We recently came back from a Canada day long weekend camping trip with some friends! We stayed at the Tuckkwiowhum campgrounds for 3 nights and did many activities around Boston Bar.

The first day of the trip started on Friday—the fiancé and I took a day off. Early in the morning, our friends drove to our apartment where we undertook the task of condensing 3 cars worth of stuff into 2 cars. The goal being that we should reduce what we didn’t need, and also save on some gas by taking just two cars. We only had 6 people (and a dog), so we tried to make it work. The monumental task took almost two hours, and we then started to head off.

We did a quick stop at Chilliwack along the way as my friend had to drop off something for his brother there, but then we headed off to Hope to get our last meal at a restaurant for the trip: Owl Street Café. The cafe was cute and had outdoor picnic tables so that we could have Onyx with us while we ate.

After lunch it was off to Alexandra Bridge Park! To be fair, this wasn’t much of a park. But a short hike took us to the old, rusted Alexandra Bridge. The view from the bridge was kind of scary, especially given the grates you walked on had ample holes that reminded you of how far up you were.

It was past 3PM by the time we checked in to our campgrounds and started to unload the cars. The setup was done as speedily as possible and we were starting to figure out dinner. First up on the menu was hot pot! We figured that we’d have hot pot on the first night because most of the perishables would be in this meal due to veggies and meats needed for the pot. It was very yummy, but we were absolutely stuffed and couldn’t’ finish the noodles (I don’t think we even had a single pack this first night), vegetables, or meat.

That night, I had some troubles sleeping because the Tuckkwiowhum campgrounds were very close to 2 train tracks. I luckily brought ear plugs (initially it was to block out any snoring noises since I’m sensitive to sounds while I sleep) and that helped me get through the night.

The next day we woke up early because we wanted to head to Blue Lake. Blue Lake had an entry fee for those who weren’t staying at the resort and campgrounds, so we just wanted to maximize our time there. We packed up all our cooking equipment, food, and our inflatables for the lake and headed off.

The drive up to Blue Lake was very precarious. We didn’t realize how far up in the mountains it was, and the road was very bumpy. On top of that, there weren’t any road guards to stop us from rolling off the rocky road. We were praying at various points up (and later, down) the road.

Blue Lake was super clear and we set up our station on a picnic bench on the beach near the lake. We cooked up breakfast and then hopped into our inflatable boats to start our lake excursion. The only thing we didn’t account for was how windy it was going to be. While my friend’s boat had a motor, ours didn’t and we had to tie up the two rafts so that we could be powered by the one motor. This didn’t work out so well because water kept threatening to capsize our boat and the winds kept blowing us back to the docks. It was a very chaotic trip.

Eventually, we did manage to get to the other side of the lake, where the winds were almost non-existent. We spent some time there fishing and tanning, and then eventually headed back to the picnic/beach area. We had arrived at 9AM, but by now, the lake had gotten very crowded. Our picnic table was swarmed with children digging up snakes (???) from the nearby bushes. I marveled as these fearless kids pulled out snake after snake from the trees around us and paraded them around as trophies as other children scrambled to secure their own snakes. What in the world??

We packed up our stuff and figured we should actually have dinner back at our own campsite—where we’d have a less hectic area to eat and relax in. But before leaving, we checked out Blue Lake’s recreation area and their petting zoo!

That night, back at the Tuckkwiowhum campgrounds, we cooked up a dinner of Korean barbeque and stir fried up the sliced meats from the night before with leftover vegetables. It was another night of eating till we were absolutely stuffed and we hung out by the campfire and had smores till we went to bed. That night, I fell asleep almost immediately.

Day three saw us starting off the day with breakfast at our campsite, and then heading off to the Tuckkwiowhum self-guided tour around the heritage village they have on display. We got to explore summer and winter homes that the First Nations folks built, as well as learn more about how they stored foods through the different seasons. It wasn’t a very long tour, but it was neat that they had this heritage site basically at our camp for us to explore.

We went back to our campsite for lunch, and had danger dogs and caramelized onions. We then packed up and tried to search for the trailhead at American Creek Falls. This trail was not super well maintained, and upon finding it finally, it seemed a tad steep. We decided to move to our next attraction point of the day: Emory Creek Park.

Emory Creek was really nice and had shallow swimming grottos and sandbars for us to relax on! At one point we discovered that there was natural clay on the sandbanks and we spent a good bit of time harvesting the clay for one of our friends. I actually don’t know how long we spent there since we didn’t have our phones, but we later packed up and headed back for our last night at our campsite.

Our last night’s meal was meant to be a mishmash of our leftovers so we did a yakisoba-esque stir fry. We cooked up udon and threw in anything we had left. It was actually delicious and we ended up making a second batch! We didn’t sleep too late since we had to be up early to pack up to do our final day of activities. I once again passed out immediately inside my tent.

Cooking up our last breakfast items, we then disassembled all our equipment and was ready to go. I think we ended up leaving our campsite at around 11AM. We headed off to the Hell’s Gate Airtram—which was only an 8 minutes drive away from us!

The airtram and the attractions waiting for us in the gorge below were dog friendly — awesome for Onyx! My fiancé said he felt Onyx tense up when we were taking the tram down though. Which was understandable given we were almost 1,000 feet up in the air as we descended. We toured the exhibits (I got teary eyed at a dated salmon migration documentary), bought some fudge, tried our hand at gold panning, and walked across the suspension bridge. We spent a few hours here and it was a nice, well-kept tourist attraction!

We left Hell’s Gate and started to make the drive back towards home. We stopped by Aggasiz on the way so that we could grill up some of our last hot dogs for lunch at a park. As we drove back, we also stopped by some fresh fruit stands to buy cherries and blueberries. When we got back to our apartment, we still had to re-sort everything so that we could distribute leftover supplies, and return items back to their respective owners.

The fiancé and I took the car to the car wash, loaded up the laundry machine, and grabbed some sushi takeout for dinner. That’s when my body realized how pooped I was after 3.5 days of living outdoors! It ended up taking most of the week for me to recover from my perpetually tired state. I think that speaks to how physically fit I usually am. :’ ) Alongside the 20+ mosquito bites I had to nurse, I took what time I could to rest back up throughout the week!

It was a fun trip, and while it was hot, it wasn’t terrible. We also managed to get a camp site that was relatively well shaded, which was a big plus. Looking forward to future camp adventures again!