We woke up from our ice cream coma, happy little campers. It appeared that we would have some decent weather to pack up our gear and head to a park for the morning. We were catching the ferry to Horseshoe Bay at 12:50 which seemed like plenty of time for us to dilly dally around town. We stopped at Javawocky for coffee on our way to the awesome playground that Nanaimo has righ on the waterfront. Shane ended up taking the girls over and letting me hang out and do some email/facebook/journaling on my own. You can imagine that is a valuable experience and difficult to come by. Shane is trying to finish the last book in the Game of Thrones series so he is more that happy to sit at the park and read and let me have quiet and peaceful coffeeshop time. thanks Shaner!!!
As he walked away there was the same gentleman who we had talked to the day before came to sit down next to us. He was excited to see the girls again and wish us safe travels for the rest of our journey. He comes there every day with his dog. Yesterday he was alone...today he has 4 friends join him. I overheard him talking to his friends about our family and how we had cycled the island with the girls and were headed out to Chilliwack. his friends commented, "Wow, that is dedication. What lucky kids to get an experience like this so young!" It was nice to hear. Sometimes I think people look at us like we are insane. To each their own, eh?
Around 11 I decided to head over to the park, unload my gear and ride on to the ferry terminal to buy our tickets. I was also in charge of stopping at a grocery store to pick up lunch for the ride over. My ride was SO awesome. Any chance to ride the bike without gear on is a treat, but to be able to ride without a 40# child at the same time....AWESOME!!! I bought our tickets and started looking for a store, but everywhere I looked there was HILLS....the HILLS are just endless. i knew there was a store by the waterfront that I could get too without a hill so I chose that instead, even though it was a bit out of the way.
By the time I got to the park, we had 20 minutes to make it to the ferry...not for departure, but for boarding. This was not good. We had to load my bike up, get the trail a bike on and get the girls ready.... THEN ride the 3 miles to the terminal. I thought there was no chance. We frantically rode, just HOPING that the ferry would be running late or that the nice workers would have a heart and just let us on even if we got there late. Pedaling like we have never pedaled before we made it there is record time to see that the ferry was running 10 minutes late anyway, YAY!!!!
This was our first REAL ferry, with HUGE lines of cars waiting. Jill was very concerned about the semis, RVs and busses and trucks that were getting on. She just did not get how a boat could carry so much weight. "Is it gonna tip over?" she must have asked 45 times! Luckily, once we were having lunch in the sitting lounge she seemed to forget all about the 3 levels of cars that were below us. This was our first chance to play the card game we bought in Duncan. (Auto Race) So fun! and it passed the 2 hour ferry ride perfectly. We rolled into Horseshoe Bay refreshed and ready to go. Well, that is not totally accurate....we had a hell of a time finding our way out!
First, we huffed our bikes up to the top of a hill that said BIKE ROUTE. But then there was a sign that went left. I did not want to go left because it went downhill and if I have learned anything it is to NOT go downhill if it means you will need to go uphill again. Reluctantly we went left. Then we saw a huge orange BIKE DETOUR sign with a huge arrow pointing left, AGAIN, right back to the ferry terminal....we felt we had no choice so we went left again and guess where we ended up! At the ferry terminal. We had just wasted 30 minutes! We asked around and not one person had a clue as to how bikes could get out of Horseshoe Bay. We did not want to get on Highway 1 so we very sadly huffed it back up the same hill we had just gone up. This time we did NOT follow the bike route sign and just kept climbing up and up and up.
At one point Alli said, "I think I just have to cry." Me too, Alli!! we kept climbing up and at one point a nice lady pulled over and asked us if we needed route assistance. She headed us in the direction of a bike trail (turned out to be the TCT - where we were supposed to be anyway). It was a lovely packed gravel low grade trail that ran along and creek and then crossed over the creek. The girls happily played there for a while and Shane read his book. We still had 15 miles to go and we were pretty sure it was going to be hilly so after a 20 minute break we kept riding.
We passed at least 40 people cycling (HA!!! They passed us I should say) so it was a great route to cycle but not for a family touring with 8 panniers, 2 trail a bikes and 2 children who weigh 120#'s! We were SOOOOOOO happy when we got off that route. It was relatively flat once we reached the area where our host lived. Our ride to his house was peaceful and calm, at least 6 miles along a dedicated bike path where cars are not allowed. It was a great change for us.
Our host was not going to be home, but he gave us the code to get into his house, he had a shed out in the back with a bed/couch for us to sleep and had left us towels and food on the fridge with instructions to eat everything we wanted and to make ourselves at home! Boy, did we!!
I went to a local market and picked up tons of fresh fruit and veggies. Tony (our host) cooked us steaks and I made a salad and fruit salad. He was such a fun guy!! He researched some routes for me so we could get out of Vancouver relatively easily and on less crazy roads. He found a map online - Cycling Metro Vancouver - that was going to get us all the way to our next hosts house in Coquitlam with mostly just bike paths! YAY!!!! Anything was going to be better than cycling on Marine Drive (or so I thought....)
NEXT BLOG POST - CYCLE TO COQUITLAM
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