Kanaka Creek Geocaching

Had a couple of hours during the weekend to get out and find a few geocaches in the Kanaka Creek area of Maple Ridge. It was more a chance to get out and stretch my legs than gathering finds, so the 3 - 4 caches I found were an added bonus. Breathing in the fresh forest air and taking the time to stop and snap some photos of interesting things was a good way to relax while I enjoyed some "Eddie" time.

Click on any picture to make it full size to enjoy the true nature of the photo......

Second growth forests are still to be found along streams and in parks where developers have not cut down trees to make more houses. I love these wide paths through the green belts as they allow you to enjoy the nature around you rather than having to concentrate on where you are putting your feet so you don't crash and burn..

 Trees are left to rot where they fell - in this case the smooth bottom of the tree matches the round "table top" covered in moss so well that you don't even realize the table top is actually the base of the tree that was felled.

Fallen trees act as nursery logs for new trees and for other flora as well. There are thousands of fungi types in BC, one source quotes numbers between 5,000 - 10,000 

Here macrofungi colonize the open end of a harvested tree; macrofungi are types that can be seen without the aid of a microscope. Mushrooms are actually a fungi as well.....

Why do those gates look funny? Cause they are designed to allow horses to step through! Maple Ridge is a large equestrian centre and many of the trails are shared pathways.Here the urban trail runs between houses as it makes a jump from one green belt to another. This is also part of the Trans-Canada Trail that stretches from coast to coast - guess that means I can tell everyone I've walked the Trans-Canada Trail !  :)

Geocaching in Pitt Meadows

Spent a few hours on the Labour Day weekend geocaching on my bike; I picked the Pitt Meadows area as the views along the Pitt River dike system are wonderful.

The first few caches I did were along the bike path that runs aside the Lougheed Highway through Pitt Meadows. I parked near the Pitt River Bridge and took my time wandering along the bike path as I picked up the 6 remaining caches of the series (I had done the others on a previous trip). There was no rush anyways, as every 0.15 of a mile was a cache, so speeding to the cache hide seemed redundant.

Along the way I passed a bike rider riding one of those stand-up trikes, the ones that "V" out at the back and the rider stands on the boards and has to swing back and forth to create a forward motion.

The picture above is similar to the Trikke I seen, turns out the Trikke rider was none other than the cache owner MiniMan of the geocaching team "MiniMan and Karma". We had a good talk for a few minutes and he asked the basic question "you finding the caches all right"? I say "yeah, no problem", which was true...of course the next cache I go to look for I almost couldn't find.....I thought "yeah, just cursed myself" but it popped up in front of my eyes and the find was made.

I moved the Jeep further south along the edge of the Pitt River to be closer to the access point to the dike trail, less truck traffic that way as well. I unloaded the bike off the back of the Jeep, got myself organized and proceeded to find the first of the Pitt River Regional Greenway series..well actually it was the last one, as I was coming at the series from the back end.

Several Geocachers have gotten together to run a series of 21 geocaches on the dikes from Harris Road west along the Fraser River, then north along the Pitt River ending near the Pitt River Bridge.This provides an excellent series that can easily be done in one day as a long, long walk or as a good bike ride. You can complete a curcuit by heading east along the Lougheed Hwy, doing the caches I mentioned earlier in the article, then heading south on Harris Road through Pitt Meadows picking up caches along the way, eventually returning to your car.

That was a bit far for me today, so I was content on doing a portion of the series, gathering 7 of the dike caches and 6 of the Lougheed Hwy Stroll series. I finished off with a few pick-me-up caches as I headed back home, happy with the bit of bike riding - geocaching - exercise I got to finish off the last weekend of the summer. My timing was perfect as dinner was almost ready when I arrived home....my tummy told me the timing was perfect as well

Have a look at the short video below of the areas I cached in today.....

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Geocaching in Queensborough

Anytime you are in the Queensborough area two things will constantly be in your view - bridges, and the Fraser River. Queensborough is a neighbourhood located on the eastern tip of Lulu Island. Lulu Island itself is surrounded by the north and south arm of the Fraser River.

Bowser98 (brother Al), and MrTJ, (brother Ken), and I picked the Queensborough area to geocache in as we would be having a late start to the day and the density of caches in the area allowed us to maximize our finds. As well, a geocacher by the name of mcwilli had done a series of caches highlighting the history of the Queensborough area; always a plus when you can learn some local history while you have fun!

We worked our way through the series, strolling along dikes and nipping into small neighbourhood parks while we picked up caches and picked up some knowledge of the region. Evidently we missed out on doing one of the caches in the series, don't know how we missed one little cache...oh well, next time!

Interspersed in the day's finds were other caches that constantly brought us along the Fraser River or left us with a view of a bridge or an on ramp or an off ramp....after all, it is an island and one of the Lower Mainland's main routes south uses Lulu Island as a jumping point over the Fraser River.

One cache brought us alongside a revamped marina where they had dry docked a boat at the parking lot entrance as a piece of art - it was neat to see the old working boat put on display and it did add a touch of character to the area.

At the far eastern tip of the island is an old industrial area which has been wiped clean, and a housing development with a mix of condos, townhouses, and attached houses now offer new homes to eager buyers. They have done a wonderful landscaping job in the area - from creating a seawall walkway around the point of the island, to designing nice looking homes that suit the area. Greenery has been added and as it grows in offers the senses of privacy that close living quarters usually don't provide.

We spent the afternoon caching in the area, mindful of the time as we were going to attend a geocaching event titled "Watching The Sun Go Down, Again" which was to take place at the top of Burnaby Mountain close to SFU (Simon Fraser University). What could be better, a warm August night, sitting in lawn chairs talking to fellow geocachers about life in general, and of course, picking up hints on those caches that you just can't find. So what happens in the middle of August on that one night we want to meet? It rains of course!
But that didn't stop 30 or 40 fellow geocachers from coming out to chat and see old friends and make new friends as well. The geocaching community is constantly growing, and many of the faces I see now I haven't seen before...I almost feel like the old man in the crowd!  :)

I had along Keelong The Panda Bear TB but didn't dare bring him out of the car for fear of getting him soaked - so we settled for leaving the Panda Bear and the lawn chairs in the Jeep. Instead we took our hats and coats and stood in the rain having a grand time....a good way to cap off a day of geocaching!

Oh, and we did see the sun appear, just as it set for the night.....  

You may want to expand the video screen by first starting the video and then mousing over the right lower corner of the video and clicking on the "expand" icon

Saturday Work On The Back Yard

After three weekends of rain, we finally had a Saturday that was nice and had 4 yards of topsoil delivered. Four yards doesn't sound that bad, until it's dumped in front of your house and you realize what a big pile that is!

It doesn't look so big from this view, better get somebody working on this right away! Lets see, who can I trick into doing this?

Ahh, what a soldier...rolling up her sleeves and getting right into it!

Annette is showing off her artistic side as she arranges the dirt around the shrubs and trees

So where did all that dirt go? Hard to see it as it seems to just disappear. We raised all the garden areas by 5-6 inches of which the first couple of inches will compact with the first good rain

New topsoil requires new garden lights - here big flower lights will shine at night

The left over topsoil is parked on the patio waiting to be tucked in a few corners here and there till the last of it has disappeared.

Sunday night this guy decided to take an apre-dinner stroll through the neighbourhood....good thing we were all finished in the yard and the BBQ meal had been cooked and the grills cleaned off so as not to attract him to the house.

Europe 2011 - Part 5 The Island of Aero

We caught one of the early ferries from Sonderborg on the coast and crossed 12 miles of the Baltic Sea that separated the Island of Aero from the eastern Danish islands. The weather had been good and today was no exception; there was bright sunshine and a light wind to blow away any marine clouds so we would be able to enjoy watching the land slip away behind us and then watch the low hills of Aero appear in front of us. 

While we sat on the open deck enjoying the sunshine and the view of the coast, I couldn't help but think about what it must have felt like to board a sailing schooner and sail off to another place where you would be starting all over again....I have to admit, the strength of character it takes to uproot yourself and your family for an unknown place always amazes me. 

The view to the aft of the boat faded away as the slow pace of the ferry made it seem like the distance to travel was ten times further than it was; we kept waiting for the ferry to clear the mainland and pick up the speed like the BC ferries, but it didn't happen...we kept puttering along at what seemed like a walking pace.

Here's a little known fact that I picked out from our Eurocar rental agreement - your auto insurance is not valid if you are on a ferry! Any damages to the car from a ferry incident - like running aground, or sinking, is squarely on your shoulders and the cost comes out of your wallet! Well, I think I'll have bigger worries than a car if the ferry sinks.........but I digress....

About an hour into the ride the low hills of Aero began to take shape, and as we came closer we noticed a large number of "sticks" rising out of the water. We at first thought these might be for crab traps, but it didn't take long to realize that they were navigation aids marking a clear path through dangerous shoals around the island. Hmmm....maybe that nonsense idea of the ferry sinking wasn't all that unrealistic.....

Before long we were docked and driving off the ferry onto the island, where I made a quick right turn and parked as I just had to get a video shot of the "Welcome to Aero" sign. With that done, we packed back into the car and took one of the small farm roads away from the dock that led over land towards Aeroskobing. We were in no hurry, so we puttered along taking video of the farms and the view of the sea over the ocean side fields. Taking the narrow farm road took us along a scenic windy path past neat small road side farm houses that almost touched your mirror as you scooted past.

We eventually joined back up with one of the 3 main island roads and came in through the back side of Aeroskobing. Like many European towns, the small, old part of town had cobblestone roads and we crawled along the narrow road between 200 - 300 year old houses with barely enough room for a small car and a bike to pass each other.

A couple of blocks along we came to the old village square which was the centre of town and parked in the shadow of city hall, built circa mid 1700s. Most of the buildings in this historically preserved village date back around that time, with a few of the old houses a bit older. You can tell the really old ones, they lean into their neighbour like drunken sailors. In fact Aeroskobing started off as a trading village from which the fresh sea catches were sold to the mainland folks. For 400 years this has been a seafaring village where tough sea going boats where built and tough sailors manned them.
Today tourism has taking over most of the business dollars and the neighbouring village of Marstal has become the main sea going centre.

I stood and looked around the old square, and was sure that not much had changed in a few hundred years; the old city hall stood large on one side of the square, with the local church taken up another side, and roads leading in three directions brought citizens in and out of the square. And I had to wonder, how many times my relatives had walked past this way or stopped at the side by side hand pumps for a drink and sat on the bench under a sheltering tree.

The old section of town was only 5 blocks by 6 blocks and was easy to cover in a few leisurely hours. We had a couple of "to-do" things while we were here - one was to stop off at the local museum and talk with the curator, with whom one of my brothers had been corresponding, to obtain more information on the family tree. The second, was to locate the address of 18 Vestergaarde, which was where my Great -Great(?) Uncle, Aunt, and a distant cousin had lived. That turned out to be easy to do, as it was only a block from where we parked the car. 18  Vestergaarde (West Street) was a two story building that looked like it had a section added on;.as it turned out, it had been two houses joined together at some point in the past. It was turned into a rooming house where, according to the village census, my relatives had lived in the late 1800s. I stood in the doorway and had Annette take my picture, some how hoping I could bridge the time gap between them and me.

Back in the car we explored the small island looking for a hamlet called Risemark and another called Dunkaer, both of which were listed in our family history. Turns out Risemark is where the island's church is located, a smattering of small houses around the the church was our only clue we had found it. Once again we were treated to a wonderful white washed historical church with a garden-type setting of a cemetery surrounding the church. We strolled the small paths that meandered through the small cemetery and again noticed the commonality of the Danish names like Jensen and Pedersen, and thought that must have been confusing when you were yelling "hey Pedersen"! to catch some ones attention, and 12 people turned around...  :)

Once more in the car and crossing the island, it didn't take too long to come across Dunkaer, which by island standards must have been a major hamlet; an old country inn looking to be from a couple of centuries ago leaned with age alongside the island road, a large milking barn and a meat abattoir sat behind the inn. Judging from the looks of the workers there we must have been among the very few of the tourists that poked our nose around here. Needless to say, we were a rare sight for them and we felt like we were on stage with bright lights pointed at us. LOL

We had one more  location on the island to find, and that was a farm area on the outskirts of Dunkaer where Dunkaer road sits a field's width away from the ocean. We found the Dunkaer Rd sign and turned onto the road, we even felt good as the sign pointed to "Dunkaer" with a small logo that we took to mean the farming area. We knew that a large farm operation was once here and that some of my relatives had lived and worked right around here. The road went for a couple of kilometres, turned past a quaint family farm and house right at roadside, then meandered over a rise and petered out a kilometre past the rise. Back down the road we went, slow past the farm house letting the farmer's ducks and geese get off the road and into the small pond by the house, then back down to where the road ran alongside the field with the wide ocean as a backdrop. Judging by what we knew, the large farm house operation that once stood here was now gone, and only wind waved crops remained to show what good fields had been found at the historic location.

Satisfied we had seen as much as we could, we meandered back along one of the country roads that crossed the island to Aeroskobing where we would catch the ferry to the eastern part of Denmark and drive on to Copenhagen. While we waited for the ferry, we popped into the local modern supermarket and purchased a few things to act as a very late lunch and dinner rolled into one.

Sitting at the ferry slip waiting for our ship to arrive, I had a feeling of satisfaction knowing that I had seen everything I could see on the island, and been to all the places where my people had worked and lived, yet I knew I would be back here some day in the not too distant future. I still wanted to spend days here, sitting in the old square watching the village life go by, I wanted to walk the country roads where the ocean breeze created ribbons of waves across the fields, and I wanted to hear the soft, muted voices carried on the still air that said " hello Edwin, glad you could make it home"
 
See the full video of our Aero visit here; as Rick Steeves, the European travel guide has noted, Aeros is a place where time has stopped and the past is there for us to enjoy

Europe 2011 - Part 4

Europe Part 4

Today is the day, we finally reach Denmark, native land on my Father's side and the origin of the Pedersen clan. This is a day I've waited for a number of years, and truth be told, even before it was a solid thought and a planned trip, it was a buzz at the back of my brain. It was there before I really knew what it meant...like a whisper in the fog, I could hear the quiet voice but couldn't make out the words. I had to have enough "life" under my belt and the wisdom of age to understand the nuances of my own human psyche...to understand the words that were being spoken... "you have to go home"...........

Which was a hard message to understand when you're a young man living in the city where you were born, as you are already home and your life is good with little responsibilities and fun being number one on your list of things to do.....still the whisper was there even then.

I felt the full tug when we crossed over the border from Germany into Denmark and drove a few miles north till we came to a small village called Rise. This was one of the areas where some of my relatives had lived, and died; first stop was the old church and a walk around the pleasant cemetery that was more like a garden than a final resting place. First thing we noticed is that, either I stumbled onto an enclave of Pedersens or it's a common name in Denmark. Turned out the latter is true; Pedersen is a very common name, just like Williams or Brown or Johnson. As a matter of fact, the most common names we seen consisted of a variation of just three names. Jensen, Peters, Pedersen....you could have any name you liked as long as it had those three names in it.

It was surreal walking around the graveyard and seeing all the Pedersen headstones; many of these people were obviously "strangers" to my family tree, yet it was enough to make me overcome with emotion to realize that I was finally "home". I had to take a few minutes to level myself out before I could continue wandering around the cemetery, looking at the headstones and graves of strangers that shared my blood line going all the way back to the Vikings.

After getting our fill of the sights and sounds of the lovely church and the graveyard, we drove a block down the small street into the village and realized after going up and down a couple of small city-sized blocks, we had seen the whole village. We pulled into the parking lot of an old folks care home, the driveway adorned with life size statues of an old man and an old woman. It was evident that the community valued their senior citizens as the care centre was the nicest and newest building in the village.

Heading north on the freeway we had another 100 hundred miles or so to go before we cut east and headed to the shores of the Baltic Sea. Our destination was Sonderborg, a seaside town where we would spend the night before catching the ferry over to the island of Aeros.

Sonderborg is a lovely town with an old section right down at the waterfront; congrats to the town as they have revitalized the seaside area and made it a popular tourist destination for Danes. There are only 3-4 good hotels in Sonderborg, one of them was a Best Western; turns out it was the largest of the hotels and was also a conference hotel. I can understand the draw to have your company's convention in the tourist town and enjoy the scenery while you are there. Problem is, when you drop into town as a tourist winging it when it comes to hotels, it makes getting a room a bit of a challenge.

We snagged the last room they had - one of the suites and we got it at a discount rate equivalent to 240 Euros, which is about $480.00 CDN. Not much choice, as the next nearest town was either 120 miles to the north, or we drove back into Germany to Hamburg, now approx 150 miles to the south. OK, Sonderborg it is!

So here's the thing....this would happen to us several times more while we were in Denmark. The room was originally 350 Euros and we did get a bit of a discount when we told them we were tourists from Canada, but when I pulled out my credit card to pay and the young lady behind the desk spotted my last name Pedersen on the card, suddenly we were treated like long lost cousins coming home. The room was suddenly reduced more and the friendly desk clerk became even more helpful and suggested places to see and places to eat. When we got up to our room, the TV screen said in Danish "Welcome to Edwin Pedersen"...at least I think it said that...I could understand the "velkommen" and "Pedersen" parts. :)

We dropped our bags in the sitting room and wandered into the bedroom to look out the window and what a great view we had of the outer harbour; that's the picture you see at the top of the page. We watched a large two masted schooner drift into the inner harbour as we simply enjoyed the serenity of the scene, complete with soundscape of birds chirping in the gardens around the hotel. As much as it cost to stay here, I have to say it was worth it!

We went out around 8.00 PM to grab a bite at one of the lovely dockside cafes but they had all closed up for the night; I guess we weren't quite into the full on tourist season yet. We ended up on the outskirts of town at the local Burger King, of all places. It was a busy place as the local Danes enjoyed this bit of Americana. Again prices weren't cheap....each of our meals for a burger, fries and a Coke was $18.00 CDN. On the plus side we did get to talk to a young cop for a few minutes; we wanted to get an idea of the area but the young guy had been recently transferred here from somewhere to the north, so he didn't know much about the area. The older cop waiting in the car was impatient with the tourists who were cutting into his meal time and said something in Danish to hurry the young guy along. We said thanks in Danish to the officer, "Tak", and we got a smile out of him as he jumped back in the car.

We meandered back into town and did a sight seeing tour of the town and the surrounding inlets and farm land. We also cruised a few miles out of town to find the ferry landing and check on the schedule to ensure what we read online was the same as the posted schedule at the dock. We headed back to our expensive but nice hotel suite and opened the windows for a while as we read more about Denmark, including the region we were in now, and the regions we were heading to in the coming days. We went to sleep with the curtains open, had a sound sleep, and awakened early the next morning to the sun streaming in and the promise of excitement on the small Island of Aero and the village of Aeroskobing, main homestead of the Pedersen clan!

Take the time to view the video of the area, it's only a few minutes long and the scenery is wonderful.
You can view the video full screen by clicking here