles that day.
Day 25 - July 10th - Happy Birthday Brookie!!!! We miss out on a birthday phone call to our niece because we cannot find a calling card anywhere. This is our halfway point of the trip. 25 days in and 25 days left, what a lucky family we are. We know we are in for quite a ride on this day, only 20 miles, but we know the road is going to be very hilly. It ends up being our absolute slowest average speed since our ride to Coquitlam, which was our nightmare day! Luckly, this day has a lot more going for it. It is really pleasant, incredibly BEAUTIFUL, great places to stop along the way, but also very tiring.
We kind of lazed around all morning and slowly made our way into town. Hung out at the coffee shop and then chatted with the owner of Off The Edge Bike Shop. What an awesome shop. Family owned and the guy was so into our trip. He said he had made a vision board at the beginning of 2014 and a family bike trip just like ours was front and center for him. They had not quite figured it out yet, but he was really excited and newly motivated to get his family out on a bike tour.
He was also the only person I talked with who told us we could take the SunCoaster trail all the way to Earl's Cove so that we did not have to ride the crazy Highway 101 (we would take that trail tomorrow, not today). He thought it was funny when I told him people had laughed at me whenever I asked about it. He said, "I wouldnt tell everyone they could handle it, but you guys look pretty hard core....no doubt you could do it." Made my day!!! I'm hard core, YAY!!!!
We had planned our day to take Redroofs Road because it would take us off the highway for our entire day. It was a beautiful road, but again...up and down and up again....over and over....but there were almost NO cars, so that is a huge bonus.
We had gotten the scoop from a few locals to visit some beaches along the way so the day was nice and broken up. Sargeants Bay was the first stop, just a little alcove to take a dip and cool off, it was FREEZING!!!! But it felt so good. Then Coooper's Green was the next place we stopped and it was just a little alcove around the
Instead, we kept riding to Smuggler's Cove. It was a long 3 mile ride in, we would have to ride out in the morning (Bummer #1), it was crazy mosquito infested campsite (Bummer #2) and we were SWARMED with mice at night (Bummer #3). After we set up camp in the mosquito infested site, we took a 30 minute hike out to the rocks with our dinner. This part was awesome. We watched the sunset over the ocean and we could see seals all over. It was pretty hilarious to eat our dinner of canned sardines and crackers while we could smell the BBQ chicken someone was cooking on their yacht!
As it started getting dark we headed back to camp. There was no one around and this campground was FREE! But, we will soon discover WHY it is free. As we are laying in our bags mice come out of everywhere and we can hear them chewing on things....then the mice start to climb up and over the mesh of our tent. Luckily the girls were asleep by now, but Shane and I had the worst night sleep ever!! I just KNEW that these mice would chew through our tent and be crawling all over us at any moment, and i HATE mice!!!! Luckily that never happened, but they did manage to squeeze into our tightly closed bag and eat our breakfast. I was VERY happy to get up and out of there in the morning. I didnt even care to not have food, I just wanted away from those mosquitos and mice!!!
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