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Someday it would be nice to own some vacation property.  Ideally, it would be within a three-hour drive of home, somewhere remote, waterfront, with lots of hikes and such nearby. 

Until then … I think an Airstream Basecamp would be a good start.  I’m getting a bit old for the rougher camping and really appreciate staying dry and warm.  I don’t need a bus-sized monster RV though; the Basecamp seems like a great mini trailer, and its weight is within the towing capacity of our current vehicle.  Too bad the price tag of a Basecamp is something like $25k, and the only authorized retailer in Canada is in Quebec. 

It would be fun to have an Airstream though!  On our last ferry ride over to Nanaimo, there were about a dozen long ones, all with different States’ license plates - it looked like a convention of them.  I wonder where they were going, and where they were coming from. 

Another sunny weekend!  Last Sunday morning, Eva and Katie and I drove out to Westham Island to pick some berries.  Raspberry season was over at the first place we stopped at, Bissett Farms, although they were selling flats of already-picked raspberries.  Instead, we picked blueberries at $1.60/lb.  It was pretty fast going, especially once we got halfway down the rows.  It’s early season yet, so I expect next weekend or the one after to be even better for blueberry picking.

We then stopped at Emma Lea Farms where the raspberry picking was open, but there were hardly any ripe ones.  We bought some raspberry ice cream sundaes instead and enjoyed them in the shade.  Some lucky people had found the blackberry rows and returned with bowls of really giant ones.  It’s early season for blackberries too, but I’ll definitely be going back in a couple of weeks for those.

Our last stop was the Westham Island Herb Farm, where we bought garlic, new potatoes, peas, carrots and golden beets.  A bunch of people were enjoying lunch in the shade here, and it turns out they were on a Circle Farm Tour.  There’s another such tour happening in Agassiz on August 9th and I’m hoping to go then.
The coolest part of our drive to Westham Island was the truss bridge linking it to Ladner, passing over Canoe Pass in the Fraser River estuary.  The bridge was begun in 1909 and from it you can see lots of floating homes on the river, some of which are part of Canoe Pass Village, a pricey floating home strata community.

We spent a very pleasant afternoon last weekend at Lucille Lake, north of Squamish.  We hiked in from the parking lot near the Cheakamus river bridge – about 15 minutes on foot, which felt way longer as we were carrying all kinds of provisions.  It was sunny (not too many shady spots available) and a bit windy, but there was a nice sandy beach and the lake was warm and very pleasant to swim in.

There were way too many dogs there – I would have been happy if there was just Buffy!  She made huge progress with her swimming skills, or at least her confidence in the water.  She drank a few gallons of lake water, which she then returned to the lake in pee form, several times.  Quite funny actually.

The drive back was painfully slow due to some malfunctioning traffic lights just south of Squamish, but we had given Buffy some more Gravol in a cheese stick so she slept all the way home.  Lucille Lake is lovely - hopefully the weather will improve and we can go again this summer.