Last weekend I got to go camping again, and explore a new part of B.C. : Manning Park! It's located east of Vancouver, about 2hrs 30mins away, just past Hope. (I just wanted to mention that there was a city called Hope in B.C.!)
It was great to get away. I had been working long hours in the workshop all week, and then marking the final exam on Friday, so getting out of the city with B. on Saturday was heavenly. She took Monday off, and I skipped out on, well, my office mates? so we got to have a long weekend in the forest. We arrived in the early afternoon and set up the tent in the best spot (according to us). It was surrounded by large trees, right next to the river, which gave us a false sense of seclusion (on Monday morning, the couple in the spot beside us blasted music while taking down their tent, shattering our seclusion idea.) We then headed out to Lightning Lake for a nice hike around the lake, with a short visit over to the next lake: Flash Lake. Once back to the car, B. braved the weather and went for a quick dip in the lake. Very impressive to me, I was chilly just waiting for her to get out!
Back at the campsite, we decided to put up the tarp that I had thoughtfully borrowed from J. We realized quickly that our "ideal" camping spot was not ideal for putting up a tarp. Lots of big trees meant no branches close to the ground. We wanted to cover the picnic table first since we didn't want to have to cook in the rain. We succeeded with the help of a stick and many tosses to secure two corners of the tarp, but when we held the other two corners out realized that the tarp covered, well, the ground next to the table. So we gave up on that idea and moved on to trying to cover the tent, which looked easier to accomplish. Here was the result:
Impressive, I know.
Luckily my tent was up to the challenge and kept us dry!
The next day, it rained off and on. I realized early that I had forgotten my rain coat, and so had to buy a 1$ emergency poncho, which I then referred to as a human condom for the rest of the trip. We drove up to the top of one of the mountains in the park, and went for a hike along the Heather Trail. Now this was my kind of hiking! Mostly flat, with an amazing view for most of the hike! Lots of flowers, trees, berries (no bears!), and beautiful alpine meadows, which is what Manning Park is famous for.
Monday was going home day. It was sunny and warm, and we were both reluctant to get back to the city too early. We took a detour in Chilliwack and went swimming in Cultus Lake, one of the rare warm lakes in B.C. since it isn't a glacier lake. We found a nice falsely secluded (again) spot along the road where we could go down to the lake and have a swim without paying for parking. It was warm, and lovely to swim in non-salty water! Afterwards, we stopped for ice cream, the cherry on the sunday of a great weekend!
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