Bogs, Rivers, Lakes and Falls

On almost all of the country drives, the Guy is at the wheel. The girl is a happy passenger, content to relax after weeks of work that often includes many, many miles driven transporting small children hither and yon. This drive will be no different. The girl has the good sense not to ask where the route will take them; she doesn’t really care, and knows well that the journey will be a good one. The weather has even given a reprieve from rain and although the smell of autumn looms large, the sun shines for most of the day.


The phrase that the girl utters most frequently on these country drives is “Where are we?” because although she’s a city girl, there are oh so many back roads just moments away from the city. The first one takes them to a dyke somewhere in proximity to the Pitt Meadows airport complete with cranberry bogs, blackberry brambles and birds singing.

The next stop is Cliff Park in Maple Ridge, and a path that is downhill on the way there. You can just imagine what that means for the way back. The girl doesn’t complain though. Not at all. She just does her best to Mr. Fast Walker. The falls are quite lovely, with interesting holes in the rock created by years of water pounding upon them. There’s even a pretty cottage with rows of lavender out front on the way back to the truck.

Along some road or another they can’t resist a sign advertising an art show “Art in the Swamp”. It’s a twilight zone surreal kinda place with rows of painted rocks, art made out of candy, and even a swamp maze. We didn’t have the heart to tell the proprietors that a maze needs to be higher than knee high. Onward to Rolley Lake and a little walk to the beach, watching some hearty children splashing in the water, enjoying the last weeks of summertime.

Last stop of the day before heading back homeward is Rocko’s Family Diner in Mission. A very delicious dinner of homemade burgers and fries and the Guy had what he described as the best butterscotch milkshake he’d ever had. A great day getting away from it all, hittin’ the back roads, travellin’ without a map.

It's not always verdant, but it's always interesting!

We don’t always spend our time finding far away nooks and crannies; sometimes they are just around the corner, down the highway, or in a neighbouring suburb. We’ve not had particularly summery summer here in the Metro Vancouver area thus far, so we took advantage of the moderately summerish day and headed out with a picnic lunch.

Not as much verdantness on the first part of the journey, more pastel shades of California-drag style stucco many suited homes on cul-de-sacs and side streets. Lola, the trusty Chevrolet chooses the route for us and the Guy knows better than to correct her most of the time. This is the point to the road less travelled, even in the city.

First stop is the Mikelson Art Festival in White Rock. For 38 years the Mikelson’s have been hosting a festival of local artists in their incredible back yard. The Guy’s brother David is showing some of his paintings beneath the cedar and fir trees of this show. There are incredible artists on display here in this backyard forest, including David Patterson although we may be a little biased. It’s a nice place to spend an afternoon and worth putting on the calendar for next year (The girl will nudge the Guy a time or two to get his own photography shown in the 2012 festival.)

More meandering down roads I’ll never remember on the edges of where suburbia and country meet and we pull into the parking lot of Redwood Park an amazing little getaway on the edge of Surrey with dozens of different trees including several varieties of redwoods. How nice not to have to travel down Pacific 101 to find such incredible old growth forest. We brought a perfect picnic lunch and find a quiet area to enjoy some delicious cheese and crackers, sliced chicken on fresh buns and crunchy potato chips.

Another bit of meandering further from stuccoed large houses and deeper into roads with horses riding on the shoulders, goats in pens nearby. We find a wedding happening on a grassy field and stand and watch awhile, the wonderful hopefulness of a new love, we resist the urge to heckle and just stand in quiet testament to the apparent joy.

We wander awhile longer through paths and bushes, enjoying a bit of verdant as we are wont to do in Campbell Valley Park as the Guy regales the girl with tales of wandering through before fences and farms, when it was just a lush green valley with a meandering river, a dog named Toke by his side.

It is a wonderful day out, a terrific respite from the oft mundane bits of life filled with work or lack thereof, routines and car payments. Lola, as always treats us well on backroads, side roads and city streets and we feel rejuvenated, photos taken to remind us that there’s so much more to life.

How green is my valley (or, I don’t think that’s ACTUALLY a road!)

The guy is a BIG fan of the back road, places with no cell coverage, in particular, places that don’t show up on Google maps. The girl has taken awhile to cotton on to the idea of being somewhere that her friends can’t text her, places that you could disappear and not be found for years, and in particular cliff edges, deep ridges and tree filled valleys with raging rivers at the bottom.

Somehow the guy has influenced the girl to his way of thinking (or rather he’s tricked her a time or two by saying “I’m just going to see what’s up here a ways.”) and she’s learned that sometimes the best roads are indeed the ones less travelled, and it’s always more fun without a map. It’s also quite easy to forget about the minutiae of life like property taxes, school deadlines and board meetings when you’re marvelling at just how many verdant shades of green exist in the world. This week’s drive brought new shades to the spectrum of early summer green.

She arrived Wednesday noonish and he jumped up and said “Come on, let’s go North”. She pretended she knew where north was (she’s clever like that, the girl) and off they went. Apparently Squamish is north and they were on freeway for as short a time as possible before slipping off onto Marine Drive, stopping only once enroute for provisions. If the girl had her way she’d bring a cooler filled with just in case food and drinks, but they’d finished their snacks before they even left paved roads. In the event of disaster they’d have to survive on nuts and berries.

Branching off at Squamish the guy opted for the road less travelled and they both began to decompress to the sounds of Dan Mangan’s Road Regrets. Ahhhhhh. A log bridge built sometime around the renaissance rumbles beneath the tires of Lola, the trusty 4X4 and while her fingers grip the door, the girl watches the river beneath them.

Uphill. Off they go along a creek that they won’t find out till they invoke Google Earth at home later is called Ashura Creek. Amazing waterfalls, incredible rolling creek swollen with the snowmelt that isn’t that far above them. Even a small hydro electric dam to stop and look down at, a chance to step out and relax in a sunbeam for awhile. And green. So very many shades of green. Lush summer foliage, butterflies flitting, leading the way, steep hills, sharp cliffs, deep abysses. No mortgage payments, no credit card bills, no alarm clocks. The true magnificence of a back road in all its summer glory.

Someday he’ll probably take her camping to a forestry campsite on a road just like this. She’ll pack lots of marshmallows and trashy novels. After a day like this such a jaunt sounds like bliss.

Planting a Rainbow

A few times each spring, we visit Western Independent Greenhouses in Burnaby to peruse and procure plants for balcony pots, hanging planters and community garden plots. The first trip is usually a surveillance trip to see what new colours of petunias and begonias have been developed since the year before.

This year our first trip is for some veggie bedding plants for the girls community garden plot (7’X10’ of organic vegetable goodness) a few days after the trip to West Coast Seeds. The garden plot will feature some old favourites (peas, pole beans) and some new varieties of carrots and beets (rainbow blend) as well as Gai Lan. He is the gardener guy that helps get things laid out properly and planted at the beginning of the season and she brings vegetables to him for summer flavour sensations.

The next trip to WIG is for a couple of nicotiana plants for her balcony pots. Interesting that the flowers of the tobacco plant could smell so very nice in contrast to the stinkiness of cigarettes! (Worth noting that he is 6 years 4 months smoke free. Hurray!)

This trip is to gather colours for his balcony garden and though he sometimes misses the huge garden of the yard on the London Street house, he never regrets sleeping in on weekend mornings and not having to worry about watering, weeding, mowing. WIG always has such an outstanding selection of annuals, perennials and succulents.

He’s a particular Guy and while some years he’s gone with a colour scheme, this year he opts for a true variety of colours. Almost crimson dianthuses, geraniums, white and pink double impatients, white, orange and yellow zinnias, and some heliotrope, the girls favourite, the lavender colours, heady sweet liquorice scented blossoms, a few marigolds for brilliance $50 or so later and off we go with two full flats of colour to keep him busy during off work weeks.

A Late Spring Day in Ladner and Westham Island - also known as "There's a lot of manure spread this time of year!"

A hop skip and a tunnel under the Fraser River (always remember to hold your breath as you go underwater!) is the village of Ladner (population 20,000) It is a pleasant community that makes it hard to believe you’re mere minutes from the big city. We like Ladner (and the bridge away Westham Island) for a number of stops on a spring and summer day. First stop is West Coast Seeds, because the girl has a small plot in a community garden in her neighbourhood and it’s high time to get planting underway. West Coast Seeds is a quaint little shop with everything needed for the gardener! A small basket of seeds later and we’re on the road again (one of our favourite ways to be!) in Lola, the trusty Chev with 335,000 km and still turning on the odometer.

The dyke along this arm of the river is home to fish packing plants and floating home communities, just before you get to the 101 year old wooden bridge that goes to Westham Island, most popularly known as the home of the Reifel Bird Sanctuary. Lesser known as the home of a little honey vendor down a side road that sells a number of kinds of flower honey, both creamed and clear (he likes clear, she likes creamed!)

The Westham Island Herb Farm is open from May to October and we were greeted by a glorious deep purple lilac bush as we parked the truck, both of us inhaling deeply to save and savour this heady scent of spring. A cat was eating a mouse as we arrived, reminding us just how far in the country we really were. A great local source of fresh garlic later in July, we picked up a couple of brussel sprout seedlings to add to the girls garden plot. Everything you could want for a herb and vegetable garden is here, as well as a little shop that features some local crafts and artisans work.



There are lots of interesting side roads, both on Westham Island and in Ladner that we explored, stopping to pick up some free fishing nets on the side of one of them (will make excellent garden netting!) and found lots of lovely flowering trees so fragrant we could smell them through the open windows as we cruised the back roads just that close to home.

Middle of Nowhere (or, is that a border marker right over there?)

It was a sunny day in early May and as is our habit we set off in the pick up to points unknown. We didn't realize quite how unknown they were until we ended up glancing onto the shoulder of the road and wondering if it was indeed a border marker that we saw in the ditch. The driver man pulled over the truck and got out, intent on inspecting further.

It WAS a border marker. Where on earth were we and just how far had we travelled anyhow?! The girl grabbed her Iphone, intent upon seeking the GPS signal that would give us a clue. He grabbed the phone without hesitation and chastised "If you look at that we'll know where we are! Put it back in the glove compartment!"

Silly girl. The entire point of country drives is to drive in the country. Knowing where you are is not really part of the plan. It was a glorious day after all with a few stops on the banks of Cultus Lake, marvelling at the progress of what had been a sleepy little summer community a couple decades ago, and then a very enjoyable lunch at the Thousand Trails Golf Course restaurant right there on the putting green. The breeze was warm, a hint of spring whispered against homemade beef barley soup.

The next stop was a horse farm, 5 minutes up this road, 5 minutes up that road, to see a beautiful little miniature shetland foal. The cutest little beast imaginable.

Next stop, Chilliwack Lake, up a very long road, past hearty campers and some beaver chewed wood. A quiet afternoon of watching the world go by through the windows of a pick up truck.

A guy and a girl checking out the scenery.