Notes from BC - A collection of writings about life in British Columbia
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Cultus Lake

 
July 21, 2010
 

Camping at Cultus Lake

A few days ago we went on our first Canadian camping trip to Cultus Lake. There are quite a few sites around the lake and we opted to stay at Entrance Bay which was only $30 a night. This weekend we're doing some more camping with our friends over at Sombrio Beach on Vancouver Island and we'd decided we wanted to get some camping experience before we go there. We picked Cultus after remembering how beautiful it was on our day trip there last year. It only took us about an hour and half to get there from home and we managed to get the tent up in the early afternoon which allowed us to spend plenty of time beside the lake. We had brought a mini collapsable stove which took a while to get going and in the end (without realizing at first we could pull the wick out to make it burn better) we built up a camp fire and finished of cooking our dinner on there. We hadn't purchased any wood but luckily we found some nearby and I found some good tinder to get it going (though Lou soon took over!), Ray Mears would have been proud! 

The tent itself was smaller then we thought and the inflatable bed we had brought only just fit inside. I couldn't even stretch out flat (despite it apparently being 7ft long) so it was a bit cramped to say the least, it's a good job Lou doesn't take up much room! It said on the tent's box it was supposed to be a 3 man tent, I can only presume those three men must have been the size of garden gnomes. Somehow we still managed to get a semi-decent nights sleep. It was great to be away from the noise of the city and all we could hear at night were birds and thankfully no bears, a night without hearing sirens was bliss. The following day we drove a couple of KM's down the road to one of the secluded ends of the lake. They have several piers there so we found a good spot for some sun bathing. It started to get a bit hot so I decided to cool down and take a swim in the lake but Lou couldn't be persuaded into the cold water. It's nice to have a great place like this only 90 minutes away from home and it really was a good relaxing trip. It's definitely something we'll be doing again and maybe for a few more nights next time.

                                     
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September 7, 2009
 

Labour Day In Chilliwack And Cultus Lake

Today is Labour Day which is an annual holiday in Canada. As the name suggests the day is in celebration of the economic / social success of workers. Apparently most countries celebrate it on May 1st but here (and in US) it is on the first Monday of every September.

As we knew a lot of people were likely to be at the popular indoor places around Vancouver we decided to go on a road trip and head out to somewhere a bit quieter. We settled on going to Chilliwack which is 100km east of where we live. It's a simple route to get there, you go along highway 1 for the majority of the drive and it only takes about an hour and 15 minutes. We didn't really have any motive for going, it was just a place we'd heard of that seemed a fair distance away from anywhere else we'd been too! The drive over was good especially for the latter part of it, as soon as we'd gone past Abbotsford (about half the way) we were driving alongside the mountains which looked really cool when we were closer. 

When we finally got to Chilliwack we noticed the place was really quiet, there wasn't many people around at all and a lot of the shops were closed, oops! It was then we thought to ourselves maybe we should have done a little bit of research about the place beforehand. Lou found a second hand book store which may sound pretty lame to most people but to a book lover it was, in Lou's words, "Paperback Heaven"! Lou got 3 books for $11 and then we continued to walk around for another 45 minutes but we didn't see a great deal we could do on the day.  Chilliwack (we now know) is really a smallish (80,000 people) rural town and the main things it offers we weren't prepared for! It looks like a great place to go to if you want to go biking, hiking or fishing so we'll have to remember this place when we have the equipment to do any of those activities. 

We'd brought with us some food for a picnic so instead of sitting in a car park we decided we'd go for something a bit more scenic for our late lunch. We headed down to Cultus Lake which was about 12km south from where we were (and a pleasant drive to get there). We were surprised when we got there to find there were only about 10 other cars parked up, though it had started to get cooler and the clouds were getting darker. We found a nice picnic bench next to the lake to have our lunch and then we had a leisurely walk around the place. Our friend Sam had mentioned to us it is a great place to go to when it's hot weather, I can definitely see why. You can swim in the lake which is very clear and full of fish, it will be awesome to go back there one day to do that. Lou loves the property surrounding the lake, there really are some nice looking homes but I think we need to start playing the local lotto before we can even dream of living there!  We'd probably go as far as saying that in terms of natural beauty this was the nicest place we have been to so far. 

 [EDIT : I've since looked up prices and apparently in the early 2000's you could get property for around $200k but now the average price is around $325k,  however this still sounds great to me considering how nice the place is]

                 
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