Day 85, Thursday, September 8

I crossed the border into Canada today and managed to get myself turned around in Vancouver. I was planning to ride through Vancouver using only my intuition and a paper map for directions. Thank HEAVENS I had my GPS. I took one (I think) initial wrong turn and that blossomed into a whole bunch of add-on wrong turns. Since I was in no hurry I tried for a little while to get myself back onto the highway without calling "help" to my GPS but in the end I gave in to technology. I’d looked on the map this morning and figured where the closest provincial parks were to Vancouver. Based on the map, the camping at Mt. Seymour seemed to fit the bill perfectly. That was, it seemed to fit until I got there. The camping is way up at the top of the mountain and while the weather was clear and comfortable at the base of the mountain, it was cold, windy, and starting to rain at the top. Screw that. I’ve had enough cold, rainy camping for a while. I decided I’d try my luck riding up the coast West of Vancouver looking for another park. I stopped by Horseshoe Bay Provincial Park and one of the workers told suggested I try further up the coast at Porteau Cove since there was no camping available in Horseshoe Bay. What a fantastic recommendation. Porteau Cove is beautiful! I got there after dark and still managed to get a campsite about 20 feet from the water. I love going to sleep to the sound of waves breaking on a shore. It reminds me of some of the special weekends of my childhood in Mobile AL when we’d go over to Cotton Bayou. Friends of ours from Church, the Gilcrests, had a house (cabin? ...things seem bigger when you’re a child) right on the water and my brother and I would get to spend the entire weekend playing in the water and fishing off their pier. I can still remember waking up in the morning to the sound of the first boats heading out of the harbor across the glass calm water followed by the sound of their wake hitting the shore a minute later. Good memories!