April 24, 2005

April 24, 2005

Sechelt to Vancouver / Surrey, B.C.

DAY 311

 

Another warm, sunny day.

We hitched up this morning and left Porpoise Bay Provincial Park, heading for the ferry at Langdale. South on Hwy. 101 through Sechelt, Davis Bay, Wilson Creek, past Roberts Creek, and finally, Gibsons, to the ferry terminal at Langdale. This was the largest of the eight ferries we've been on in the last week or so. The ferry ride from Langdale to Horseshoe Bay, just north of Vancouver, took about an hour. We drove in heavy traffic for 2 hours from the ferry, east on Hwy. 1 through North Vancouver, then south on Hwy. 99 over the Lions Gate Bridge, through Stanley Park, through downtown Vancouver, through Vancouver, past Vancouver Airport, and across the northern arm of the Fraser River into Richmond. We found our way through Richmond to the location of the RV park we were headed to. It wasn't there. It was permanently out of business. < huge sigh > We pulled into an industrial park empty parking lot to prepare lunch, phone our friends Dwight and Jennifer, and figure out where to go from there. We did all that, and chose the next closest RV park, about another hour of driving through urban traffic east to Surrey. We found our way back through Richmond onto Hwy. 91 heading east, then south into Delta, onto Hwy. 10 heading east, then Hwy. 15 heading back north onto Hwy. 1, to Tynehead RV Camp. All in all, that was about 3 hours of driving the rig through heavy urban traffic to drive a huge "U" just to end up back on Hwy. 1 where we were when we first came off the ferry !

We set up in the crowded, small sites, expensive, urban campground. I took Bo for an obedience training session, and as I was finishing with Bo, Dwight and Jennifer arrived. They had our March mail with them. I used their address as my April "mail drop". We haven't seen them in quite a few years. We had been planning to go out with them for dinner to the fishing village of Steveston adjacent to Richmond, for fish and chips, but obviously that plan went out the window with the non-existent RV park. Jennifer had just had dental surgery on Thursday, so her eating choices were still confined to soup and / or scrambled eggs. Okay ... scrambled eggs for Jennifer, and Louisiana gumbo for the rest of us. We had a long, pleasant evening of visiting. We filled them in on what the full time RV life is all about, and our adventures overthe last ten months. It was great to see them again.

DSK