Barnston Island Day Tripping

Yesterday we loaded the family into the family sedan and headed out to Barnston Island. For those who may not know, Barnston Island is the island that you can see in the Fraser River to your left as you are driving east across the Portmann Bridge. It is a lovely and idyllic country setting.

As you can see in the above photo, as fast I was loading the car with kids and their assorted gear, they were heaving it back out of the car. This was a preview of what was to come.

My sweetheart “tasked” me with putting together a small lunch for our family. I thought one 7 ounce bottle of milk, three granola bars and a little tub of homemade sunomono salad would be enough for us for the day. It wasn’t.

In order to deal with our shortage of food and milk we stopped at a Starbucks on the way out to Barnston Island. I went into the Starbucks and got myself a tall dark coffee. I certainly felt better after that.

Fortunately, near the Starbucks was a blackberry bramble patch and the girls discovered the amazing flavour packs that grow wild everywhere they are not beaten back. The girls gorged themselves on blackberries while I sipped my coffee.

Once we had enjoyed a little feast (see, why bring food from home when we can live off the land?) we headed down to the Barnston Island ferry terminal.

We arrived just in time to see the ferry departing for the other side of the river. That gave me time to take a couple of photos with my new Canon G11 (product review to follow).

The above photo is a reminder of why I left behind the world of primary resource extraction and went into the knowledge based business (read that as I went into sales).

Soon the ferry returned and we had front row seats to watch the world’s largest RV drive onto the ferry. The guy in the orange safety vest directing traffic onto the ferry warned the RV driver that he was likely going to rip off any low hanging parts from his RV when he got off the ferry. The driver didn’t seem to mind.

More on this RV later.

Once on Barnston Island there are any number of quaint little houses and farms. The irony is that as soon as you get off the ferry you see this home that makes you think you might have landed in the backwoods of the Ozarks.

If you look closely you can see the jacuzzi tub in the blackberry patch. And then there is the always safe practice of towing a quad with a pick-up truck.

As we continued around Barnston Island we saw the corporate headquarters of Avalon Dairy.

It may actually not be the actual corporate head-office, more of a production facility.

However, back to that RV that we saw driving onto the ferry. The trick to the ferry to and from Barnston Island is that while you merrily drive onto the ferry to get to the island, you are required to reverse onto the ferry to get off the island. I believe that is the explanation behind what otherwise can only be the mystical truck burial ground (think elephants, the legend of the elephant burial ground).

And then there was the truck burial ground.

I had to wonder if these were trucks operated by people who never managed the back onto the ferry maneuver, as the sign demands. I particularly appreciate the speed limit that restricts the back up maneuver to 10 kmh. A safety consideration I assume.

Overall, the best part of the trip was leaving Barnston Island, I, unlike the people who have left their RVs and trucks on the island, successfully backed the car onto the ferry; I’m pretty sure my insurance will cover the damage to the car and the bicycles that were lined up along the fence.

It was also fun to listen to the lovely lady in the GPS becoming more and more agitated as we left the island. She was very unsure of the route we were on. She was recalculating the route all the while.

Our day trip to Barsnston Island proved to be one of those little day trips that we will remember for a long time. Annalie slept peacefully while Story screamed her face off. Once Story wore herself out and fell asleep (after what felt like hours upon hours) Annalie woke up out of concern for her, likely wondering where her screaming sister had gone. Annalie then screamed until we left the island. Ahh…these are the kinds of memories that we will cherish in the coming years. What a great day!