Now with the cooking adventures resolved for the time being,
and the house starting to approach a state of organization, we have turned our
attention to exploring the new community.
It certainly helps when we get these sunshine days or at least part
days, to make the adventure more complete.
The other day we travelled about 10 minutes down the road to
Cliff Park to see the twin falls of Kanaka Creek. There is an interesting bit of information
that we learned about this area and Kanaka Creek especially, the next day. More on this later.
After hitting the parking lot and starting the short walk
down to the falls, I figured that would be it.
I was wrong. Thankfully, the
falls or at least the viewing areas for the falls are down low and my fear of
heights didn’t kick in, unlike when I visited Helmeken Falls a couple of years
back. I lugged my big camera and lens
with me as well as a wide angle lens and Renee brought the backup camera with a
medium wide angle lens.
I’m not much of a landscape photographer and shooting
waterfalls is a new experience. I see
some pretty incredible photos of them, but mine are not them. The biggest mistake I made was not having a
tripod or neutral density filters. This
would have allowed slow shutter speeds which would have blurred the water into
that “spun glass effect”, that is so popular.
I wasn’t too keen on lugging around that tripod though.
We wandered through the trails, up and down hills and over
bridges. It was pretty spectacular with
most of the tree branches and fences covered in a very pretty moss. It made for some very ghostly type
views. The other thing on display of
course was stupidity.
At one point as we were walking, there was a fence which had
signs prominently displayed which said “danger!
Slippery rocks and cliffs”. Sure
enough this couple climbed over the fence, right over the sign and disappeared
into the bush. I haven’t heard of any
rescue operations yet, but this is why S&R gets called out so much in the
lower mainland.
Later on during the walk, we saw two women with their dog
sitting on a rock, in the river just a few feet from the lip of the falls. I’m not sure how much of a drop it was at
that point, but going over would do some serious damage, not to mention the
hypo-thermia from the extremely chilly waters.
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| DANGER SEEKERS |
It was a much longer expedition than I expected starting
out, with just over 4 km and two hours of hiking. Granted if visiting the park, you can still
get some amazing views just on a short 5-minute walk from the parking lot. Returning to the parking lot, Renee found a
hand written sign reporting a bear sighting.
That’s not quite the thing you want to find on return from a hike. Then again, I guess it’s better than finding
the bear itself.
The next day, we spent an hour loading up the truck for
another trip to the re-cycling depot.
Cardboard galore, Styrofoam by the arm-load, paper, metal, old
appliances, batteries etc. It is amazing
how much re-cyclable material we have produced in the two weeks since moving
in. But the Maple Ridge re-cycling depot
is amazing, and apparently we weren’t the only ones with the idea. There was a vehicle line-up 5 or 6 blocks
long to get in. That was until I
realized that it was the line for the “Transfer Station” which is a fancy term
for The Dump. There is a separate lane
for re-cycling but even there it was a steady stream of vehicles jockeying for
position.
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| CARDBOARD TO THE BIN |
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| OFF LOADING |
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| RENEE GRABS THE LAST PIECES |
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