Spirit Bear Sea Kayak Trip

Check out our pictures of this trip on Picasa at: http://picasaweb.google.com/MarkSNewell/2009818SpiritBearSlideshow

JULY 2009
This is it, our big Honeymoon adventure and series of trips one or both of us have always wanted to do. With Mark done with school (MBA in Sustainable Business from BGI), and family plans in the future, it seemed to us that now is the right time to travel together. I left my job with Bike Works on July 15th after three and a half years leading the dynamic, growing organization.

The first part of our adventure was kayaking in the Spirit Bear area of northwestern British Columbia. It is a section of the coast 80-100 miles long about 100 miles south of the BC/Alaska boarder. It is unique for many reasons, one being that the Queen Charlotte islands, about 80 miles off shore, provide some protection from the open Pacific swell, allowing for access to a rugged coastline without gnarly surf landings. In total our trip was 21 days on the water, and covered roughly 200 miles of remote, rugged coast. A long time friend of ours, Mark Leek, joined us on the first half of our trip is Mark Leek (we highly recommend him as a honeymoon partner anytime!)

We’d hoped to blog about this in detail, but here we’ll only provide a summary – you’ll have to get all the juicy stories, if you haven’t already, when you see us next. The trip was truly amazing. The weather couldn’t have been better – we were expecting lots of rain and cold days, and most of our trip was warm and sunny; some days we joked that it felt like Baja, not BC. This trip proved to be a powerful way for us to start our big adventure – after so much craziness with Mark finishing school and me leaving Bike Works, it was rejuvenating to unplug from the world, and immerse ourselves in nature. We felt connected to the tides, the moon, the eagles, and the jumping salmon. We were graced to see three wolves and lots of whales. We ate like kings, had lots of fun baking in our new Dutch Oven, and enjoyed the fresh squeezed margaritas that Mark Leek managed to pack in his boat. We returned with such an incredible sense of peacefulness, and felt ready to jump into our next adventures together.