Point Roberts: Urban cycling and car camping

Last weekend Christian's work had organized a car camping trip to Lighthouse Marine Park in Point Robert. To add a bit more adventure and some exercise we decided to go by bike from Ladner. We didn't want to deal with the Massey Tunnel, which is why we started in Ladner. I had been looking up bike routes from home and liked the description of the dyke trails from Let's go biking. 

We started off from Ladner at a casual 1.30pm. It was a bit tricky to follow the dyke at first as there were a bunch of gates that was non-trivial to get the chariot through. On the dyke from Ladner to Wellington Park Fenya biked herself and I enjoyed checking out all the house boats. The best part of the ride was from the turn off to Westham Island to the train track crossing (going to the port). We discussed for a while how we should cross the tracks and eventually decided to walk along side them until we found a suitable crossing, which was just ~100 m east. We continued along the dyke until it ended by the road to the ferry terminal. We explored a road and a trail along the beach, but it ended 7 m below the road we wanted to connect with, so we had to retrace and follow the road the rest of the way to Point Roberts. You can see our full route here. In total it was 30km there and 17km back. 

At Point Roberts we went shopping and then joined the rest of the crew at the campground. All the other families were car camping, so we borrow a few camping chairs and joined them by the fire while cooking. F played with the older kids. They were really good at including her and she had a great time. Every night when we go to bed I ask her what the favourite part of her day was and the whole week after the trip she answered playing with the big kids. After dinner there were s'mores by the fire and afterwards the kids went for a bike ride. F followed one of the bigger kids around and went after him down a big hill. She lost it and had pretty big bail. There was a lot of crying and she wasn't fully over it until the next morning. She did declare shortly after the bail that she could go down the hill when she was bigger, and the next day she was back on the bike right away.

Sunday we played at the campground and the beach. Lot of sticks and rocks were thrown in the water. Around noon we started heading home. F biked a bit, but mostly she collected flowers for her basket. After she went into the chariot we decided to just bike back via the fastest route while she was a sleep. Back in Ladner we picked up some strawberries and veggies before heading home.