Sunshine Coast, BC

Place 91 – Sep 14 to Sep 18 2021: Sunshine Coast, BC ðŸ‡¨ðŸ‡¦

Day 1

We’re back! Hello! We went on a little trip to Sunshine Coast for Curtis’ birthday. You can read about it here.

On Tuesday 14th September, in the evening, we drove out to Horseshoe Bay to catch a ferry out to Sunshine Coast. Whilst it is not an island, it’s technically connected, there’s no other way to get there without a boat, so we took the ferry.

The ferry arrived late, but that didn’t make much difference to us, other than the fact we were hungry!

There weren’t many people on the boat, so it was quick and easy to get ourselves some food. We ate that and then the ride was pretty much over. (it’s only 40 minutes).

We drove off the boat and drove on to our first accomodation, which was a cute little cabin!

Here’s a low quality video of the cabin!

When we arrived, the cabin was incredibly cold as the windows were open, but after a bit of time with the fire on it got nice and toasty. We arrived fairly late, so once we got settled we watched a little bit of TV before sleeping.

Here’s another low quality video of the cabin!

Day 2

We woke up in the awesome cabin and drove down to Gibsons for a spot of breakfast.

We got a breakfast bagel each from a cafe there. The staff were wonderful (and one was British!) which made it a very nice experience.

Once we had our breakfast, we had heard that people were filming down the street for a holiday film! We went down to check that out, but not much was happening at the time, other than there being some fake snow on the floor.

We walked around Gibsons for a bit as there was a nice little marina area and the sun was shining!

After walking for a bit, we found a park to go to for a hike/walk!

We drove to Cliff Gilker Park where it said there were waterfalls and hiking trails, which sounded perfect.

The walk was through the forest with nice big trees and some really nice little wooden bridges!

We saw the waterfall, but it wasn’t really much of a waterfall, but still peaceful.

We walked around here for quite a while, mostly to just find all the bridges…we love bridges!

Once we left here, we drove to a petting zoo to let some animals, but unfortunately it was closed on that day, so we turned around and drove to something nearby that we found, called Robert’s Creek Pier.

Robert’s Creek is a small town with some nice little buildings that we looked at and when we went down to the pier we nearly got blown over it was so windy!

Wind!

We drove back to the cabin and had a look online for some places to get food and also a look for other things to do whilst we were in the area.

We eventually found a place for dinner, which was a Mexican place. Luckily, they were able to seat us once we got there (they were very busy!) And we grabbed ourselves some pretty tasty Mexican food!

We went back to the cabin and watched a bit of TV and relaxed.

Whilst relaxing, we heard some noises outside, so we checked and sure enough, it was a BEAR! We saw him right next to our cabin trying to get at the bins, but we think he scared himself away when he knocked over the bin.

It was our first time seeing a bear in the wild and it was pretty large and right outside!

Day 3 – Curtis’ Birthday!

We woke up, got ready and left the cabin to grab some breakfast.

We went to a cafe (after a bit of back and forth between two) and managed to get a seat. It was pretty small and busy!

We had to wait 45 minutes for our food, which seemed pretty long, and when we got the food it was…Alright. It looked good but wasn’t incredible. Curtis had a smoked salmon and dill cream eggs benedict whilst Kim had a breakfast bowl.

We left here and tried to go to a few cool looking spots with nice views, hikes and waterfalls, but they all seemed to be closed for some reason!

We ended up finding a park near the new cabin we were moving to, so we sat there for a bit and stared into the water.

We checked in to the new cabin and it was not quite as we thought. It looked like a cabin, but was pretty large. It was quite dark and just not as good as we hoped. But it did look cool!

Looks cool outside, right?

We relaxed for a bit once we got in. The weather had started to deteriate, which we knew was going to happen, so we prepared to just hunker down and do very little.

Kim found a really nice brewery called Batch44 and we headed there for some drinks and dinner. Kim also found out there was a quiz, so we entered that and didalright! We weren’t last, which is a win!

We headed back to the cabin and got some really good sleep.

Day 4

It was raining all day, so we just slept and stayed in, watching some TV and playing card games.

We went and got pizza for dinner. Nothing fancy but a bit of a tradition for lazy days!

There was a large wind/rain storm which blew over a power line! This caused us to have an outage and, as the power line was laying on the only bit of road in/out of the town, we were stuck in the dark!

We were able to get some candles from a neighbour and we spent the night playing cards and chatting. It was kinda nice, in a way.

We didn’t get too cold and headed to bed. We were however awoken around 02:00 when the power came back on! But we were glad that was able to get sorted.

Day 5 – The Final Day

We woke up and got some breakfast at a diner style place and then looked for something to do before we needed to catch our boat.

We found somewhere called secret beach (it was sign posted, so not very secret!) And we had a wander around on the beach and the logs that were on there.

Pretty nice place!

Kim found a nice rope swing and had some fun on that!

We took the ferry home and drove back. It seemed to take far less time!

We got home and made some dinner and then it was time for Curtis to play hockey. He’s finished his 3rd game now and is really enjoying being back out there on the ice.

Curtis has a goal and two assists already, all of which came from the last game!

And there we have it!

That was our sunshine coast trip. We hope you enjoyed having a blog to read again. We had some fun times and we were excited to share it with you.

Maybe we’ll have some other fun stuff coming up at some point, but we hope everyone is well.


Mr And Mrs Hale

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Courtenay,BC

Place 89 – Day 1: Courtenay, BC🇨🇦 – Forbidden Plateau & ‘Medicine Bowls’

Forbidden Plateau

We work up at a good time again and Kim went out to get us breakfast.

We ate our breakfast and slowly got ready and managed to head out around 11:00.

We drove out to Forbidden Plateau which took us about 1 hour and 30 mins.

Forbidden Plateau used to be a ski resort but now it’s a short hike which allows everyone to get a great view of the water and surrounding areas. It was really quite beautiful!

‘Medicine Bowls’

We drove back down the road we came and took a sharp left to head down towards medicine bowls. This is a small waterfall with rock pools that people jump into and also just swim in. We didn’t have much interest in doing either, because it’s cold and jumping in is scary, but we walked to take a look.

We parked up in a safe location as, unless you have a truck, it’s not possible to drive the entire way there.

We walked for about 20 minutes to make it to the pools. There was a little hike involved but it was beautiful!

We really, really enjoyed this area! We were there for way longer than we expected but we just enjoyed looking at the water, sitting down and relaxing and just enjoying the quiet.

We walked back to the car and saw someone try and drive through the part just beyond where we parked where it was not really possible to drive and they scraped/damaged the bottom of their car!

Beer & Snacks

We drove form here to the nearby town Courtenay, where we had actually been before when we visited Comox in the winter a couple of years ago. We got ourselves a beer at a brewery and relaxed.

We left there and walked to a restaurant to get a quick snack. The snack turned into a huge meal and we really didn’t want that much food. We ate what we could and then we drove back to the hotel, which took about 1 hour 10 minutes.

We were tired, as expected, so we relaxed for a bit at the hotel and then went out to get some snacks and drinks for the evening.

We leave this area tomorrow and head out to a new area to do very little, though!


This Time Last Year


Mr And Mrs Hale

Vancouver, BC

Place 72 – Day 409: Vancouver, BC – Shannon Falls & Porteau Cove Beach

Shannon Falls

We got up and Kim made some breakfast, and we relaxed for a short time whilst we ate this.

We got ourselves ready and hopped in the car for a 1 hour drive.

We drove up to Shannon Falls, which is almost in Whistler!

We got there and it seemed a little smokey again, which was unfortunate, but we continued anyway.

We saw the falls from the floor and from a small viewpoint and they were certainly pretty!

We continued walking towards a hiking trail, only to be stopped by a fence as the trail is closed for gondola repairs! We were going to do a nice hike, but due to this, we just left instead.

Some Beach Somewhere

Kim found a beach fairly close, so we drove onward to that as there are apparently seals there!

It took us down a strange gravel road which lead to a ‘beach’ right by some construction and logging sites!

It really wasn’t interesting at all, so we got back in the car and drove onward to another location.

Porteau Cove Beach

We drove to Porteau Cove which has a beach and a little pier. It’s mostly for people boating, but there is a beach which you can walk on.

The beach wasn’t sandy, it was just a lot of fallen trees and some rocks, but we made the most of it by walking up and down this for a very long time!

Kim climbed a large rock, only to get worried about getting down which was some entertainment for a bit, whilst she tried to get down safely (which she did!).

We got tired, hungry and thirsty, so we slowly made our way up to the car.

We drove back home and when we got back, we had some pizza and watched the film Brave.

We played some Crash Bandicoot and watched some more TV for the evening.


This Time Last Year!


Mr & Mrs Hale

Seattle,WA

Place 73 – Day 4: Seattle,WA – UPS Waterfall, Waterfront & Starbucks Reserve Roastery

Walking To The City

We were going to take a bus to the city, but we only had a $100 note, so we decided to walk instead. It wasn’t very warm today, but it also wasn’t cold or raining so we didn’t mind the 40 minute walk.

International Centre

We walked through the international centre, which is Chinatown, Japantown & the Vietnamese area. This was great and there also seemed to be a lot of great looking restaurants!

UPS waterfall

Our first stop was brief, but was fairly interesting.

This was a waterfall which was used to commemorate and celebrate the UPS staff and founder.

This is a Japanese style garden and is also the original office of the UPS.

Pioneer Square

Right by the waterfall was Poineer Square which we accidentally stumbled across.

This area has games, like table tennis, and also a memorial to all firefighters from Seattle that have lost their lives.

Ye Olde Curiosity shop

We went from here towards the waterfront and then stopped at Ye Olde Curiosity shop. This is a shop which has been around since 1899 but has moved several times.

This is a gift shop, but also has a lot of interesting, rare, items in, such as (apparently) real preserved dead bodies and more like that.

Kim Tried On Some Really…Interesting…Glasses

Walked along waterfront

We walked along the waterfront some more, just to see what was there. There was a lot of seafood restaurants but it was an interesting walk.

Starbucks Reserve Roastery

We walked from the waterfront up to the Starbucks Reserve Roastery.

This is where coffee beans are roasted, as well as a self guided tour, coffee only available at this location is served as well aa mixologists and staff that know a lot about coffee!

We started by being given a map and going to the first area where they roast coffee. Just 9 feet away, we watched the coffee get roasted and then it all poared out and smelled incredible!

We were given some freshly roasted beans to smell and taste!

These smelled incredible, but didn’t taste to good like this!

We got a flight ofcoffee to try, which was 8oz of 3 different coffees.

We had one from Kenya, one Columbian coffee and one which is only roasted at this location from Guatemala.

Kim isn’t a big coffee drinker, so Curtis drank most of it!

The Kenyan coffee had a great flavour but was fairly bitter. The Columbian was the easiest to drink and the Guatemalan coffee had a crazy flavour of black cherry and plum, which it really did, and was a little overpowering.

Curtis didn’t feel great after drinking so much rich coffee at once, but it was an awesome experience!


Starbucks Reserve Roastery | Seattle,WA


Steak

We got back to the apartment and Curtis watched hockey.

After hockey, we went to the supermarket to get a few things we needed as well as dinner for the next few days.

We got back and had steak ready to cook, which we purchased a couple of days ago.

This was a new york strip steak and it was large and incredible.

Curtis seasoned the steak very well and Kim cooked it perfectly, with the help of meat thermometers. The meat was incredibly tender and the accompaniment of the expertly cooked potatoes and delicious onion and mushroom gravy made it a heavenly meal!

Host Chat

We sat and had a chat with our host for a while as he came in whilst we were cooking.

Once we were done with the chatting, we washed up and then went to bed to watch a bit of TV.

Tomorrow…

Kim has a surprise for Curtis tomorrow, so he doesn’t know what’s going to be happening!


This Time Last Year!


Mr & Mrs Hale

Kerikeri

Place 68 – Day 9: Kerikeri – Rainbow Falls

We were up a bit later today, but it was also our last day of this HelpX.

We had about 1/3 of the outside of the house remaining to clean and the same amount of windows inside and out also.

We got all of this done and then had some pesto pasta and watched some TV. After lunch, we got all sun lotion’d up and got in the car to go down to Rainbow Falls, which is a waterfall just down the road from where we are.

We walked down to the waterfall and decided not to go into the water as it was full if very slippery rocks and quite dirty.

We did notice a lot of rocks down stream, so we walked down there instead. We found an area to enter the rocks and then walked down them. We got pretty far, navigating the rocks and trying not to fall in the water.

We eventually ran out of rocks near us so we walked all the way back to the waterfall and headed to the car.

We drove to the supermarket and got an ice cream which was much needed in the hot weather! We also got a doughnut from a local doughnut shop.

Once our host got home, she got our cheese and crackers, so we sat out on the sun eating cheese! A great end to the day.

We then relaxed and talked about our days and then our host made us a delicious spaghetti bolognese!

We watched some of the latest Kong film and then went to bed.

We will probably be leaving here around 10:00-11:00 tomorrow morning.

This time last year!

Poroporoaki!

– Mr & Mrs Hale