Savary Island and Lois Lake

Okay, so we're at Lund. This is a photograph of Savory Island. You can take a water taxi to Savory Island. It's supposed to be pretty nice, but there's no power, water, or ATMs. But this is yeah, yeah, this is Lund. And you can get water taxis here. We're gonna find out what's going on. Okay, this is Lund. And that out there is Savory Island. A water taxi runs every hour on the hour, 14 bucks each way. And seemingly there's bike rentals there, seemingly there's camping on the beach. I don't know. That's another island. I don't know what it is. Interesting. Okay, so when you enter Lund straight ahead, that's the water taxi. To the left is the harbour. Those washrooms are just for customers. And you see a boat. And there's a hotel here. And there's a little road here to the right. If you're coming down, it's to the right. There's a post office there, a general store. And then just on the right of that building is the public washrooms. Kind of difficult to find. Signs poised everywhere here. But anyways, that's where it is. It's on the side of the post office. Now I'm told that to the left here is a walkway and a bakery. And above the bakery is a kayak rental place. I could freaking paddle over to Savory Island. I don't know. We'll see. Okay, so this is just down from the kayak and the zodiac tour place, which is just above the bakery. Very popular bakery. And there's a secret trail to a secret campsite, which is mostly just RVs. I'm going to see if they have any tent sites. And there's a cool boardwalk here. And it takes you to the boardwalk restaurant. It opens for lunch and dinner. It looks very nice. Very nice. I'm looking at maybe a zodiac tour. Renting a kayak solo is a little bit dodgy with liability. They want proof of course and stuff. It's just easier for me to bring the car, my own kayak, and it's quite easy to paddle over Savory Island from here. But I'm thinking about taking the zodiac tour through Desolation Sound. I'd really like to see that. That's kind of on my bucket list. One of the reasons for wanting to camp is Sarah Point, so I could see the Desolation Sound Marine Park. You know, one day I wouldn't mind getting a sailboat and hanging out there. I saw a sign for the Lund Loop Trail. I just saw a young couple walk up, turn left, and walk up the stairway there. So I guess that's a little walking trail. Check it out. Okay, here's a sign that says Beach Access. I just came up this loop trail. And I go down this road and there's no beach access. Here's the beach access. And this is the beach access. Well, what do you know? Tucked away in this little corner. Nice. All this over here is perfect. Well, we got some beach access here. And we got a great view of Savory Island right there, right in front of us. That's Savory Island. And Savory Island is supposed to have a lot of really nice beaches on it. Maybe I'll do a day trip there. We'll see. This is a really cute trail. I was just gonna blow by Lund because I was getting irritated about the parking. All the signs. They say something here and you can't find where it is. But once you find where there is, this is a really nice spot. This is the trail back. 1k. I can handle that. And look at what we have here. These are those Arbutus trees that you see at Whitecliff Park. They have no bark and they're red. Normally, if a tree loses its bark, it dies. But these don't. Pretty cool. And this is the trail that takes you to the RV site, which I'm hoping I can get a tent site at. Samlund it's called. Okay, well that was very successful. That's the secret trail to the RV camp and they do have a few tent sites and I was able to secure one of them for tomorrow night. So that means tomorrow morning I can take that Zodiac tour of Desolation Sound. Nice. Windmill palms. Nice. That takes a while to grow that tall. Just a couple of them. This is Nancy's Bakery. Very nice. A lot of nice, very nice stuff. 15 bucks for a sandwich is expensive, but it's a very nice sandwich. Uh-oh. Those guys were fisheries. They look like gang tabs. All right, this is the water taxi to Savory Island. After coming in, I think you can take a bike there. All right, everybody's loading up. There's several. Leaving at once. Okay, so that's Hernando Island. Heading over to Savory. Yeah, buddy, I got you. All right, so that's like the Granville Island water taxi. Here we are. It's not Granville Island. It's Savory Island. Let's check this out. Okay, so we're on Savory Island, and straight ahead is Lund, where we just came from. I mean, there's lots of beachfront here, but a lot there. I guess you're allowed, obviously, on this beach, but I think a lot of the beaches are protected. You're allowed on them. We'll see. Okay, they rent golf carts here and ATVs. That's South Beach. That's the way we want to go. Before that, up here is a bike rental and ATV, so we're going to see about a bike rental. We're not going to walk all that way. Two hours. Yeah, I can see why people like this place. I think my days are all mixed up. I think today's a Friday. Yeah, that looks cool over there, too. South Beach seems to be like the go-to place. It's around the corner the other way. Very nice, long, sandy beach. But that looks cool up there, too. We'll see. Cool road, but once again, I don't see any signs that say bike rental. Oh, here's some bikes coming. I think there's a golf cart. They have some private vehicles, but here we are. Bike and scooter rental. Nice. Savory Island Spa. Pascal Camping. Ah, this is very interesting. That's why the bike place is up here. All right, so this is the bike shop. You've got bicycles, e-bikes, and scooters, and believe it or not, I went for the scooter option. Two hours on a scooter. We're doing the Italian job. There's a campsite up here. We'll check it out when I get back. I only got two hours on this thing, and we'll check it out. All right, this is pretty wild. There's no clutch. There's no gears. Where my clutch is, it's the freaking back brake. My back brake's driving my rear foot. Anyways, this is a lot easier than bicycle. This is kind of cool. Yeah, this is the bicycle trail, and it's an actual road, and scooters are allowed on it. It's just that there's supposed to be some rock slide that cars can't get through, so scooters and bicycles get through. Anyways, we'll try it out. All right, first stop, Duck Bay. Check this beast out. This is like, this is the first time I've ridden a scooter. There's no, there's no gears, no clutch. It's automatic transmission. All right, so this is what they call Duck Bay. It's the first stop along this little, uh, bicycle scooter trail I took, and this is, I, I guess this is the other side of the island. Like, we came on one side, and this is the other side of the island already, so it's pretty, it's long and narrow. Here we go. This is a nice road, and the scooter is, I felt really, uh, really weird, because I'm standing upright. I said to the guy, where's my highway pegs? Because I'm sitting, I'm almost standing up, sitting up, like in a chair at a dining room table, but, uh, this is cool. If it was 30 bucks for a bicycle or 40 bucks for a scooter, yeah, I'll take the scooter, and I don't think I have to pay for gas either. I'm not going to use much gas, but anyways, this is nice. Very nice. Okay, fork in the road. I thought he said current left, and then I thought, well, it's down here. This, if you take the right fork, this is the bicycle trail that scooters can go on. Cars can't go on it, because it's washed out, and it's a little bit dodgy going around the washout place. You don't want to fall down the cliff, but you can make it on the scooter, and, uh, that way it is for cars, but obviously bikes can go there as well. So we're going to try out the washed out route. Okay, I saw some off-site tents mixed in with the residential here, and I'm not sure if that's a tan pad, what that is. We're coming up to another beach. I think this is mermaid something. I don't know. So we're going the opposite direction of the south beach. We're going towards that mid thing that I thought looked cool. Oh, lots of beaches, lots of boats out there. Okay, this is another beach. I don't know where it is. There's a boat launch here. Pretty cool. I gotta hustle around the island to get it back by two hours. This is nice. Okay, another beach. Now, I gotta find them now, because, like, there's these roads going everywhere. I thought there was just, like, one main road, but this is cool. Okay, this is very scenic. A lot of Douglas firs. There's private residences everywhere around here. This is nice. Okay, I found a main road. They called it Vancouver Boulevard or something, and then I took the site straight off of here, so I don't know where the businesses are. I think I'm off the beaten track. Okay, I went through some back roads there and did a lot of private residences. I'm back on the main road, and it says if I keep going around Vancouver Boulevard, it'll take me to the Mermaid Cafe and a general store. So, let's check it out. And that Hacienda thing is close to where I returned the bike, the scooter. But I'm amazed at how well this scooter handles in completely off-road trails. Like, completely off-road. I mean, I'm going slow, but I'm going up and down, up and down. It's handling. It's very comfortable. It's handling pretty well off-road. I'm not talking about the gravel road. I'm talking about the off-road stuff. So, this is really cool. Yeah, these scooters work. Okay, so this is the Mermaid Lounge. Check it out. Okay, now I know where I am. I did make the loop. I got completely turned around in all those back road trails. But if you get back to Vancouver Boulevard, you're okay. Ironically enough. Because this is where I came up, where I rented the e-bike from. So, I got half an hour, so we'll do a couple more things. One of the ladies was saying, because I was talking to her directions to get the Mermaid Cafe, and she said that that the side road trail was more scenic. But this is pretty scenic, too. This is nice. Very nice. Okay, we're back at the Duck Beach thing here. I guess this is why that guy said it's his favorite, because it's quieter. There's about 50 million boats out here. This one's the one that's closest to the e-bike rental, or the scooter renter rental place. There's a gulf cart coming. I like the scooters. The scooters work really well. Okay, this is, it says Hacienda. I don't know. Hacienda, I guess from, this isn't open till 3, and I have to leave at 2.30. So, 3 to 7, they have specials. Friday Pond, Palo Verde Ponds and Chips. Sounds nice. Anyways, but there's also, so the Hacienda is a place you can get food in Karma Cafe Bakery. I had to find that. Okay, that's the e-bike place at the top of the hill. Come up here, the road turns left or right. There's no signs, but you turn to the left, the middle lane forks, and you go to the right. You follow that road, what, 100 feet. I run out of time. But that's where the campsite is. Pascal's Camping. Obviously, I think online you have to make reservations first. Pascal's Camping. Pass the e-bikes, take a left, take a right, and go straight. Those are the e-bikes. I think the regular bike was like 30 bucks for two hours, and the scooter was 40. So I said, I'll take the scooter. I can't remember how much the e-bike was. If you take the right fork, just really a couple houses in, there's a restaurant and a store. I haven't found many businesses. Yeah, there's a restaurant and store there. The restaurant looks okay. I suppose there was that Karma Cafe thing. That was further down. There's a restaurant and store there that's closer. But I want to see if I can get that south beach before I have to... No, I'm not. I'm just going to go here. Okay, the restaurant's called Riggers. There's a Savor Island store. And there's a young lady here with really cool art stuff like wood burning and macrame. That is so retro. Okay, so I'm back at the dock where I came in. And there's a map here. To the left is South Beach, which looks very appealing. To the right is the e-bike place. I went to the right. And instead of coming down this way, the guy said avoid South Beach because it's high up and high down. I don't know. I went all the way out that way. So this map says you are here. And instead of going over to South Beach, which looks very appealing, I went up here and there. So I think I went all the way down to here. And then I came... Got lost on all these off roads or whatever. There were like all houses and residences. There were trails. And I think I finally got back onto Vancouver Boulevard. And then came back to here. Here. So I think I did all of the island except for this very important part. Maybe next time. But then again on the map, I see the road ends here at Barge Landing. And then I guess you can only get around there during low tide. One of the guys who came over on the water taxi with me asked the driver, he said, can you get around the thing at low tide? And he said the tide was coming in and it was already too high. So at low tide you can walk around to get to South Beach. But at high tide you can't. And if you walk around at low tide, you got to make sure that you don't trap yourself when high tide comes in. So that's the point. Interesting. But this is, oh yeah, Duck Bay. Duck Bay right there. So from here to Duck Bay, that was very nice. I don't know. I saw, I think I saw this boat ramp. That was very nice. And there was tons of stuff over here. But I didn't, I kind of ran on a trail and I was worried about all these sites, trails, like they weren't roads. They're like trails. And I was worried about getting lost. So now I think I have a better idea of what's going on here. Okay, so you walk down there you get to the barge landing and if the tide's out you can walk around to South Beach. When I came the tide was in. So I didn't do it and I'm not even walking down there because I'm tired. I'm just going to have lunch on the beach and wait for my taxi to go up because I have to hurry and confirm my my echo tour or whatever you call it tomorrow morning through Desolation Sound. I do that before three. So here we are. Lunch on the beach while I wait for my water taxi. I think I want to try out that that Keff, that restaurant on the dock. That looked really cool. That was in Lund, of course. That restaurant on the dock that was in Lund. But this was a nice fact-finding mission and I learned that scooters, I like scooters. You know, we used to make fun of guys on scooters, but those are fun and I'm amazed at how well they handle off-road on trails. The guy was a little bit nervous when I said that. He says, what do you mean trails? I said, you call our roads trails? Well, you said to take the right and go on that bike trail. Oh, okay. But then I was off. There was all kinds of trails that went off of that and it looked like a road, but they were more like trails and it was like up and down and it was off-road. It was trails. So I guess I wasn't supposed to go there, but I'm amazed at how that scooter handled in those conditions. It was awesome. I wasn't going fast, but it was very comfortable and very doable. There's lots of cars on the dock. I guess the water taxis, they leave on the hour Lund and on the half hour here. So I guess they're having supplies come in and they're loading up the supplies in the cars, I guess. I think that's what they're doing. There's a lot of cars lined up here. But that's the interesting thing. I looked at that one general store. It had a tiny bit of produce there. It's like, yeah, where are all these homes? Because there's a lot of people that live on here. Where are you going to get all your groceries from? And I guess they only have to get them over on the water taxi. That's quite expensive. You'd think they'd have boats and do it themselves, but shipping all their supplies over water taxi, it costs maybe to get a special pass. I don't know. It's like the barge they're talking about. They're getting the cars back before a big rock there on the water. All right, ice cream on the boardwalk. Okay, so the boardwalk restaurant looks very nice. Nice food, high class, a little pricey, but looks very nice. We're in Lund Harbor. I got an ice cream at the thing. There's a bakery over there. I'm uh, I'm camping in Fall River tonight. There's some good cheap food right on site. So tomorrow night when I camp here, we'll see what other alternatives are. All right, and the lady that does the zodiac tours I booked with, she she mentioned that she confirmed that South Beach you can only access at low tide. Low tide you can walk around and there's no road that goes there. So that's interesting. So I basically saw all that I could of Savory Island. And because it was high tide and high tide was coming in. So, uh, that's good. The water taxi guy mentioned coming back from Savory Island that a lot of those vehicles lined up on the dock with whale tails or paw prints. He said those were land taxis. So if you own a cabin on Savory Island then they're using, they're paying to bring food over. You have to take a water taxi and then you're only allowed like three coolers per person. So then you're taking a water taxi, a land taxi. It's well, it adds up. It's pretty pricey. But it's a beautiful place. There's no question about that. All right, we're back at my campsite in Fall River, Willingdon Beach campsite. I'm gonna buy a couple of tokens for the shower. And there's something to eat here. It was closed last time, but it was a little bit more affordable than some of the other places. But this campground is right beside that public beach. Okay, this is called the Beach Hut. That's a Douglas fir. One cedar, a couple of cedars, a lot of fir. And this is the Willingdon Beach beside the Willingdon campgrounds. Last night there was live music here. I missed it, but maybe it'll be here again tonight. And of course over there is the volleyball, beach volleyball. Young kids were there like, you know, after dark, you know, and it was no lights and they were good kids, you know, just hanging out. Being good, it's nice. Okay, I'm gonna document this, but I'm not gonna do it. I was at the tourist information office and she told me how to get to Lewis Lake. There's a Lewis Lake and a Lois Lake. I don't know how you pronounce which. I'm talking about the bigger lake that's right near the highway. Um, that's the one. I don't know if that's Lewis or Lois. I don't know how you pronounce that. Anyways, the turn off to get to this service road was unmarked. And I'll explain how to get to it when I return back to the highway. But once you make that turn, you come up the service road. It's an active service road. And then you turn right here. It says Lewis Lake Forest Service Road. So Lewis Lake is up here. It looks like a fantastic lake on the map and there's camping sites on the lake. And it's the beginning of the canoe trip paddle. But none of this is marked. And this road is okay, but this one is a little bit more rugged. And the guy said, I wouldn't take your bike up there. And I'm like, I'll try it. And I'm thinking, nah, maybe not. So anyways, you take, once you're coming up the service road, you turn right Lewis Lake Service Road. It's a beautiful lake. It's big and there's campsites on site. And this is where you start the canoe paddle. It's, I forget how many far it is. It's like the Bower Lake one, except the only difference is this is rugged. Like the protages between the lakes are not wheelable. So you got to carry the canoe or kayak over your shoulders. So this is old school rugged. But it looks absolutely awesome. So anyways, I I didn't get it. I wanted to document the beginning, but I'm not going up there. I just want to document how you get there. You can look on the maps and YouTube, more information about it. But it's rugged and, but it looks beautiful. And the Powell Lake, before where I said that the starting point, you could start there. But she said most people start here. This is why. And most people end at Powell Lake, just like the Bower Lakes one. They get the hard stuff over with first. And you just paddle into home on the Bower Lake. Well, same thing. You start up here and you do all the rugged stuff and then you finish right down at Powell Lake and you finish right at the highway. So anyways, it's interesting. From Bowron Lakes to Powell Lakes. Over to Lund, Savory Island. And tomorrow we're going to do a zodiac tour on Desolation Sound Marine Park. That was the whole purpose that I wanted to try and get to Sarah Point, which I haven't done yet. It's a backcountry campsite, but you're looking at the Desolation Sound Marine Park. And I wondered, you know, if I could camp at Sarah Point, then I could just kind of like camp and paddle around Desolation Sound. So tomorrow we'll get a zodiac tour of Desolation Sound. Okay, so this is the unmarked entrance to the forest, to the lowest lowest, lowest, whatever. L-O-I-S. To the lowest lake forestry service road. Which is the beginning of the Powell Lake canoe circuit. So this, this is Lois River. You cross over this and you turn right. I guess there's a forward. There's two service roads. You turn right here and this is how you get. Wait a second. Turn right here. And the only reason I knew that is because the sign said welcome to Stillwater. They just said it's Stillwater Road or whatever. So it's totally unmarked. So they could market this a little better. If they made the portages wheelable and if they put signs up this would be a very popular route. I'm just saying.