The First Time I went Camping (Properly)| Bowen Island, BC, Canada

Up until now, I had never properly gone camping. That is, I had never camped in a tent. In my last year of elementary school, we went on a school trip where we camped in cabins, and that was where my experience with camping ended (until now). Neither the people I hung out with nor my family went camping, so it just never came up, and I guess I was never particularly curious about it.

Of course, if an opportunity came up for me to try it, I wouldn’t say no.

Alex suggested a weekend trip to Bowen Island, which is about a 20 minute ferry ride away from West Vancouver. His suggestion was that we cycle from Vancouver to Horseshoe Bay, take the ferry to Bowen Island, and then cycle to the beach at Cape Roger Curtis Lighthouse, and hopefully camp overnight. I agreed.

Being that I had next to zero experience with this type of excursion, I left it to Alex to do the planning. He sent me a spreadsheet outlining the items I needed to bring, and told me we would be renting panniers to put everything in. The next morning, we met up at MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) to pick up the panniers and any items we were still missing. For me, that was a headlamp.

Somehow we dilly-dally’d until it was quite late in the afternoon, and we finally went to the bike rental shop for me to pick up a rental bike. Because we were so late, the shop had only one hybrid bike left, but it did the trick. After clipping on our panniers to the bike, and allowing me ten minutes to test out the bike (I had never ridden a bike with heavy bags on the back before, so I wanted to make sure I could balance properly before zooming out on to the roads), we were heading off across the Lion’s Gate Bridge.

Then It wasn’t even another ten minutes in before I was struggling to ride up the incline of the bridge. Unfortunately, a hybrid bike isn’t the lightest nor fastest bike, and with the bags on the back, I was working extra hard pedaling. The view from the Lion’s Gate Bridge though? Absolutely amazing. After crossing the bridge, we had to cycle through West Vancouver along Marine Drive to get to Horseshoe Bay, where the ferries departed. The last third of route was where it started to get quite hilly. I had to stop multiple times to walk the bike up because it was difficult and I also did not quite trust myself controlling the bike when it was feeling heavy (I start to swerve) alongside the cars passing by on the winding roads. There were multiple occasions when I would hear Alex yell to me from behind, “Stay on your right, Daphne!”.

Twenty sweaty kilometers later, we were at Horseshoe Bay (I am assuming it is called as such because it’s shaped like a horseshoe but when I looked at the map, it wasn’t particularly horseshoe-like. You can decide for yourself.). From Horseshoe Bay you could get ferries to Bowen Island, Nanaimo, or the Sunshine Coast. Once we got our tickets, we headed to the waiting area for bikes to walk on. The ferry was delayed so we spent a lot of time stretching. Being that it was basically dinnertime already, we had to figure out if we were going to be able to make it to the beach in time, which was on the other end of the island. Alex said that he knew someone who lived on Bowen Island, and that his friend would be happy to have us stay over night if we needed to. That was our Plan B, in case we were unable to cycle the 10 km across the island while it was getting dark. Not to mention that many islands tended to be quite hilly.

Horseshoe Bay.

The ferry ride itself took only 20 minutes, and the scenery was beautiful. I had learned that there are actually a number of people on Bowen island who actually take the ferry into Vancouver to go to work, the idea of which was quite interesting. Imagine working in the city while living the island life, how many places in the world could you do that in?

View from the ferry.

I had never been to Bowen Island before, and when we stepped off the ferry into Snug Cove, I could see immediately that, like many seaside towns, it had a calm and quaint feel to it. Many of the buildings were from the early 1900s (and if you’ve read my past posts, you’ll know I love historical things!). We stopped at The Bowen Island Pub for dinner, and asked the waitress how hilly the road across Bowen Island was. There is basically one main road through the entire island.

“Oh, very hilly,” she immediately replied.

The sun was beginning to set, as we set off on our bikes. The plan was to cycle to Alex’s friends place and then go from there. Because we were among the trees, it looked darker than it really was on the road. I couldn’t wait until we reached his friend’s place. Five hilly kilometers later, we were there. His friend offered for us to either sleep in his camper van, or he could drive us down to the other end for camping. We decided to go down to the beach to at least check it out.

It was a shame we didn’t arrive earlier. When the lighthouse at Cape Roger Curtis revealed itself we were treated to a beautiful canvas of colours from the sunset on the beach. We managed to find a good spot to set up camp right in front of the waters, and decided we would stay the night. Alex’s friend told us there were no big animals to worry about on Bowen Island, and that there were mostly just a lot of deer.

“Do check for ticks though,” he advised us, before leaving.

Just caught the end of the sunset.

As it was quickly getting dark, we put on our headlamps (I remarked amusedly on how bright and how far the light from the headlamp was able to illuminate --- this is how you know you’re an outdoors newbie), and got to setting up the tent. As the ground did not exactly allow for pegs to be put in for the tent, we had to look for some heavy rocks to hold down the ends from the tent. Eventually, we (namely, Alex) got the tent set up. We put in our sleeping mats/pads and then our sleeping bags, and got ready for bed. I then realized I kind of needed to pee, and decided now would be a good time to do so. Given that I had never peed in the wild before, this was another new experience for me. The only light I had was from the headlamp, it was otherwise dark, so it felt a bit creepy. The thing is, I think peeing is always easier for guys because they don’t have to squat down to make sure it doesn’t go down your legs (I hope you don’t mind all the pee-talk, just keepin’ it real). Also, you can’t help but feel vulnerable squatting with your pants down; I always envision things like bugs deciding to jump on you just at that prime moment. How terrifying. Thankfully, my trip to nature’s washroom was without incident, and I climbed back into the tent.

Our setup.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t think I got any sleep that night. I think it was a combination of multiple factors:
• It was my first time camping
• The waves crashing against the rocks were really loud
• I couldn’t get into a comfortable sleeping position as the mat wasn’t comfortable
• Paranoia – I kept trying to hear for noises outside the tent even though they said there were no big animals to worry about

The noise from this kept me up.

So basically, I couldn’t wait until sunrise when I could leave the tent again. It was such a relief for me to hear the birds start to chirp, signaling to me that it was time to wake up. Climbing out of the tent, I saw that the sky was starting to turn a light shade of blue and pink; the sun was rising, albeit on the other side of the island, so it was blocked by trees.

Cape Roger Curtis Lighthouse.

We both took this time during sunrise to take some photos of our surroundings. At one point we noticed a man on a rock in the distance, and we were surprised there was someone else also out here at this time of day. Next thing we knew, he was on a little boat in the water, apparently fishing in the choppy waters. Of course, we also saw a cute little deer walk by, grazing on the grass and flowers. I immediately got my camera out to take some photos, and as it heard the clicking from the cameras, the deer stopped and stared at us with its deer-in-headlights look. It then decided we weren’t a threat, and continued its grazing.

So cute!

After eating a couple of Cliff Bars and brushing our teeth, we packed up and headed off. We would be cycling to Alex’s friends place so that they would have a chance to catch up before we left the island. I was not really ready to cycle back uphill to his place, but it had to be done. I could tell that I was more tired than I was the day before because every little hill felt really hard, so I would keep getting off the bike and walking whenever there was a slight incline. Eventually we reached the house, and Alex’s friend invited us upstairs showing us his humble abode where he and his wife and daughters lived (and the chickens that he kept in his backyard) After some tea and coffee we also were lucky enough to have some of the waffles that his wife made which were absolutely delicious. After a couple of hours I was itching to leave though, because I felt like we were overstaying our welcome.

By the time we got back to Vancouver we were exhausted and starving; my body felt like jelly. It was a good trip, but I still don’t know how I feel about camping yet. Takes some getting used to, I suppose.

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