Thanksgiving Trip

I had a great thanksgiving weekend. I went on a road trip / camping trip with my friend Alyssa. Alyssa came over to victoria on Friday night after quite a run in with the inadequacies of the BC transportation system. Early on Saturday morning we went downtown Victoria and picked up our rental car, went back to my place, threw our stuff in the car and we were off. We had decided to do some camping and hiking and without really thinking about it how far it was I suggested Strathcona Park on Vancouver island. Strathcona is the biggest park on the island, but it is half way up the island. Vancouver island is very big. Bigger than you would think that being that it is an island! It took us about six hours to drive up to and then into the park (but we did take a number of detours on the way). Strathcona is big and was actually BC's first provincial park. It is soo beautiful. The road that leads into it runs along a series of lakes that are edged in by mountains on all sides


This is a picture of Alyssa looking at one of the lakes from a point were the lake narrows

There are a lot of different hikes you can do at Strathcona and the first day (Saturday) we choose to do two little ones. Both of them were beautiful and had waterfalls along the way.

This is the waterfall on the first hike.

And this is me after we climbed off the trail and above to the top of the waterfall.

This is the water fall on the second hike. It was very cool. The water actually ran from the waterfall into an underground cave.

And this is just a view from the second hike I thought was pretty.

After finishing those two hikes we drove to the camp ground and chose a site. The camp ground was kind of at the end of one of the lakes where it narrowed into a river. There was a huge mud flat in between the campgound and the lake. But on the lakes edge of this mud flat there were a whole bunch of huge tree trunks. It was very strange and surreal. We couldn't figure out why these huge trees had been cut down and why there was such a wide gap between them and the rest of the forest. And sorry to say we never solved the mystery. But here is a picture anyway. It is really hard to capture just how vast these spaces really are.


After we got back from exploring the lakes edge it started to rain. I ended up making a fire in the rain and we made dinner and then spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the car. It was actually a lot of fun. Having a good person to hang out with is essential during times like that!
On Sunday we woke up to find that it had finally stopped raining but it was very misty. We decided to hike up and summit Crest Mountain which is about 1550 meters about sea level which is about where we were starting from. We basically hiked right into the low hanging clouds.

This is what the mountains looked like the day we climbed.
The climb was amazing and beautiful and soo much fun. Although a little tiring at points. Near the bottom of the hike we crossed a stream that we followed up for a while.
I really like the bridge though. This is a picture of Alyssa on it.

And here is just another picture of the stream.

Climbing through the mist was just extrordinary. And the forest out here is so green and lush and almost magical looking.

This is looking down in to the misty trees on the way up the mountain.

Here is a little sun poking through the mist.

To add to the magic of the climb, part of the way up three grey jays landed next to us in a tree. They were completely fearless and flew all around us and even tried to steal our shoe laces. About 15 min further up the climb we stopped to eat some trail mix and one of the jays had followed us and would even eat out of our hands.


We finally made it to the top. Here is Alyssa in the alpine brush at the top.



At the summit we were basically sitting right in the cloud. It was hard to see anything and it was quite a bit colder than being in the forest. We were also shocked to find a lake at the top. It was hard to tell how big it was because we could hardly see more than 10 - 15 feet in front of us but it looked so surreal, like it went on forever.
This is the edge of the lake.

This is me and Alyssa at the summit.

And this is a picture of Alyssa just to show how misty it was up there. It was quite windy as well.

After we climbed down we drove to Gold River a tiny community separated by all other communities by Strathcona. It was totally just a logging town. Then we drove home and I dropped Alyssa in Nanamio because there ferry from there is more direct to Vancouver and I drove back to Victoria, dropped the car off and fell fast asleep. It was a long two days but amazing fun and beautiful trip. Even the drive is spectacular with views of both the mountains on the island and the ones on the main land as well.

Well that was my thanksgiving. I hope everyone else had a great time too!