Entry tags:

camping, cody, coral, darcy, friends, hornby, joe, jordan, kc, malcolm, marina, mike, n, photos, vacation, weekend

Mostly Camping.
I took last Friday off work to go camping with: smokes_outside, darcymercer, rowdyllama, coralcoralcoral, fakesharkstore, codycallon, mikesleckyesq, KC!, Joe & Marina!

The whole trip could probably be summed up with the words: FOUR SQUARE!, A WHOLE LOT OF FOOD!, SCOOBY SNACKS!, PHOSPHORESCENCE! and CAMPFIRES!

SO - we went camping on Hornby Island (and seriously click on that link, I can't believe how tropical it looks in that picture!), which is not one, not two, but THREE ferry rides away from Vancouver. The ten of us (Nigel took his motorcycle over) piled in the Fake Shark van at 9:00am Friday morning and headed to Horseshoe Bay to catch the ferry to Nanaimo..



















Cody was realllly hung over..





























It didn't take us very long to set up camp, it was a pretty fancy "family oriented" campsite. We'd actually gone to Costco the day before and bought a TON of food, but discovered when we got there that there was a coffee shop, co-op, taco stand and breakfast place literally STEPS away from our site. There was also a ten pm quiet time curfew with a hefty $300 fine if you got a complaint. Lucky for us, Tribune Bay was just around the corner..




"notice we're the only ones over 25?" heh










she was selling pie for a dollar. <3



















I'm not sure who's genius idea it was, but FOUR SQUARE was re-discovered early in the evening.. we played until it got dark, or were we rained out? I was too drunk to really remember.







Saturday August 23rd













































Saturday night was fantastic. Since we had been warned at least three times on Friday night about bringing booze to the beach, we decided to head over to the bay around the corner from the main beach for our fire & evening drinks. It was the perfect beach for it, NOBODY bothered us except for this really nice guy who brought a bucket over for us to use to put out our fire when we were done(!!)
I wish I'd been able to capture one of the most epic moments of the night.. but it was just impossible to take a picture of. I don't know if you've ever experienced phosphorescence (it's bioluminescent algae), but it is totally breathtaking. I couldn't figure out for the longest time if it was just my eyes picking up the white in the waves (in the dark) or if it really was glowing.. but later in the night we walked down to the water and you could SEE all the glowing dots on the shore and your hands, where ever the water broke. Even if you stamped your feet in the seaweed on the shore you could see it. The most amazing part was when Joe RAN into the ocean and everywhere he went was just GLOWING green.. like, completely impossible to miss GLOWING. He said when he put his head under water all he could see was glow. I should have gone in.. but it was just so damn cold. I've promised myself I will next time I get the chance. amazing.







































Sunday August 24th

We packed up and got out by 11:00, impressive! Nigel managed to escape right away and get home by 3:00 since you can drive right up to the front of the ferry line-up on a motorcycle. We were not so lucky..
After the ferry waits and the driving and the ferry ride, we managed to get back into Vancouver at midnight (uuuugh) - though I'm finding that as long as you have good company, even a 13 hour unexpected road trip is completely enjoyable. (I also discovered Strongbow on my way home which might have made it a teeny bit better)



































Today it is raining (again) and it feels like fall (anorexic_a! I'm blaming you!). I think this last weekend was probably my last summer adventure of the year.. but I think I'm okay with that.
Penticton, Ashland, Seattle, The Gorge, Hornby - yup, I had a pretty amazing summer.

XO