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Pearson’s Take the West
  • Andrew Pearson

Pearson’s Take the West

A 23-day adventure by Andrew Read more
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  • Trip start
    July 23, 2017
    Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler
    1

    Departure

    July 22, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 21 °C

    Airport taxi arriving at 6:00! No room for error at the airport! Found our seats and waiting for take off.

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler
    1122

    Calgary

    July 23, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    Airplane lost Jess's luggage. Playing in airport while waiting for them to find it. Kids a little blitzed after flight. They found the bag. Picked up the car! Waited for them to clean it. Nothing a few rockets can't help. Toby wants to go home. Everybody wants mommy all the time! Sampled local cuisine at a place called eh and double u. Mommy gets her first downtime 8 hours after we left. Flash follows us everywhere.Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    Preparing for the mountains

    July 24, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 13 °C

    Up early on the second day of our journey! Ollie likes to punch me over and over again until I let him roam the house. For most of us, the trials of flying across the country had not eroded our enthusiasm for adventure. Toby still wanted to go home. After a glorious breakfast of chocolate chip pancakes and oven baked bacon, our intrepid family said good bye and thank you to the gracious McCulloch's. We bid farewell to the giant lawn hares (as big as German Shepards) and the intemperate magpies of Calgary. We turned up the rock music and found the Trans Canada stretching out in front of us under the splendid azure. Our ever widening eyes drank deep of the view before us. Puffy, white clouds, like islands in the sea, drifted casually over the craggy and haggard bald faced mountains. As we passed Kananaskis country, Dead Man's Flat and Canmore, the mountains loomed ever larger. First stop, Johnson's Lake, where the mountain breeze whispered it's ancient secrets through the limbs and leaves. For our part, we padded our way, willy nilly, and eavesdropped on the restless brook and the quiver of dragonfly wings! Two bear Cubs up a tree, across the lake, were learning their local vernacular while their mother sauntered nearby. We rolled some chicken into wraps to get us moving again towards Banff. There's not much to say about Banff. I don't know what I expected to find there 24 years after living at the corner of Moose and Beaver. Nature has been buried under parking lots and high fashion.Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    The Bartol's

    July 25, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 1 °C

    We arrived in Golden a day after one of those '100 day' storms tore through the town. As we drove to Dan and Martina's we saw the roof of a car caved in and giant trees felled Helter skelter. Dan's place, the Long Way Home, was thankfully still intact. We were greeted by three easy going dogs; Misha, Podie and Mato. Banjo, a week old kitten was MIA. The kids were excited to learn of the four chickens in the coop out back. This morning Banjo turned up in the veranda. Dan and I took the boys on a walk through town. We crossed the Kicking Horse River which was a milky colour from glacial debris. The boys pretended to be conservation officers until Toby lost one of Dan's walkie talkies. We retraced our steps and found it by a water fountain.Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler
    10:00 at night in Golden

    Golden

    July 25, 2017 in Canada ⋅ 🌧 9 °C

    The pirate, the ninja, the mommy and daddy continued on their quest through the wild West. On their 4th day, the sun bounced up over table top mountain and it was already hot before ten o'clock. After a play at the park and some lunch Dan took us up to mount 7. We drove the dusty switch backs above Reflection Lake all the way up to a paragliding take off platform. After watching a couple of paragliders take off we went on a hike up an old logging road.Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    The Day of the Wolf

    July 27, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 8 °C

    After learning about wolves at Northern Lights wolf center, we drove to the Blaebury River valley, between Willowbank mountain and Mount McBeath. We were surrounded by dramatic peaks: Redburn, Moberly, and Langford. Ollie said the mountains made him feel calm. Jessica reported feeling small but powerful. We were all alone in the great wide open of the valley. A Giant's footprint is a humbling place to be. We splashed in the freezing water, collected rocks and basked in the hot sun. Nothing could touch us there. After a lunch of leftover hot dogs we drove north towards Sea Lion Mountain and Mount Lassedat in search of Thomson Falls. The emerald green waters of the Blaebury got brighter and richer the further we drove. By the time we reached the bridge where the falls were supposed to be our road had run out of room. We walked 100 meters or so up a carpet of daisies, buttercups and bell flowers. Ollie and I banged sticks together to give wild animals fair warning. The forest encroached on our path, eventually swallowing it up in a veil of green leaves. The only way through would have been to chop away the vegetation. Toby had fallen asleep in his carrier and we were getting nervous about bears...Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    Kicking Horse

    July 28, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 11 °C

    We boarded the gondola up Kicking Horse around 11:00. There weren't many people around until later in the day when the downhillers started descending into the bowls along spaghetti-thin trails carving through the stubby brush. We chose the CPR trail along a ridge that ran parallel to the gondola. It was an iron and rust coloured rock pathway threading it's way through feathery spruce trees. Jessica lugged Toby who was audibly nervous about the steep slopes crumbling away on either side of our path. It took all of us awhile to get our Mountain legs but we persisted to the end of the trail and back up again, about a km in total. Being in the mountains really makes you feel yourself, Jessica said. The scale of the mountains from up there is like an ocean. It's terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Afterwards we ate left over salmon and burgers at a playground and then went to Cedars campground for a swim in the lake.Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    Boo the Bear

    July 29, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 25 °C

    Last night Dan and Martina entertained friends from Calgary. For dinner we had lasagna made from ground mule deer that Dan and Martina had tracked for three days before killing it just outside Golden. Home made lasagna noodles (eggs from their chickens of course) and vegetables from the garden made for a true locally harvested meal. This morning we returned to Kicking Horse and rode the chair lift up to the bear refuge to meet Boo the Grizzly. He was happily grazing just inside the electric fence which surrounds his 21 acre habitat. After listening to the guided tour, Toby and I decided to walk down the mountain. Jess and Oliver rode the chair. We all agreed that splitting up was quality time spent one on one with the kids. We went back for left over deer lasagna and quiet time. We're getting excited about the next leg of our journey. Tomorrow we drive to Summerland in the Okanagan.Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    Onwards over Roger's Pass!

    July 30, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ☀️ 26 °C

    Oh the fun is just beginning! What a week with the Bartol's! Ollie and I slept under the stars last night, in the open air of the Rockies. We woke up with the sun warming our cheeks through the mesh in the tent. A couple of hours later we were on the road heading west on highway 1, over Roger's pass. We stopped at the interpretive center with the big howitzers they use to set off avalanches pointing skyward. A little further on down the road we strolled and skipped through a forest of five hundred year old Cedars. These Giants were just seedlings when Colombus was sailing to America and they have been patiently growing ever since. As the sign said, they were there when Da Vinci was painting and Shakespeare was writing. A construction worker named Mike let Ollie and Toby drill a few screws into a board of the walkway. A couple of hours later we stopped again at the Enchanted Forest. Years ago someone had started making figurines of fairy tale characters out of concrete and it has since become an amusement park in the woods. The boys had a great time running into the house of Goldilocks' bears, the old lady's shoe, hanging out with Winnie the Pooh and skipping up the yellow brick road. The three little pigs each had a house. There was a pirate ship, a rabbit hole, and more.
    We left with two wooden swords, licorice, and a bag of popcorn. As we cruised along the shoreline of Lake Okanagan we started to get hungry. When we arrived at our Summerland destination, we went out for dinner at Zia's. They had a backyard for kids to play in. What an amazing idea! Everyone ate too much and then we ordered dessert!    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    Summerland sleeps

    July 31, 2017 in Canada ⋅ 🌙 23 °C

    Between 1910 and 1915 the Kettle Valley Railway was built to accommodate the gold rush. During the same period, Sam McGee developed an orchard and worked on road construction in Summerland. A little over a hundred years later the Pearson's boarded the 3716 in anticipation of the 90 minute tour from Prairie Valley station to Trout Creek Bridge and back again. We were tired, hot and a little cranky after more than a week on the road. Earlier in the morning, a ribbon of smoke having blown in from the BC wildfires had encircled the hills and hoodoos around Summerland. By the time our steam engine pulled up to the old timey platform, the sky was clogged with gray as if trolls had stoked fires under all the fairy chimneys in the West. The train jogged along the north side of Conkle Mountain, overlooking Prairie Valley. A banjo player walked up and down the cars taking requests for country music. By the time we rounded Giant's Head Mountain our kids and many others on the train had decided to revolt. I'd like to share more of what I learned from the sonorous voice of the conductor as he described landmarks and historical points of interest but I couldn't hear much other than Tobin wailing for snacks which we didn't have. At the Trout Creek Bridge I bought a pint of hand picked raspberries for five bucks and Toby ate them all in about five minutes. He and Ollie crawled behind the seats of some folks from Vancouver and we pretended not to notice. Jessica promised that would be the last vintage train ride we ever go on.

    I hit a wall today. We went home for lunch and a nap. After the nap we went to the Sun-Oke Beach and splashed around for a couple of hours. After the beach and a DQ side serve ice cream the kids and I went for a hike on the trails behind our host's house while Jessica made dinner. It was pleasant until Ollie decided to run down a slope of loose gravel and sand followed by Toby who wiped out skinning a knee that was already scabbed over a few times. I had to carry Toby after that and Ollie had to carry both wooden swords which evidently was too much a burden because he sat down in the middle of a trail and refused to budge for long enough that I had to put Toby down at which time he promptly tripped again landing face first on some rocks. We returned, both kids yelling and crying in a way that was clearly blaming me for their suffering. They were at least good enough to contain themselves just as we met our hosts on their way to yoga class. When I asked them if the kid on my shoulders looked ok, Brent said he looked great and Ceri said he didn't look as tired as I did.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    To Cultus Lake

    August 1, 2017 in Canada ⋅ 🌫 20 °C

    We got a late start and didn't leave Summerland until 11:00. The 97C was to take us to highway 5 and according to our information, we should have expected a scenic drive with unbelievable mountain and river views. As we climbed through the Cascade mountains up to the Coquihalla pass and along the Coquihalla River we were confronted with a different reality. Mother Nature, from Earth to sky, was cloaked in a uniform of opaque gray smoke. All we could see of her were the faint outlines of mountain faces as evanescent as the hulls of ships sunk in a murky sea.
    It was oppressive and disorienting just driving through it. Difficult enough to imagine living under this smoky inferno for any length of time and even harder to comprehend being displaced from your home.

     At some point, perhaps due to the mystifying properties of a world perpetually smelling like a campfire, our communications and navigation systems broke down and we got lost. Originally I was hoping to explore the Othello tunnels on the way to Cultus but by the time we got there it was late and we wanted to take full advantage of the twilight rates at the water park. We drove straight to the park and took full advantage of all their rides. We rode the Collosal Canyon, the Twisters and the Blasters. They had a pirate cove and lots of hot tubs for resting between rides. We weren't quite ready for the Valley of Death or the double black diamond Rattler but right at the end I decided to do the Freefall as research for Betwixtia. From the top of the slide, the smoke in the sky had mostly cleared and the peach colored sun seemed close enough to throw a pinecone at.

    Back at the Best Western Rainbow Country Inn, 20 minutes down the road on Industrial Way in Chilliwack, the only rainbow I could detect was an olfactory one made up of manure, exhaust and tobacco smoke. Jess and I looked at each other with raised eye brows. The facade looked much more modest in person than it did on the internet. I made a mental note to work on my hotel reservation skills and we retired down a hallway colored in many shades of maroon and beige to room 131. As I briefly pulled back the curtains to reveal the side of a warehouse about 10 feet away I felt happy in the knowledge we had completed another day on the Pearson road trip.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    USA USA

    August 2, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 26 °C

    The smoke followed us across the border. Even in Seattle they are just now getting smoke from Canada roll in. It's not too bad though and we can at least see some blue sky on the crown of the sky. We drove the I-5 down through Washington State, stopping at Whatcom park for lunch and a hike. We found a swimming hole surrounded by cliffs. I borrowed a tube off some teenagers so Ollie and I could bob around near the waterfall. Toby showed some real interest in scrambling through the woods today and he's asking to go home a lot less frequently. When we arrived at Ryan and Patricia's house in Seattle they had a dinner waiting. Quiche and a platter of cheese and olives and peach cobbler for dessert. Ryan and I took the boys to the playground near a Nordic museum for awhile. I think I'll want to check that out again!Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    A Seattle beach and park tour

    August 3, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C

    We got up at 5:45 and with the car already packed we were able to get on the road just after 6:00. Our ferry from the Anacortes terminal was cancelled due to mechanical failure so we had to drive up to Tsamussen in Vancouver to catch a BC ferry. The trip went without incident and we made the 9:00 passage to Victoria.
    Leaving Seattle was good for us. We had a comfortable stay and the Edgars were great hosts but the city itself was similar enough to Toronto that I think we lost our sense of adventure. Jessica started missing her bed. The boys had a great time with Zach but they were getting squirrelly, especially Tobin.

    As for me, on our last night in Seattle I felt muddled and confused. My identity as a father, husband, man got all tangled up and sank beneath a senseless, chaotic and unnavigable sea within myself. For awhile I was adrift like a jellyfish, floating on the inky black currents of the Salish Sea.

    Somehow, the next morning, driving north on the I-5 refocussed me and I was able to distinguish between myself and the world again. I was no longer drifting. I was steering. The captain of my ship! And the sun was rising, the coffee was hot, the traffic was clear. We were on our way again!    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    Car camping

    August 4, 2017 in the United States ⋅ ☀️ 22 °C

    Preparations for the big overnight boys camping trip have been made. Homemade waffle breakfast with fresh fruit fuelled us up! Plan to get on the 10:30 ferry which will take us to the peninsula. We made the 11:30. The ferry took us across Puget Sound to Southworth terminal on the Kitsap peninsula. From there we drove to Scenic Beach State Park, just past a village called Seabeck. While driving the turquoise water off the Hood canal and the Olympics Mountains in the distance appeared on our right. We arrived while the tide was still low so the beach was littered with craggy rock and oysters but not the seaweed that the Puget Sound coughed up on the Seattle beaches. After setting up camp the kids played in one of the two playgrounds within the camp. Ollie discovered tire spinning and spun so much that we had to take him back to the tent to lie down. In no time he was throwing up his waffle breakfast in our cooking pot. I was worried it was something else but he felt better after a short rest so we all went swimming. A nutritious dinner of hot dogs, strawberries, carrots and macaroni was followed by a forced shower for the kids. After a sufficient number of Ranier lagers, what the locals call vitamin R, I lost all moral authority with respect to preventing the kids from wrestling in the tent. Their utter disregard of my empty threats combined with the fire ban made the choice to go to bed with the kids a pretty easy one. Camping is such an irrational activity. I slept with a pair of jogging pants as my pillow and every time a kid had to go to the bathroom I had to escort them, half asleep and stumbling out the zippered nylon doorway, over the threshold into the murky forest where they peed on the rhododendrons, in their pajamas and everywhere in between. It's cold, uncomfortable, dirty, and inconvenient. It's a ton of work to set up and tear down. Nothing ever turns out exactly as you planned and you always forget something and break something else. But, I keep going back and now bringing my sons out into the woods is another dream come true. We woke up in the morning and made some pancakes. Ollie is learning how to use his pocket knife by cutting strawberries. We went on a hike through a lush forest with towering trees. Douglas firs and red cedar and Big Leaf Maple look down at us as we pass under smaller trees drooping with old man's beard. As the kids investigated the mushrooms and centipedes, counted rings on fallen tree trunks, banged on bark, slashed at ferns I'm reminded why we need to be a bit irrational at times. How else will they know they are part of nature?Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    Victoria

    August 7, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 15 °C

    It's our anniversary tomorrow. The song High Tide, Low Tide came on in the car. That was our wedding song. We kind of went up and down today. Jessica is feeling the weight of the kids over relying on her for every little thing. Between the Salish aquarium, the butterfly gardens, lunch at Sassy's and swimming in Hotel Zed's pool we must have laughed dozens of times and snapped at each other just as many times.

    We walked to fisherman's wharf and it took a lot longer than I was told. Along the way the city lost its color and turned flat. We were silently marching through the streets looking for the end, wishing we were somewhere else. The kids alternated between wanting to be carried and rushing up ramps and stairwells.

    Once we arrived at the little village of docks, house boats, restaurants and patio tables we split up to order food. Ollie and I got some chowder, deep fried salmon and halibut tacos. Jessica and Toby got fish and chips. We ate under the orange sun and by the time we were finished eating, colour and dimension returned to the world. We took a jaunty little ferry taxi back to our car and returned to hotel Zed.    Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    Anniversary

    August 8, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    We drove up the trans Canada along the Saanich inlet and stopped at the BC forest Discovery centre for lunch and a play. We learned some logging history and climbed an old fire tower where we had a nice view of the Duncan Canadian Tire. A couple of hours later we arrived at the Buckley Bay ferry terminal in Baynes Sound. A ten minute cable ferry got us across to Denman Island and we discovered our AirBnB, Hillsdale, on North West Rd. It's a 20 acre farm with a main house and guest house facing each other across a yard of yellow grass. Chickens and a couple of sheep have free range of the grounds. Our hosts are a Polish couple that moved here from the big city 7 years ago. It's a nice combination of rustic cottage life and modem amenities. We have three rooms so finally the boys don't have to share a bed. We bbqed strip loin steak and mini potatoes for dinner. After dinner we went a couple of minutes down the road to a rocky beach armed with white wine and a sand pail. Jessica and Ollie caught a crab in the pail while Toby practiced his rock hopping. A few boats moored off shore bobbed silently against a misty backdrop of the Comox valley hills. Eight years we've been married. Jessica commented that we had never before spent so much time with the kids. I felt so lucky to be out on the road with my family!Read more

  • Andrew PearsonPearson’s Take the WestTraveler

    Denman and Hornby Isles

    August 10, 2017 in Canada ⋅ ⛅ 23 °C

    Sitting in the car on the ferry preparing to cross the Lambert channel, it became obvious that we were ready for our road trip to be over. We we're headed to another beach called Big Tribune, known as Little Hawaii. Both kids had runny noses and Ollie had a persistent cough. We were spending most of our time parenting the kids. Toby is starting to ask to go home again. Even Ollie said he could hardly wait to get back.

    And then we got to the beach! We parked the car on a tree lined avenue between a provincial park and a private campground. Everywhere people were flip flopping towards the water carrying stand up boards or wheeling sailboats (I've seen more than a couple of Lasers out here). At the end of the road there was a cart renting paddle boards, kayaks, and skim boards. A narrow dirt path slinked through some bushes and spilled out into a beach 1000 meters wide. There were some large sailboats moored in the bay and although there were a lot of people, the area was large enough that there seemed to be wide open space. We threw our towels down, effectively setting up shop on the fluffy white sand near the back of the beach where high tide wouldn't reach. The darker wetter sand ran at least a couple of hundred metres to where people were wading and playing in the water. Ollie met a friend, a 10 year old girl, who had a skim board. He went with her and some older kids to see how it was done. He came back and reported he had tried it once, fell flat on his face, and declined anymore attempts. Him and I floated out on our alligator to the end of one of the spits. The whole area was filled with sweeping sculptures of sandstone hoodoos layered in with pock filled mud stone. We watched some boys crab hunting with a net. I heard them say they could get 5 bucks per crab from a local restaurant. Ollie climbed up and down the sandstone monuments. We spotted a bald eagle with a head as white as snow flying over the shore. Toby mostly played in the sand with the cousin of Ollie's friend while Jessica enjoyed an open air massage under a tent for a half hour. Around 5:00 we packed up and drove back to the cable ferry that would return us to Denman Island.

    The next day the boys and I ventured off around noon to look for Tree Island. We heard you can walk there at low tide. We found the trail head and walked down a half dozen or so flights of steep, wooden steps (105 of them)from the crest of the Komas bluffs to Morning beach. Other than some guy swimming nude in the distance we were all alone. We hobbled along the rocky shore which was unstable enough that Toby couldn't make much progress. I would carry him over the rocks and put him down on the sandy parts. We found a patch of sand right at the water edge and we enjoyed a perfectly secluded private pure sand beach until we were ready to move on. Along the way we hunted crabs, squished little spongy things, rock hopped, picked up shells and rocks, having a blast. Then we crossed the channel to the island and we were literally walking on the bottom of the sea. Ollie kept finding moths and naming them names like Ken and Jefferson. Toby wanted to be carried constantly so we made up a song about him:

    It's goody to be a lazy Daisy,
    On a woodsy walk.
    Riding daddy's shoulders,
    Over slippery rocks.

    It's goody to be a lazy Daisy
    On the bottom of the sea.
    Riding daddy's shoulders
    Unless it's daddy you happen to be.

    We were singing this and feeling pretty good about ourselves in our yellow submarine when Ollie stepped up on a seaweed covered boulder, slipped and wiped out slicing his hands and left knee on some gnarly barnacles. By this time we were a couple of km out and neither kids could walk independently over the rocks, both were crying and Ollie was bleeding out on the sand. After some urgent explanation that no one cared to hear I swooped up Ollie and carried him a couple of hundred meters until the rocks became impassable by Toby. I put him down and carried Toby a hundred meters than walked back and picked up Ollie. I repeated this for a good portion of the way back. Eventually Ollie started limping after me when I was carrying Toby so I had less distance to cover when I came back for him. When we reached the sandy area by the water I set them both down on a log and ordered them not to move so I could go swimming and give my sweaty body some relief. When I hiked back to where I left them they had filled my hat with sand and rocks which they placed on my head after asking me to close my eyes and bend down. We made it back to the car and went out for dinner for our last night on Denman Island.    Read more

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