Taken Away Camping

On the May long weekend, I was wisked away camping to somewhere that I'd never been before. I don't think anyone had ever done that before, even though I've gone on some great weekends with others. So this was a treat!!! Just to not make the plans and just to pack camping gear - which I did get in trouble for bringing too much stuff, but I'm a girl?!?! Mark is the current man who I did meet online. Actually, for the record, we had met years ago through mutual friends of ours, but I was with Sean and he was with someone else then. It was an interesting first date that's for sure. Back to camping - the weather was supposed to be really rainy here on the coast, so we went north of Whistler towards Lillooet and then another hour west of Lillooet towards Gold Bridge. Beautiful mountain country up there.

We got up there quite late on the Friday night and camped in a free BC Hydro site. There's quite a lot of them up there and are free!! In the morning we weren't woken up by anyone, but soon after there were a LOT of ATVs zipping around camp and the tunes from big trucks were fired up. Not exactly what we had in mind. We went out for a ride and quickly came across Mowson Pond where noone was camping so we headed back to move camp for some quiet.



Being "taken" camping also meant that I had to not do things the way that I'm used to doing them. That was good for me to let go of having my way, but put my foot down when it was important to me. Had to bring my cooler for car camping so I could have fresh veggies and fruit. Not used to letting someone else that I'm involved with take the lead in the wilderness, but again it's good for me. Mark has done more than I so I trust him that he knows what he's doing also. The next day we headed off towards Spruce Lake on our mountain bikes. We had to travel on some dirt and logging roads before we hit the single track. Most of it was ridable for me, but as we went on there were so many trees blown down along the trail that it was annoying so we didn't make the lake and just biked back around another way to camp. I have a couple of pics of me biking, but had problems uploading those so you don't get any - sorry. Here's a view of the valley that we were hanging out in.



We managed to escape most of the rain so Mark had picked a great location. It's also one of his favourite places. Apparantly, I need some lessons in being more gutsy on my mountain bike. I am a bit of a chicken, but I don't like wiping out and am also more hesitant since I don't want to get injured for my Ironman training. He was very patient in waiting for me, but he can't wait until Ironman is over so I can begin my biking lessons. He is that good of a mountain biker, and he also understands the desire to ride/hike for hours and has trained with me on the bike. That is certainly a selling feature of him. Anyways, the weekend was great and look forward to seeing where we head to next.