Van Camp BC: Escaping the Rain & Wildlife Encounters

Hi everyone. So we're doing a sort of mid-September break. We kind of just headed out again with no real destination in mind. We actually wanted to sort of chase the sun, but in actual fact what seemed to happen is the rain chased us. But we got out to a couple of our favourite spots. We were in Manning Park for a couple of nights and did a paddle I've wanted to do for a long time and a hike. When we arrived in Manning Park, the larger reservable loop of the Lightning Lakes Campground was full, so we checked with the park operator and was told that the sites in the smaller loop were available for first come first serve. And when we got there, we saw that there were plenty of spaces free. And we had an unexpected visitor in our campsite. I was just about to leave the van by the side doors when I saw him and didn't want to scare him, so we stayed in the van during the visit. And we also had the privilege of seeing the resident beaver at Spruce Bay Beach during our evening walk. This was the reason chopsticks were originally invented, was to be used to place under the lid on your kettle so that you didn't have that annoying whistling sound going too long when you're trying to boil the water longer than, say, a minute. After breakfast, we headed out for our hike to Thunder Lake, the furthest lake in the Lightning Lake chain at Manning Park. We'd never ventured that far before, and we're excited to see it and paddle the lake in our packraft. Vicki says I have a funny get-up. That's just only because I'm carrying her PFD on my back. These are the biggest mushrooms I've ever seen. A little overgrown. Yo, bear. I'm just making sure if there's anybody joining us, they know we're on the route. Neither Vicki or I brought our machete today. We were just coming through this rock section, and it's gorgeous, but right over there, there's a black bear. You won't be able to see him with the camera. We were coming down, and he was scrambling from the trees up the side of that bank and went up about halfway, and then we were far enough away we were comfortable passing, but we weren't going to stop and take video. So almost at the lake. We're hoping that the bear will have time to move on to wherever he'd like to go. So our yelling and making noise as we went through the bushy parts was a good idea. So we didn't realize how small a lake this is. It actually ends right there. It's not going to be a very long paddle, but it's just one of those things where you just have to do it because you're here. And Gordon lugged the pack raft all the way, so. We were going to go through the Okanagan and head probably sort of across the south part of the province, but it just started to rain everywhere. As we went through the Okanagan trying to drive away from the rain, it kept catching up to us. So we decided to head west towards Merritt to see if we would have any better luck. Now we're back at Mamquam Lake, which is one of our favorite places. Actually, it's Marquart Lake. Oh, Marquart Lake. And it's just great here. We'll put a link to our previous video while we were here. We were here maybe a year and a half ago at the start of the season, so the grasslands were alive with fresh flowers. And now we're at the end of the season, but it's still incredibly pretty and looks so different. It's just wonderful. There's just, again, so much less people traveling right now. So it's really nice. It's sort of a gray tide, if you will. A lot of people seem to be retired right now, but it makes it very peaceful. Manning wasn't too busy. There were several empty spots, and there was only one other person camped where we were last night. So it was just wonderful. As we drove towards home on the Coquihalla Highway No. 5, we saw the devastation caused by the wildfires this past summer. Thanks, everyone, for watching our video. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel if you haven't already done so. We'll see you next time!