dare2go

Sunshine Coast/BC


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The ferry trip was beautiful - perhaps the most spectacular experienced so far - passing very slowly by quite steep forested hillsides and islands, and the water is such an amazing colour. We continued to drive south on the 101. It is called the coast road, but even though there are sometimes magnificent views of the coast and small islands, there is hardly ever any place to stop and really look or take photographs. The main reason for this is that the property between the road and the coast is all privately owned and the people living there have the best views! It made us appreciate even more the Oregon coast which is all accessible to all people.
We made a stop at Mountain View Service - a Petro-Canada service station - to get our propane cylinders filled. The reason I make mention of this is because I want to sing the praises of the husband and wife team who run the place. The first thing was that we haven't been able to get our second gas bottle out of its compartment and in Canada it is not possible to have them filled without removing them. The man that came to help me actually struggled with it until he not only cut himself but also managed to free it! This was service well above what could be expected in my opinion. But then instead of leaving it to us to replace, he also struggled with it to put it back in. So a big thankyou to Richard for that. Then I went to pay and asked about possible campsites - the woman serving me not only gave me the name of two nearby, but called one of them to check if they had space. It would have saved us about 10 kms of driving if they had been full, as the Park was some distance off the main road. So, once again, service that wasn't expected and we were most grateful for it.
We drove to the Pender Harbour Resort and Spa to check out the site they had, but found it too crowded for our liking. Pender Harbour is an absolute maze of waterways and attracts many tourists interested in all types of water-related activities. There are so many little inlets that you really need to explore it by boat. Were we not quickly running out of summer, we may well have been tempted to stay a while and do just that.
Instead we headed back toward the highway and stopped at Katherine Lake Park. Katherine Lake is a small lake which was originally privately owned. The owners gave the lake and some land around it to the local area and the regional park was created for all to enjoy. There was no sign that said there was a campground, but we followed the directions give us at the service station and drove in to investigate. We found a campground on the side of this beautiful lake. We were also lucky in that they had a site for us, but just for Friday night - Saturday and Sunday were fully booked. It was a lovely place and the people there - mostly family groups who knew each other and lived almost locally - were very friendly. We spent a restful night and were up early to drive on Saturday morning. The lake was lovely in the morning light with a thin layer of mist wafting across its surface. It was a shame in a way that we had to move on.
Sechelt interested us because the couple we had met in Washington, who had told us about the ferries, came from there. We had compared their small hometown of about 10000 people with our small hometown of a few less. Both are tourist towns with a lot of visitors each year. We didn't have a lot of time, but drove around to take a look. There didn't seem to be as many people on the street as we are used to seeing at home - especially for a long weekend. But it was Saturday morning and maybe many had yet to arrive! We also visited the Tourist Information office, which provided free internet along with all sorts of other information, including some excellent booklets relating to the next part of our journey. There was also a rather impressive art exhibition of local work in an area adjoining.
From there we drove to Gibsons and spent some time walking around the marina area and visiting a collective art gallery containing a selection of works from local artists. The Sunshine Coast and many of the nearby islands are home to a large number and variety of artists. Gibsons is a very pretty coastal town and the locals seemed to enjoy a relaxed and comfortable lifestyle. A long-running and internationally successful television series, The Beachcombers, was filmed here in the 80's around the Molly's Reach restaurant.
As we were travelling the southern stretch of this coastline between the towns of Halfmoon Bay, Sechelt and Gibsons, we noticed that the bus stops between, and sometimes in, the towns had chairs at them. These were plastic garden chairs in a variety of styles and the stops had anywhere between 1 and 4 chairs. They seemed to be second hand and we deduced that the locals had donated their chairs they didn't need. The amazing thing to us was that nobody had appropriated them for their own use. It showed a somewhat rare sense of community that still seems to exist here, despite the massive amounts of visitors to the area.
We caught the ferry from nearby Langdale at 3.05. There were an uncountable number of vehicles arriving from Vancouver for the weekend - they had even added extra ferries to their normal schedule. We had been told by someone at the campground that on Monday, and even Tuesday, you can wait several hours and watch several ferries leave before it is your turn to board. We were quite thankful in a way that lack of campgrounds forced us to move on earlier than we would have otherwise done! We arrived at Horseshoe Bay, slightly north of Vancouver, after a 45 minute trip, to begin our 1500 km journey to Prince Rupert to catch the ferry to Alaska.
The Sunshine Coast was a rather rushed experience for us, but I'm willing to support the millions of tourists who visit the area each year. It is a beautiful place and I think it would be great to have the time to do it justice some day - particularly to get onto the water and explore some of the myriad inlets and islands in the vicinity.