Happy Victoria Day

Today is a holiday for Canadians, and the birthday of the monarch. Victoria Day normally signals the start of summer activities with the camping season for us here in BC on a rainy weekend. It's also the opening weekend for many spring and summer activities around Canada such as gardening, frost free nights, winterizing cabins and opening up those cottages.

This is how beautiful the weekend started off to be.

So I started off with a celebration of summer activities and took my first kayak and camping trip together. I don't even remember camping since I've moved to Vancouver...

Our two day kayak trip started out at Cates park in North Vancouver.

We started our journey at the boat launch at Cates Park. It's also the turning point to go up Indian arm or out towards Burrard inland and Vancouver area towards the Pacific.
This small map shows the places we stopped at. Initially we wanted to go further but found out I was a lot slower than anticipated. Our lunch stop was at Jug Island and then onto Twin Islands where we ate dinner and camped for the night. We wanted to get to Granite falls but that would take us 4 hrs longer landing at night fall.

I'm laughing at my lobster red head, but it's still beautiful behind me.

Our campsite with fajitas for dinner.

Views on the Island while relaxing on soft rocks.

The beauty of it raining so much is that we get to see green everywhere.

I had to throw in one site that is so North American.

It was very nice to enjoy the evening and see the beauty all around us. That night, the waterfalls from accross the way were so loud we decided we had to check them out on our way back home.

The Light house on the Twin Islands looking towards Indian Arm, where we rounded to head back home to Cates Park.

Kayaking was a lot of fun but I'm so darn slow compared to my friends. I guess I should get better with practice but coming from a swimmer, I just don't quite understand it all yet.

I'm so lucky to have such a great group of friends who were so patient with my beginner ways. Hopefully I'll be taking a few more of these trips this summer to get better! And then maybe I'll have some more water shots in the water as there is absolutely no way I'll take any camera out yet.