Getting to Ruckle Park

August 5, 2020

This morning we loaded the car and drove to our friend's home in Ladner. This shortens the trip to the ferry terminal significantly and has the bonus of getting us across the Fraser River in the car. Other solutions include taking the free but infrequent bicycle shuttle through the Massey Tunnel or riding the long way around over the Alex Fraser Bridge. PJ lives 12.5 flat kilometres from the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal.

Waiting for the ferry at Berth 5. We've been here many times, though it's the first time for Maple.

BC Ferries no longer charges the extra $2 for bikes (yay!) but they've installed these racks on most vessels. Not suitable if your bike has delicate wheels or you've got panniers, which they seem to expect you to remove and carry. We just lean our bikes up against the side of the boat as we always have.

Inside the vessel, it's very different. Passengers are to wear masks if they cannot keep 2 metres from others not in their group and many seats are roped off. The regulation that you cannot remain in your vehicle on the car deck has been temporarily lifted so there's lots of room for foot passengers and cyclists.

We avoided the hill leaving Ganges and take the ferry from Tsawwassen to Swartz Bay and then a second ferry to Fulford Harbour. It's a shorter ride to Ruckle PP but the grocery options are not nearly as good. We didn't stop except for some beer since we were concerned about getting a campsite. Everything within easy reach of Vancouver is jammed but Ruckle has a few things going for it: the majority of its 85 or so sites are walk-in and cannot be reserved, and it's expensive to get there with a car from the mainland.

Al is much faster on hills so he went ahead. We were both apprehensive coasting down the hill to the park past the the "campground full" sign but it wasn't full. We even had a few sites to choose from, though the best sites were occupied by people who had either arrived very early (which is only possible from Victoria) or had moved their stuff when the previous occupant left.

We needed to drink the beer before it got too warm so we did that first. (Dageraad is a craft beer maker in Burnaby.)

Not a bad spot, eh? That's Active Pass in the background. The new tent even has helmet-holder straps, one on each side.

Colourful! Gray and orange tent, red and gold sleeping bags, and blue footprint. The footprint is actually from our heavy tent; we are using it on this trip because the one for the new tent is backordered.

Before dinner we went for a walk to the Ruckle Farm. It's one of the oldest continually operating farms in British Columbia, since the 1870s, and there's a small area with historic buildings you can look at. There's also a small farm stand where we bought some cookies for dessert.

We had brought a just-add-boiling-water meal because we weren't sure what would be available in Fulford Harbour and because we'd never had one before and thought we'd try one. It was okay, but fresh food is better. The cookies were great.

We had been trying to pack light for this trip. As you can see in the photos, we did bring our camp chairs but I didn't bring my good camera and neither of us brought our electric toothbrushes. As we were getting ready for bed, we both decided that we missed them. Like the shoe covers we brought, which we greatly missed on our previous trip to Salt Spring, we will take them on all future trips.

Arbutus (arbutus menziesii) shedding bark. I liked the colours.

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Today's ride: 23 km (14 miles)
Total: 23 km (14 miles)

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Rachael AndersonGreat to see you getting a chance to get away!
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3 years ago

Jacquie GaudetFinally! Hopefully some new ground to cover in September...
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3 years ago