Camping

In a very similar way to with my passion for animals, I grew up camping with my family and both sides of grand parents, but largely lost touch with camping through university and early adulthood in favour of international travel.  As a kid, we used to camp at least once a year, usually several times, and every other year we would spend around a month camping our way from Vancouver to a destination and back.

As a family we camped our way to Alaska, the Yukon, Montreal, Yellowstone, Alberta and Saskatchewan and back, not to mention all over BC and Washington state.  Some of my fondest memories growing up were the weekend trips camping to Rolley Lake or Cultus Lake with my grand parents.  I used to love going fishing with my Grandpa, if I was unsuccessful we would stop off at a trout farm on the way home so I could catch a fish. Some of my best childhood memories are being given a pocket knife and told to go have fun in the bush behind the campsite.  

Our last family camping trip was to the Yukon and Alaska and back during the summer between grade 10 and 11.  We saw so many black bears on that trip.  On the way back we stopped off at Stewart BC and went over the Hyder Alaska.  There we visited fish creek and the Grizzly viewing platform to watch the bears catch salmon right out of the river.  It was something right out of national geographic.  

After that trip, I largely didn't camp anymore.  It wasn't cool.  None of my friends were into it and with school and a new job it wasn't a priority.  I used to love camping, but like my love of animals, it felt like a historic artifact of my childhood which was no longer important.  Honestly, I felt like BC was too boring and that I would rather see the world.  What a typical young adult thought.  I have learned since then how special BC and Canada really is.  I was so wrong in thinking BC was boring.