Camping - Day 4

Soooo... today we are off on another adventure. But I realized that I forgot to mention an important part of camping... you have to cope with outhouses!! They can be a bit fun... particularly if you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night...

We are off on a forest walk today...

Some of these trees are huge!!!

Oh look, it's a nice calm river! It would be nice to go down there and play in the water.

There is even a bridge, just downstream...

Ohhhh.... that calm river flows down into a gorge!

Maybe playing in the river upstream of this is not such a good idea!

We went downstream along the gorge for a little bit. Those sure are steep cliffs...

Down below, there was another bridge with another waterfall... you can't quite see it because it is behind that big boulder that is jammed in the gorge...

But downstream of this bridge... wow!!! There was a beautiful green, blue pool!

If I was a swimming bear, I'd be in there right now!

But I is not a swimming bear. Plus, the water was a tad cold...

But... I could hop scotch on those rocks and sit on that boulder in the middle of the river.

Ahhhh... this is the life!

It is really quite beautiful here. We came in the morning, but by the afternoon, the place has a lot of people who are cooling off in the water.

We hiked back to the campsite and I came across some Maidenhair Fern - it likes cool, damp forests - beary beautiful.

Back at the camp, I was in for a bit of a surprise! Turns out Irene is a bit of a tight-rope walker... on a Slack Line. She says it is great for her abs and her back.

I wonder if elephants balance on this as well?

She has been doing it for a couple of years and is quite good. She can do a pirouette turn in the middle of the span!

I thought I would give it a go but... my balance is not the best, even on terra firma... so I thought I would just sit and watch.

Another surprise was that Valentin had also brought a stuffie along on the trip! A shy rabbit named Hassie... He got brave enough at the end to come out and say "Hello"!!

Camping - Day 3

Hi again! We are off on a hike today... This is a new area for me so... it is a bit of an adventure finding the start of the trail.

Luckily, I am a good navigator bear and co-pilot... so we found the start of the trail after only a few false starts...

Here we go! You can see from the dry grass how long it's been since we've had a good rain.

This old rotten stump had a couple of little bear holes in it... perfect for leaping up and going "boo" at unsuspecting German cousins who then shriek in terror at the wild Canadian bear!

The trail was pretty cool with different topographies... some creek bottoms with big old cedars...

And a dead garter snake as well!

Also some ponds...

With the cat tails coming along nicely. Did you know that you can eat many parts of the cat tail??

Ummm... in some places the trail was beary overgrown... This is an old beaver dam that was serving as a bridge across some of the ponds.

There were even salal berries! They tasted pretty good but make an even better jelly...

This was a slightly bigger lake where we decided to sit down and have a break.

It was a nice open arbutus forest slope with grasses...

The cousins enjoyed the walk a lot...

Valentin and I shared the Cool Ranch Doritos... yum!

Now is the season when the arbutus bark is peeling off... beary pretty.

Of course we had to stop and take a few grass pictures... We also saw a LOT of garter snakes, even baby ones... but they all slithered away too quickly to be photographed. Beary annoying... but...

I saw a mouse!! A real, live mouse and it was just hiding in the leaves and if we crouched really still, it would forage around a bit. I thought Beanie Mouse would like this!

He was pretty cute... but not highly photogenic either. Maybe that's why there aren't postcards of wild mice??

Camping - Day 2

Hullo again! It is another fine morning and it is time for some breakfast... after a hot chocolate, of course!

We have some almond butter, some jam and some tea for the tea drinkers...

This is our camping toaster. The cousins were totally impressed with that!!! And some turkey bacon frying away - yum! (No pigs were hurt in the making of this bacon... Thought Sullivan would appreciate that!)

We also boiled four eggs for lunch and dipped the cooked ones in blackberry juice so we would know which were the cooked ones. This might be a good idea for Easter eggs!

 And... some juice for later as well... blackberry juice on the left and some Sprite on the right.

Get the backpack together... This all takes a lot of time when you are camping!

But finally... we are all ready!!!

Today there was some blackberry picking. Valentin is impressed with the size of our blackberries...

We also found some Mirabelle Plums which were completely new for me and Mama. The skin is a bit sour but the pulp is super yummy!!!

Beary yummy!!! Even for a little bear...

And the blackberries went into a pot... They were trying to make sort of a jam but... the Knox Gelatine did not gel... so they had blackberry sauce instead! Still beary yummy!