Anyway, slightly later than planned here are some photos from my trip to Canada. By my reckoning I was 12 or 13 here, and it wasn't really a typical family holiday! We went to canada for 3 weeks to do a mixture of backpacking and sea kayaking. The sea kayaking photos have got lost in the email ether, but I do have the backpacking ones. I'll post the kayaking ones sometime soon. We spent 5 days walking the Juan de Fuca Trail on Vancouver Island. We carried everything we needed, tents, sleeping bags, stoves, food, etc. with us. As you can see from the photos below even though my Mum and Dad carried alot of things my younger brother and I both had huge rucsacs too. My strongest memory about this trip was that it was hard work, but the forests were also spectacular.
I also remember the bears! We were camping on beaches quite often, one morning we woke up hear large thuds, when we all poked our heads out of our tents we saw a very large black bear flipping over stones to eat the small crabs underneath, when we looked in another direction we then saw her 2 cubs. If you know anything about bears you'll know that this is not a good thing! However as there were 7 of us, and we were all in tents there isn't really alot you can do. We all stayed put, watching her being completely oblivious to us, eventually getting to within 10 metres of us before he decided that she'd had enough for breakfast and ambled off. Certainly an experience to remember!
