With our home for the next two weeks being Peace Arch RV Park in Surrey we were only a 10 min drive from Bryan (Larry’s brother), Alexis, Helen and Madoc so it made it feel like home. I guess it is our home now, we just have to make it official! The first order of business was to get our “stuff” that we had shipped out here delivered to our new address. This time going through and reorganizing it was not so emotional, and everything went smoothly.
Our time here was filled with cycling during the day and dinners with family at night. One major event that needed to be celebrated was Helen’s 13th Birthday! Avery fun filled day with a scavenger hunt in downtown Vancouver and then a party at night, what a great day!!! Several Friday night dinners with amazing pizza from Ocean Park Pizza as well as some tasty home cooked meals, kept us from starving!! A full circuit workout with the Zehr’s at Sergio’s gym, and a couple early morning spin classes helped work off all those calories!
After enjoying a lovely dim-sum lunch, close to where Bryan works so he could join us, we spent a couple of hours getting a tour at Mustang Survival. He is the director of operations there, and they make high end survival gear. It was interesting seeing the factory and the process of how the survival suits are manufactured. Hard to believe that Larry’s LITTLE brother is this high powered executive!!! He certainly has done well in life, wonderful family and a great job!
One evening we reconnected with another cousin that lives here, Will Zehr and his wife Shannon, where we spent a lovely few hours at a local eatery. Throw in several of Helen’s soccer games, a swimming lesson and Madoc’s hockey games, we were definitely kept us busy.
A meet and greet with our new doctor at the Crescent Beach Medical Clinic, updating our vision prescription and getting new glasses was also on the agenda. We even did some remodeling of our home.
We ordered a new couch from the Brick and had it delivered, and after some stress ( from June ) about it fitting through the door, there were no problems. It fit in the spot perfectly, and is more comfortable than the old one! Danielle and Connor ended up taking our old couch, so everything worked out! It was weird to see it in their place when we took them out for her birthday later in the week.
After 2 busy weeks there it was time to re-locate to Rosedale, a small village outside of Chilliwack about 90km East, to Camp Bridal. Here is where we needed to do some critical things to complete our move to BC. The first one on the list was to hand in our Ontario drivers license and health cards and apply for BC ones. This process was going to take a few weeks, and once we received them we could get insurance and our license plates. We decided to do it in this order just to make things easier. The other thing we needed desperately to do was to get our RV front window replaced. This ordeal started back in April in New Mexico, and for many different reasons over the summer it kept getting bumped further and further out west. Finally it was put in, everything went smoothly, and since it was a warranty repair it did not cost us anything.
Our next location was only for a week and it was at a very nice park in Harrison Hot Springs called, The Springs RV Resort. It is one of the nicest parks we have stayed in. The view of Mount Cheam from the balcony of the clubhouse was stunning.
This also was a good location for some nice cycling into Sasquatch Provincial Park and back into Chilliwack.
We did several amazing hikes that we were able to walk to from the RV park, the Harrison Grind and the trail that went around Whippoorwill Point. On a beautiful sunny day we decided to rent kayaks and spend it on Harrison Lake and Harrison River.
Since we were here over Thanksgiving we had our friends, Peter and Darlene over for some turkey and stuffing and an enjoyable afternoon. We enjoyed a walk through the small and somewhat funny, sasquatch museum as the area around Harrison is known to be their favourite walking grounds. We did not partake in the hot spas this week, but will come back to enjoy them later.
For our last month in the Fraser Valley we moved back down to Camp Bridal. This is the park where Peter and Darlene live, so we had friends just around the corner from us ( literally, they were 7 spots away! ) With the weather turning cooler and wetter we needed to rent a car and join a gym, so we said good-bye to the Harleys and the bicycles and packed them into the trailer. The gym, Fit for Change, turned out to be a great place and we made good use of our membership! Since we were not cycling anymore we explored the area with Peter and Darlene.
A few shorts trips were made to the Cheam Lake Wetlands & Bridal Falls Provincial Park. The falls at Bridal Veil are the 38th highest waterfall in British Columbia, the water drops 122 m over a wide rock face, creating a “veil-like” effect, however, only the bottom 200–250 feet can clearly be viewed from the base. Its source is from Mount Archibald and flows into Bridal Creek where it travels to Cheam Lake Wetlands Regional Park and finally to the Fraser River. The wetlands are noted for their wildlife, with over 200 species of birds nesting in the park.
One day we went further into the mountains to the Othello Tunnels at Hope, which is a decommissioned railway(now a walking trail) leading eventually to the Coquihalla Pass. Originally part of the Kettle Valley Railway, the five tunnels and series of bridges follow a relatively straight line through the gorge, which is lined with sheer, flat rock cliffs, it was amazing!!
Another drive took us to the other side of Mt. Cheam, to Chilliwack Lake and almost to the US border, the highlight was seeing bald eagles and a grizzly bear feasting on salmon at the rivers edge!!
There were more falls to see, so off we went to Cascade Falls, which has a 30m drop with a suspension bridge spanning Cascade Creek, as well as small runs of waterfalls dropping 18m into tranquil lower pools, gorgeous!!!
A trip to see the salmon spawn at the Chehalis River Hatchery was disappointing as there were not a lot of salmon yet, so we drove up to Sasquatch Mountain Resort ski area. However there were some good bald eagle sightings.
On one of the few nice days we were able to do this great hike up the service road which is behind our park. It was a grueling 10km ( total ), with an 800m elevation up to a beautiful lookout point that is used by hang gliders.
We also went back to Harrison Hot Springs to enjoy an afternoon at the spa and hot springs, stopping on the way home at the Fraser River for a beautiful sunset.
We even squeezed in 9 holes of golf with Peter down the road at Mountain Brook Golf Course, a beautiful little golf at the base of Mt. Cheam. We packed a lot into these last 4 weeks!
Early in November our drivers licenses arrived and we were able to finish the final piece of our moving to BC puzzle, and that was to switch over our vehicles and insurance from Ontario to BC. We picked up our BC license plates, took off our Ontario plates, and put the new ones on. It is official: we are BCites.
It is starting to turn even colder and wetter here in Chilliwack so it is time to go south!
Here is just some of the overall beauty of the Fraser Valley!
Wow, this was really a momentous segment. Not that they all aren’t, of course.