Josh suggested riding our bikes up to Courtenay (something he's wanted
to do for a while). I decided to go along as far as Parksville,
meet Cheryl there, and then she & I would drive up to Courtenay and
go camping. It turned out to be a great day to ride - nice and
sunny, and not too hot. Josh made it up to Merville where his
inlaws live and I stopped at Rathtrevor Park in Parksville as planned.
We met Cheryl in Ladysmith for a snack...
Peanut butter sandwiches...I am the most predictable person in the world.
I
recently got a new bike computer as my old one busted due to being made
out of really cheap plastic. I was totally satisfied with the
old one, but once it broke I started looking around and I ended up
going for a pretty deluxe one. It records the data from my ride
(heart rate, GPS data) and allows me to upload it and look at it later.
Here's the Victoria-Parksville trip data.
I reserved a spot at Miracle Beach Campground since it seems like we
are getting into camping season. Apparently not. We were
just about the only ones in the whole campground. Maybe I clicked
on "reserve entire campground" by mistake.
The
next day we did a driving tour around Comox. We stopped at a
marina - this is looking over towards the Cadet's base on Goose Spit.
Another shot from the marina, looking back towards Vancouver Island.
Note the boat...it showed up later on. Here are a couple
more shots from the same location:
Then
we did a great tour that took us to Goose spit, and around Comox along
the water and up to Merville. The one above was from Goose spit
looking over towards the mainland.
It didn't seem like we were far out of town at all and there was this beautiful little farm with horses. Nice setup.
This was near Seal Bay - another great park!
It
seemed to lonely to head back to Miracle Beach, so we stayed at another
Provincial Campground right near there instead. This one was
right on the water!
These rocks were really smooth!
The tide was out a bit - so we walked down to the water's edge. This was a great campground!
I am getting better at the self portraits. I almost caught myself off-guard in this one.
Sunset
from our campsite. That's the same boat that we saw earlier in
the day - they just pulled around in front of this campground &
moored there overnight.
The
next day I felt I had to ride up Mt. Washington. We drove up to
the top so I could scout it out, then I rode down & back up.
It was slower coming back up but at least it was quite a bit
warmer. I had to throw on just about all the clothes I had to
stay warm on the descent, then removed them for the ride back up.
As you can see, there was still plenty of snow at the top. Here's the log data for the ride.
|
