SurfingSeattle

This morning, I left the AirBNB at 8AM, about 15 minutes after getting out of bed.  I planned on walking around the International District, and then spending most of the day at a coffee shop before flying back to Los Angeles at night.  A long, indirect walk from the Buddhist Temple led me through Downtown to the Little Saigon section of the International District.  I noticed a bakery/prepared foods restaurant and ordered a fried banana and tofu wrap for breakfast.

From there, I walked to Downtown Seattle and spent most of the day in coffee shops, before taking the subway to the airport a few hours before my flight.

Today, I woke up and continued trying to recover the data from the SurfingSeattle blog.  At about 11AM, I left the AirBNB and spent a few hours working at a Starbucks near the Metrotown Station.  At about 2PM, I started heading over to Pacific Central Station, where the Amtrak bus leaves from.  I had about $15 in Canadian cash which I wanted to spend before heading back to the United States.

I ended up spending the $15 in the stupidest place possible:  McDonalds.  I ordered a fancy sandwich, with (upgraded) poutine fries, and an iced sugary coffee drink.  Considering, I wasn’t too hungry to begin with, I felt awful after eating this unhealthy meal. This was a terrible idea, especially since I would be spending the next 4 hours riding in a bus.

When I arrived in Seattle, I noticed an informative sign on the street in Pioneer Square.  It was interesting to learn that the Pioneer Square neighborhood was originally underwater, until it was drained to become dry, usable land.

 

When I arrived at King Station, I walked over to the AirBnB at a Buddhist Temple near Pioneer Square.  The temple is called Seattle Choeizan Enkyoji. Here is an interesting article on their website about “Becoming a Buddhist.”

I arrived at the temple at around 9PM.  The temple is located at the edge of both Pioneer Square and the International District, in a neighborhood with a lot of dilapidated buildings, homeless people, and drug addicts.  I walked up to the building’s intercom system, a bit paranoid and attentive of the people surrounding me.  Mike buzzed me in and I walked up the stairs of the clean, well-maintained building to the temple on the 2nd floor.  The sanctuary area of the temple is a highly decorated and ornamented worshipping area with many spiritual images, statues, charity boxes, and other instruments/supplies.  I removed my backpack and walked over to the dining/recreation area where a couple of other travelers were sitting at a table with Mike.  We each shared some basic information about our backgrounds and travels for about 30 minutes, before the conversation winded down.

Mike mentioned that he is basically the caretaker of the temple. The temple decided to post listings on AirBNB because they haven’t been able to raise enough money through donations.  They have a pretty efficient, low-cost, high-grossing operation going on which seems to be a win-win.  However, I was hoping for a more immersive, social, educational experience which I unfortunately didn’t get.  It might have been because I showed up really late.

Write about Buddism and the “becoming a buddhist” article on the temple’s website…..

https://www.youtube.com/user/ChoeizanTemple/videos

 

On Sunday morning, we woke up and split into a couple of groups for the rest of the trip. Michel, Julie, Tyler, Sarah, and I hiked a few minutes to the saddle, steeply climbed up to Mt Cokely, and followed an advanced/difficult, poorly-marked trail down to the trailhead. After a few hours of slowly descending on the ridge, we arrived at the trailhead.  Below is an amazing video that Kate created a few days after the camping trip:

[vimeo 179294383 w=640 h=360]

Arrowsmith saddle 2016 from kate hamm on Vimeo.

From the trailhead, we drove about 45 minutes to the Co-Op gas station where we met back up with and picked up Julien and Rachel.  From there, the seven of us drove to Nanaimo where we would be eating a celebratory lunch and also where I would be taking the ferry back to Vancouver.  We ended up stopping at Longwood Brew Pub where we had burgers and beer in a beautiful environment.  Afterwards, we said our goodbyes and Michel dropped me off at the Nanaimo Ferry.

I boarded the 5:20 PM ferry, and arrived at the Lyn and Paul’s AirBnB in Surrey, where I’ve stayed on three separate occasions during this backpacking adventure.  After taking a shower, I sat down to work on the blog and noticed that the blog had been suspended because of a violation of WordPress’s terms and conditions.  In short, this was a terrible, terrible feeling and a wake up call.  It’s so important to retain full control over any information that’s important to you and to backup all information on a regular basis. Even though, the site was reinstated the next day, it was a terrible feeling and experience.  Lesson learned.

 

This morning, we woke up at 7AM, packed up camp, and drove over to the Co-op gas station at around 8am. Across the street from the gas station, we ate breakfast at Cruiser’s Grill. I ordered an omelette with extra cheese which was very delicious and filled up the tank for the day ahead.

At 11:30AM, the entire Meetup Group met up at the Co-op gas station for the upcoming weekend camping trip.  Here is the Meetup event link.  The event attendees were as follows:

• Michel Pinault (Retired from the Canadian army)
• Kannae (International student from Japan)
• Tyler Moore (plumber/entrepreneur)
• Kate Hamm (attorney and videographer)
• Neil (Machinist who recently moved to Victoria)
• Rand Park
• Julie Tremblay (Event coordinator and fitness/health enthusiast)
• Sarah Ross (Landscaper who moved to Victoria from Ireland a couple years ago)
• Wiebke (Legal assistant who moved to Victoria from Germany 8 years ago)

After a brief pre-trip meeting, we drove to the trailhead which is located about 15 minutes off of the highway, accessible via a graded dirt road.  This page has a useful map showing the location of the trailhead. We then began hiking the unexpectedly strenuous three hours to the saddle between Mt Cokely and Mt Arrowsmith.  The trail wasn’t too long, but was steeply climbing uphill for most of the way.  Since I was expecting a relatively easy hike, I was accustomed to hiking with a much lighter daypack, and it was a very hot day, the hike up to the saddle was a bit difficult.  During the hike, I remember thinking that Julien and Rachel definitely made the right decision not to join us on this hike because of the level of difficulty.  We arrived at the saddle a few hours into the hike, and ascended another 5-10 minutes toward Mt Arrowsmith to the camping area.

Because it was still just 4PM, we all definitely wanted to hike and explore some more before nightfall.  Kate, Kanai, Julie, Neil, Tyler and I decided to hike down to the Jewel Lake, which was a few hundred meters below the camping area.  After searching for the trail for about 30 minutes, we finally found a rough, yet marked trail which steeply descended via switchbacks to Jewel Lake.  Jewel lake is stunning and the water was perfectly refreshing.  We each took turns jumping in, and then swam altogether to the middle of the lake for a few minutes.  We also chatted with a solo-backpacker who was camped on the shores of Jewel Lake.  He mentioned that instead of retracing our steps back to our camping area, we could complete a loop on the ridge above Jewel Lake, which would take us about an hour to complete.   In addition to the stunning views from the ridge, we would also be passing through the site of a crashed airplane from the 1950s.  We we were sold on the ridge loop hike and were excited for what awaited us.  The loop hike featured many long-distance views of the Salish Sea, views of the lake below, walking across snow patches and walking across snow-melt rivers.  After about an hour of hiking, we arrived back on the same ridge where our camping area was located.  We were immediately faced with a beautiful late-afternoon view toward the direction of the trailhead.

When we arrived back at camp, we set up our tents, ate dinner, and had interesting group conversations with a backdrop of an incredible sunset view.  After a few hours of interesting conversations, I went to sleep at around 11PM.

On Friday morning, we packed up camp and left Tofino.  About an hour later, we stopped at a small parking lot off the highway for a break.  We ended up hiking the Giant Cedar Trail, a forest trail which travels alongside the Kennedy River.  Midway into the hike, we removed our shoes and walked to a large, sun-exposed island in the middle of Kennedy River.  Michel, Rachel and I swam in the river for about 15 minutes before returning to the large island to have a lunch break.  At this time, I crossed the river back to the Giant Cedar Trail because I wasn’t very comfortable laying out on the sun-exposed island for too long.  I told Michel, Rachel, and Julien that I would be strolling around the shaded forest and would meet them on their back to the car.  About 30 minutes later, they were walking back to the car and told me that Rachel and Julien decided to spend a couple of days on Kennedy River and would meet up with us on Sunday at the Co-op gas station near Cameron Lake.  Throughout the week, Rachel and Julien were hesitant about joining us for the upcoming weekend camping trip to Arrowsmith Saddle because they were concerned it would be too strenuous.  Considering the high difficulty level of the upcoming weekend’s hike, this was probably a good decision.

Michel and I continued on toward Port Alberni, planning on camping at the same place as we did on Tuesday night across the highway from Cameron Lake.  We drove about 30 minutes out of our way to visit Stamp River Provincial Park, a park and campground with a waterfall and fish ladder.  We walked along the river, waterfall, and fish ladder for about 30-45 minutes, before returning to Port Alberni and continuing on Highway 4 toward Cameron Lake.

We arrived at Cameron Lake at about 6PM, with a few hours of daylight remaining.  Michel wanted to relax and swim at Cameron Lake, but I was more in the mood for a walk, so I just decided to walk across the Highway and hike the Arrowsmith Trail to Mckay Bridge again (same hike as wednesday morning).  Afterwards, I descended back to Cameron Lake just in time to catch the end of a beautiful sunset.

This morning, we woke up to the loud sounds of birds crowing before 7AM.  We packed up camp and drove about 30 minutes to Ucluelet, a sister town to Tofino with similar recreational opportunities.  At Michel’s recommendation, we ate breakfast at Matterson House, a historical house-turned-restaurant with a cozy, comfortable feel.  I ordered a lox omelette w/ potatoes and toast which was delicious.

A short drive from the restaurant, we decided to park in the coast guard parking lot and to hike the Lighthouse Loop.  Lighthouse Loop is a 2.6KM trail which follows the rugged, scenic coastline near Ucluelet.  The trail passes numerous beaches, coves, and even a historic lighthouse.  We took our time walking the Lighthouse Loop, stopping off at almost all of the overlook points and beach-access points.

After hiking Lighthouse Loop, we drove to Tofino and stopped by a cafe in Downtown called Common Loaf Bakery, to have a coffee and use Wifi for a few hours as Rachel and Julien were trying to secure a couchsurfing arrangement for next week in Vancouver. Michel and I also enjoyed the atmosphere of the coffee shop, and left the coffee shop for 15 minutes to walk around  the downtown area.

After leaving Common Loaf Bakery, we tried visiting a hike Rachel and Julien had heard about in which hikers can climb up trees and relax in mesh nets up in the trees. At the trailhead, a local notified us that the nets had been removed from the trees earlier in the year, and that we shouldn’t waste our time on the hike. We listened to the helpful local, and instead decided to hike the Tofino Airplane Hike, which Sarah Ross had told us about. After some brief online research, we drove to the Radar Hill parking lot, paid the Pacific Rim National Park fee, and began walking back to the main highway to locate the trailhead of the Tofino airplane hike.  According to the website, we would need to walk back to the highway, proceed to walk past 15 telephone/utility poles, and at the 15th telephone/utility pole there would be an unmarked trailhead where we would begin the hike.  At the 15th electricity/utility pole, there was a drawing of a small airplane on the pole, and we followed the trail into the forest to begin the hike.

The trail initially ascended for about a 1/4 mile to an abandoned building, which previously operated as a radio building.  From there, the trail descended for a 1/4 mile, until leveling out in a muddy, swamp-like environment.  For the next mile, we navigated our way on branches, logs, vegetation, and higher ground, doing everything we could to avoid the muddy ground.  After about an hour of hiking, we reached the remains of the crashed airplane.  The Royal Canadian Air Force Bomber crashed in 1945 and is in surprisingly complete shape and mostly intact, not what one would expect to see when visiting a 70 year old site of a plane crash.  Rachel, Julien, and I examined and climbed on top of the plane, taking photos and enjoying the site while Michel barely approached the plane.  It wasn’t until a few days later, that Michel relayed to me that as a former soldier he couldn’t bring himself to playfully and lightheartedly climb on top of a crashed army plane (even though there were no casualties in the crash).  I fully understand Michel’s reasoning and if I had known about it at the time, I probably would have refrained from climbing on top of the plane and taking more than a couple photographs.

After the Tofino Airplane Hike, we drove back to Chesterman Beach where we had a bonfire last night.  On the way to Chesterman Beach, we collected dry firewood right off of the main highway, and arrived at the beach well prepared for a bonfire and viewing of the Perseid Meteor Shower.  Throughout the night, every 5-10 minutes a streak of light shot across the star-filled sky.

Before sundown, I took a 15 minute cold shower at the showers near the parking lot of the beach.  The full shower made me feel refreshed and revitalized before the bonfire at the beach.  After spending a few hours at the beach, we drove to the landfill campground and set up camp for the night.

After waking up across the street at our campsite across the highway from Cameron Lake, we continued ascending the dirt road which we camped on last night, to the trailhead of the Arrowsmith Trail.  We hiked a total of 10 km on the Arrowsmith Trail and Lookout Trail.  About 3KM into the trail (and again at 7KM into the total hike) we walked across a bridge above MacKay River, which is a waterfall around the area of the bridge.  After crossing MacKay river, the weather became very cloudy, foggy, cold, and wet.  It was nice to be able to walk in the cold, refreshing weather during the steepest portion of the hike.  About 5km into the trail, we arrived at a lookout point, overlooking Cameron Lake and the Salish Sea.

 

After hiking the Arrowsmith Trail, we walked across the highway to Cameron Lake, where we swam for about 30 minutes.  The lake was beautiful, and it was nice to be able to swim to the wooden floating platform and lay down on the platform in the warm sun, before jumping back into the water and swimming back to the shore.

After dipping into Cameron Lake, we started driving toward Tofino.  Right off of the main Highway, we noticed a small parking area fronting a river.  We parked there and walked across the rocky formations and across the river, which weaves its way through the rocky formations, thereby creating alternating areas of slow-moving pools of water and fast-moving waterfalls and whitewater rivers.

After walking around the rocks for a few minutes, Rachel suggested that we should swim in the river.  I was hesitant and definitely wouldn’t have had I been alone, but I’m never a person to shoot down someone’s adventurous idea.  Before I knew it, we were in our shorts, counting down to jump into the water at the same time at the end of 3..2…1 countdown.  Before we knew it, Michel was also jumping into the water and we increased the height of our jumping from 5 feet to 7 feet to 10 feet, until eventually jumping from a height of about 15 feet into one of the river pools.  This was one of the highlights of the Tofino Road trip and it just goes to show and reinforce the importance of being open-minded, adventurous and going with the flow.  As long as a situation, won’t lead to permanent pain/discomfort and doesn’t clash with your values/beliefs, then just go for it and it’ll be sure to be a wonderful experience.  Discomfort is temporary, memories will be treasured forever.

While crossing the river and walking back to the car, I slipped and my phone was immersed in water.  I immediately removed my phone from the water and stored it in a container of raw rice for 12 hours.  Luckily my phone still works perfectly.

We then drove to Tofino and headed straight to Chesterman Beach, a beautiful expansive beach in Tofino.  Chesterman Beach is also one of a couple of beaches in Tofino where bonfires are allowed.  We found a nice spot, gathered (wet/inefficient) firewood, and created a fire.  A nearby group/family noticed we were struggling with our fire, and offered a few pieces of large, dry firewood which helped us build a great, lasting fire for a couple of hours.  After a couple of hours, we drove to the “Emergency Landfill Campground” in Tofino, a free campground which very few people know about, where we set up camp and spent the night.

This morning, I left the AirBNB and spent a few hours having breakfast, walking around Downtown Victoria, and shopping for groceries for the upcoming road trip to Tofino.  At 1PM, I boarded bus #50 from Downtown Victoria to Six Mile Road, where I exited a walked a few blocks to Michel’s home.

At about 2PM, Michel, Julien, Rachel, and I began driving along the highway toward Nanaimo.  After about an hour of driving, we stopped at a lookout point overlooking Cowichan Lake.

After a few minutes at the overlook, we continued driving another hour toward Nanaimo.  We stopped at Old Country Market, a well-known tourist attraction in Coombs, BC.  A newly-emigrated Norwegian couple started a roadside fruit stand at the location of Old Country Market.  They incrementally expanded their offerings to include a market, restaurant, ice cream shop, and much more.  Inspired by some of the architecture in Norway, they designed the market building to have a sod roof.  As the grass grew increasingly longer on the roof, they placed goats on the roof to keep the grass presentable.  Because of the high levels of attention the goats received from passersby, they decided to keep the goats on the roof permanently.  Whether or not this was originally a genius marketing ploy or originally an innocent attempt at keeping the roof presentable, I really admire how they’ve created a tourist destination in the middle of nowhere.  The inside of the market contained a wide variety of international packaged foods, groceries, and pastries.  It was an adventure walking through the market and searching through all the different foods.

 

From there, we continued on to Little Qualicum Falls Park.  The park contains several pathways which follow and overlook a river and quite a few waterfalls.  We walked on many of the trails at a leisurely pace, enjoying and taking in the views and sounds of the magnificent falls.  We even found a nice, quiet spot on the Little Qualicum River, where we swam and waded in the refreshingly cold water.  On the road trip, it quickly became evident how much we all enjoyed swimming in the rivers and lakes.  Considering that we would be camping for 6 days without access to showers, we pretty much had no choice but to embrace and enjoy swimming in nature.

Afterwards, we drove to Macmillan Provincial Park, where we would enjoy the last hour or so of daylight in an old growth forest.  The Cathedral Trail is a loop that passes through an old growth forest with trees that are hundreds of years old.  The highlight of the trail is an 800 year old Douglas Fir Tree that is over 200 feet tall.  After completing the Cathedral Trail, Big Tree Trail, and old Growth Trail, we drove a few minutes a camped on a quiet dirt road across the street from Cameron Lake.

This morning, I left the AirBnB at around 9:30AM to meet Michel, Julian, and Rachel at Six Mile Pub to carpool to East Sooke Park.  Julian (20 years old) and Rachel (22 years old) are siblings from France that are traveling through BC for a couple of weeks on a really low budget.  They are Couchsurfing with Michel for a few days and were very kind, friendly people.

After driving about 30 minutes to East Sooke Park, we met up with Tyler and Julie at the trailhead.  At East Sooke Park, we hiked on the Coast Trail to Cabin Point, before walking back to the trailhead on another interior trail.  The trail was beautiful, rugged, and followed the twists and turns of the coastline the entire way along the coast.  During the hike, Julie (a personal trainer who is also passionate about diet) shared information about her Ketogenic/Intermittent-fasting diet.   As a slim/petite women, she eats over 100 grams of fat every day, eats about 30-40 grams of protein each day, and avoids carbs as much as possible.  She adheres to this Ketogenic diet without eating anything at all before 3PM.  Every day, she eats just two meals, one at 3PM and one at 8PM.  According to her, the 18 hours between her nightly meal and daily meal helps her organs to recover and not be overworked from constant eating throughout the day.

During the hike, Rachel and Julian mentioned that they’re planning on hitchhiking to Tofino tomorrow.  Upon hearing that me, Julian, and Rachel are all planning on heading to Tofino tomorrow, Michel suggested that we should all plan a trip there and travel together.  The costs of gas should be $25 each, which would be much cheaper than the $120 roundtrip Tofino Express bus service.  For me this works out great, and it’s looking like we will actually be doing this.

On the way back from the hike, we decided to stop by Matheson Lake to go swimming.  The water was refreshingly cold and all of us, swam to an island in the middle of the lake.  We climbed up on the island, jumped back into the lake, and swam back to shore.  The fifteen minute swimming was an incredible bonding experience and one of the highlights of the day.  There’s just something about swimming in bodies-of-water in nature, which just makes for a blissful experience.

From Matheson Lake, Michel, Rachel, Julian, and I stopped by My Chosen Cafe, a cozy, character-filled cafe serving ice cream, coffee, food, and bakery goods.  I ordered a coffee and banana/cream cheese cake, which was delicious.  After leaving My Chosen Cafe, we parted ways and planned to meet up at 1:30PM at Michel’s place to carpool to Tofino.

As soon as I arrived at the AirBNB, I showered and left the house to meet Steve for dinner. About a week ago at Splash Symphony, we had an interesting conversation and he seemed like an interesting, unique, enthusiastic guy to have a very in-depth conversation with.  We planned to meet at The Reef, a popular Caribbean restaurant in Victoria.  The food was flavorful, unique, and a great experience in and of itself.

The conversation with Steve included the discussion on the following topics.  Throughout the three hour conversation in the restaurant and on Yates Street, I was picking his brain and gaining incredible insights into a very unique, kind, hard-working, passionate and genuine person.

• Steve rented an AirBNB apartment for is 6 week stay in Victoria.  It’s his first time using Airbnb, and he made a mistake of not reviewing the reviews well enough.  apartment (first experience and $1,400/month)
• One of the reasons he chose to spend 6 weeks in Victoria is because he thinks the people here are extremely, polite, and kind, and that he will be much more successful in his personal relationships if he’s in this type of an atmosphere
• His gradual interest in the past 4-5 years in businesses, podcasts, affiliate website businesses (cell phones/music).  After listening to the “Smart Passive Income w/ Pat Flynn,” he has began building websites to try to achieve passive income, which he finds to be almost impossible to achieve as a music teacher
• Recreational drug use (Most of our conversations were about this topic but I can’t disclose much of what we spoke about)

This morning, we woke up at about 6AM while it was raining.  We quickly packed up our wet tents and sleeping bags, and drove to the Safeway/Starbucks in Port Angeles.

After enjoying a coffee and breakfast, we drove to Storm King Ranger Station which also serves as the trailhead of the Marymere Falls Trail.  The Marymere Falls Trail is a 1.5 mile (total) out-and-back trail, the midpoint of which is a beautiful waterfall.  The first (and last) .5 mile of the trail is relatively flat, with the next 1/8th of the mile steeply ascending up to the waterfall.

After ending our hike at the ranger station, we spent a few minutes tracing the previous day’s hike on a full-wall 3D rendering of Olympic National Park at the Visitors Center. At this point, it was about 10:45, and we decided to rush over to Port Angeles and try boarding the 12:45 ferry to Victoria, rather than the 5PM ferry we were originally planning on.  Our cars were #19 and #20 in the standby line because we didn’t have reservations.  We were extremely lucky and our cars ended up being the 2nd-to-last and 3rd-to-last cars on the ferry.

We arrived in Victoria at around 2:30PM, and Michel dropped me off near Thetis Lake so that I could try hitchhiking to Goldstream Provincial Park.  After about 30 minutes of unsuccessful hitchhiking at the entrance of highway, I just watched back to Six Mile Pub and boarded the 50 bus to Downtown.  Once there, I texted the AirBNB hosts for that night (Ed and Karen), who cooperated in letting me check in at 7PM rather than 9PM as originally planned.

Ed and Karen are empty nesters and world travelers.  They have a very cozy home, with walls containing sentimental artwork and photographs from their travels.  They have spent a lot of time in Thailand, and most of their artwork and photographs seem to be from that country.  They are using AirBNB as a way to make some extra money, but also to meet travelers and to feel a bit like they are traveling themselves.

At around 8:30PM, Ed invited me downstairs to meet their other AirBNB guest, Vaughan.  Vaughan works in the Tech industry, has two kids (aged seven and two) and is in the process of moving his family over from Vancouver to Victoria.  He recently acquired a home in Victoria for $501,000 The final move date is scheduled for August 31st, just a few days before his children start school.  The reason for his move is that he grew up in a small town, and believes that it’s best for his children to grow up in a smaller town than Vancouver (Vancouver has a population of 3.5 million Vs. Victoria having a population of 350,000). He also believes that in addition to the size, Victoria’s location on an island, greatly affects the way of life and feeling in the city.   Ed, Vaughan and I got involved in an hour-long, interesting conversation about the differences between Victoria and Vancouver, the sharing economy (Uber, AirBnB), and traveling.  The conversation was definitely one of the highlights of the day.

 

Michel’s Additional Photos from the Olympic NP Trip: