Ticking Off Another Provincial Park: Golden Ears Good Times!

I'm not sure if I've mentioned on here before but you know how U.S licence plates have little slogans on them for each state like the sunshine state or the lone star state, well here in B.C the slogan is 'Beautiful British Columbia' which may seem kind of simple but it's definitely appropriate!

There is soooo much beauty all around here! I was listing in my head one day the number of provincial parks we've had the chance to visit so far, just in the 100km stretch leading up to Whistler there's more than 10 provincial parks alone! So when our friends lent us their car for the weekend we decided to drive out to Maple Ridge to check out another provincial park - Golden Ears.  It was also the furthest east we had ventured out since we've been here.  It was only an hour and a half away! but usually our road trips are always north or south! 

So I was feeling pretty good about the fact I was going to be able to add another provincial park to my list and I wondered out loud to Byron just how many provincial parks there were in B.C.  He guessed there were probably 50.  In Northern B.C there's sooooo much green space and so I decided to guess around 100.  Well, I couldn't believe it when we got home that day and google filled me in on the fact that there are actually 830!!! 830?! I couldn't believe it! Suddenly the 20 or so we have visited seemed rather insignificant! 

So we started off our day at the rather picturesque Alouette Lake.  It had been forecast as a sunny day so we came prepared to swim, unfortunately the clouds had other ideas! and we felt the water and it was pretty icy cold! 

We hiked through the woods...

and came across these snow capped mountains in the distance.

I liked these cute little maple leaves...on the vine maple tree (which is one of the native maple trees found here).

The forester in the family had to climb this ginormous cedar stump!

At the end of our walk, we reached the falls.  They were rather impressive...

and rather ferocious too! 

See that kayaker in the right of the picture above? We had passed a kayaking crew as we walked up to the falls and just assumed they were some daredevil kayakers out for some fun so we watched as they weaved around the rocks.  

We were happily snapping these pictures when a lady approached us and told us not to go so close to the falls because two teenage boys had been swept away that day and the kayakers were actually a rescue crew searching for bodies! 

I googled the full story when we got home and discovered it was a group of boys who had decided to go swimming, which is so crazy because it's clear to see the water was wild! They recovered the bodies later that day, it's so sad that one moment of stupidity had such life altering affects.

I love this close up of the spray in action! 

It was an awesome day, topped off with some cold stone creamery fun on the way home too! 

Up next: Falling in love with the sunshine coast!