You Will Cry When You See It // The Incredible Story of Big Lonely Doug // EFRT S6 EP 22

Welcome to another episode of the Epic Family Road Trip, the Empty Nest Edition. This is the good stuff, the good smelling western red cedar. Somebody cut a few sections so I'm able to chop some wood out of there by hitting it sideways. This is the stuff that smells amazing. It splits up so it's smooth. It's just fine grain, smooth grain cedar wood. It's almost a shame to burn it, it's so beautiful. So they make cedar shakes, cedar shingles. Hey guys, it is Monday afternoon and it is a blustery day here on a beautiful lake called Flora Lake and it's uh, sorry, Lando's looking for something. What are you looking for buddy? What are you looking for? The bulb? Anyway, it's called Flora Lake. I'm gonna hide behind this tree because the wind gusts are coming through pretty strong. We've got camp set up right over here and we've got the windshield out to keep the fire from blowing away. We might just reposition the jeep because uh, yeah, we'll be rocking it and rolling. I was saying we might reposition the jeep, I think we absolutely will. Let's just pack up real quick. We came in here and it was calm and then these gusts started coming in. So, chairs are going to be put down, tomatoes rescued. We've never had the tent blow all the way over like that. I guess we've had some pretty big windstorms but last time we were all, we were in it so. Carol, you just kept cooking? I'm hungry. Your hand got... I can't move after. Wow, okay, well we'll finish dinner here but yeah, that was the fastest put down of the tent ever. We haven't moved far but we repositioned the jeep so where before we had it facing straight towards the lake and we're over here just directly to all the gusts that are coming off the lake. We're now back in this way and instead of having our tent facing the lake we have it facing the forest and we've got that big clump of cedars and a little bit of forest between us and the lake so that should buffer the wind a bit and it's not going to blow us in from behind so I think we're good. That should be a good place to spend the night and it looks like some snowfall in the distance. I don't think it's supposed to snow a lot but it might get a little bit. Hey, it's winter in BC. That's what you get. Looks like Carol made us up a nice wedge salad which is iceberg lettuce with blue cheese dressing, blue cheese, onions, tomatoes and bacon. Man, that's gonna be good. The wind died down a bit last night thankfully like the forecast had said and so we're tucked in here and had a really good sleep. It's a little chilly. Yeah, it didn't snow too much down here but you can see snow all just above us in the trees. Now we're gonna open a new coffee. We get a lot of offers from companies and people wanting to send us stuff to use on the channel and excuse me, 90% of those we have to turn down just because we don't have room and we also don't want to be a commercial channel but when someone offers coffee we normally say yes. Why wouldn't we? So this company 2 North Coffee sent us a couple of bags and we're just gonna get into it this morning. Grind it up. That smells good. This is the breakfast blend and I think they said it's a dark roast as well. Yeah, it's all ethically sourced and organic and it comes whole bean. You can probably get it ground but we like it whole bean. This little portable grinder does one cup per. You get the top on and you get the grinder on and you start grinding. I'll see you in five minutes. All right, we're just gonna have a coffee here this morning and then move on. This episode, one of our side themes is we're going to be looking for elk sheds. That's when they shed their antlers starting about this time of year and then it happens more you know into March and the antlers they rub against something and then drop them and those things are first of all very beautiful. We'd love to get one or two or three up at the lake in our cabin. Carol, you noticed last year found a big moose shed, a big moose antler and we'd love to have some elk with that. So we're going down the mountain a little bit into elk country in the winter that seems to hang out around the river. So we're going to go down there. We might spend the night at the river and spend some time just walking through the bush looking for antlers. There's also a town, a small village called Yubu I think it is and we saw that on looking online. We were searching up about elk and elk walk right through the streets there and so we kind of think that would be a neat town to go and visit and yeah and that's in the Lake Cowichan area and a lot of our followers especially from the island have said you should check out Lake Cowichan and then we're going to move on in search of some more big tree. There's a story about a big Douglas fir that somebody, one of the logging guys helped to save. It's now called Big Lonely Doug I think and it's standing in the middle of a clearing and it's the second largest tree in Canada. So we want to go find Big Lonely Doug and investigate a bit more about that story. It sounds very interesting and a couple other huge groves of old original growth giant trees that have been saved or at least to this point are saved. So yeah come with us. We're exploring Vancouver Island the west side looking for big trees and big elk antlers. True North coffee. Thank you. That was a very good cup of coffee. In fact we had two cups. One of the breakfast roast which is a lighter blend and then we had the dark roast as well. We drink our coffee straight up black so we get to really taste it and it's very very good coffee. So thank you. Cheers. With so many new subscribers to our channel recently we figured it's a good time to reintroduce ourselves. And first of all welcome to the Epic Family Road Trip channel. We are the Van Straelen family and for over five years we have been traveling together as a family of five with the three values work, play, and care. And for us care means to create a remarkable experience by leaving the people we meet in the places we visit a little better than we found them. In 2015 we left the rat race behind to spend quality time together as a family and to seek out interesting and remote places. There we find our senses heightened and our spirits renewed. Out there we feel truly alive. We're hoping this goes down to the river. Either way it's a beautiful little side road. We're plotting it out here for you. If we find a camp spot we'll mark it for sure. So it does lead to the river actually right back to that little bridge we crossed. But as you can see back there there's a lot of logs across the road and a ton more ahead. So I'm sure somebody will clear it and make a nice place to camp down by the river. Carol's up there looking for antlers. I'm seeing a lot of elk activity and it'll be a great place to find the shed. So we're definitely in elk country. We have only seen like maybe one or two rubs and I don't know if that's from a mule deer or the elk. Lots of droppings and a few bones things like that. Hopefully it's from the wolves or something. But yeah we'll just keep on looking. That's part of the fun. So look at this. This is brand new. Looks like it's going all the way down. Oh and there's some fresh pellets there. That is so neat. Could you imagine finding them? My heart is racing. There's, look at that. And you can see the massive one down there going along the whole trail. I'm just going to follow this. Randall you help me? Let's find it. So that was definitely an active wildlife spot. I think it was more mule or white-tailed deer. But you had lots of droppings, lots of rubs. They're bedded down in there. So no antler but the hunt continues. We're going to carry on down the hill and get down by the river where we saw an elk herd a couple of weeks ago and see what we can find. All right we're just going to pull over here and make some lunch right beside the river. It's not far from where we camped before and we don't often double back to a spot but we saw an elk herd in this area. So that's why we came back because we're looking for elk sheds and this is a good spot probably to start hunting. Hi guys. So we've been out doing some shed hunting and lots of hiking so we are starving. We're going to make a quick lunch. Probably just a pan pizza or something really simple. So let's get to it. This one is a little bit different. I'm actually going to be using one of these. I've never used one before but just for quick and easy lunches. I thought to try it out. You can definitely do homemade pizza dough. I would prefer that. I'm just going to turn it off while I put the toppings on the top. It'll keep it cooking but just at a slower speed. Mediterranean style. Olives, peppers, artichoke, banana peppers, just everything good. Smells amazing already. This is nice and fast because we need to keep on going down the road for a couple hours so this is perfect lunch. I'm going to top it with some mozzarella just to bake slices. If you have a lid that'd be great. If not this works fine. Oh this smells good. Let's just cut into it and get on the road again. You can see the bottom there. It has a nice little crunch to it. Can't wait to get into it. Good. I must say that pizza was delicious. The perfect crunch. Oh my gosh. Anyways we're heading up to the lake now. As we made our way down the trail, Carol noticed a herd of elk feeding along the riverbank. These majestic Roosevelt elk are the largest of the elk species and a mature bull can weigh more than a thousand pounds. They are native to Vancouver Island and are the purest strain of Roosevelt elk left in North America. And just like we expected, when we pulled into the village there was a big bull elk eating grass in someone's backyard. After that we headed back out of town making a quick stop at an ancient spruce tree that was right beside the road before finding a camp spot along the river for the night. Step number one, hook up the buddy heater and get it up in the tent. We got this little adapter so you're not using the green propanes all the time. They're very expensive and they don't last very long. We use a 20 gallon barbecue tank and we could, this thing could run for literally weeks on that tank. So much better setup. Sometimes you get into camp late and you just don't feel like making a fire but you're still cold and you want comfort. Boom. Look at that. It's like an outdoor fireplace ready to go. Super cozy. Turn on the propane. Instant fire. Oh and it's kind of raining. It's raining. So we're all tucked in. Yeah we backed in under the tent. Underneath this. So yeah. We hope you guys enjoyed today and tomorrow we're trying to find Big Lonely Doug and we'll dig into the story of Big Lonely Doug but in the meantime we're just warming up listening to some river sounds. We had the moon up until about, I don't know, three minutes ago and started, the clouds came in and started raining but it's still a gorgeous night here in the rainforest and we're very happy and I hope you guys have a wonderful night. Good morning everyone. Another wonderful sleep. Sound of the river in the background. Can't go wrong. We are now more than halfway to the west coast. We drove last night until just about dusk and then set up camp here and now it's about half an hour to the west coast and then we're gonna head a little bit north and look for Big Lonely Doug. We're heading there now. But first, coffee. It's chilly. It is. Yeah everything's a little rusty this morning. That tree has a big, a couple of big old burrows on it and that's why they call it Canada's gnarliest tree. After hiking both the upper and lower trails of the Avatar Grove we headed further up the logging road in search of Big Lonely Doug. As we rounded a corner we came upon a blockade in the road. The people there explained to us that they are a volunteer group focused on blocking the road to try and stop any further logging in the old growth forest ahead. Their goal is to draw attention to the plight of the forest and ultimately have it dedicated as a protected area by the government of Canada. At the center of this struggle stands Big Lonely Doug. This is the real deal. This is old growth forest. It's not a park. It's not protected unfortunately in any way but it's just there and there are hundreds and hundreds of year old trees and they're everywhere. We just walked in an old grove which is awesome and it's a protected space but this is just everywhere you look there's huge old trees and they're planning to log them which is ridiculous I think. That's great. Those people back there, they do this in their spare time. This is nice. Wow that's so much work. Maybe you shouldn't have worn green today. You smell. You're acting so funny today. Let's go. Come on. What do you smell huh? It's a good exercise as well. The freshest air you'll ever breathe. One winter morning in 2011 a logging engineer named Dennis Cronin was marking out an area of old growth forest for clear cutting when he came upon a huge Douglas fir tree. He marveled at its size and after stepping out its circumference he pulled some tape out of his pocket that he had rarely used. On the tape were the words leave tree and on a whim he tied it around the big Douglas fir. When the logging crew came through to clear cut the area they cut down all the trees except this one. The tree eventually was nicknamed big lonely dog and has since become a symbol of the struggle to find a balance between the world's insatiable need for lumber the jobs and livelihoods of those in the industry and the importance of preserving wilderness areas and old growth forests for the future generations. In the end we realized that the struggle will continue and there are many stories and positions to consider but we hope that these great forests will be protected for the benefit of all and for future generations to enjoy. And in the meantime we'll see you down the road.