Last Tuesday, the two of us took a trip out to Mission to get the winter tires off of Eeyore, Kait's Yaris, and also to visit Kait's grandma. We got out there late in the morning and after sitting down and chatting with Kait's grandma for a while, we went out to get the tires exchanged before having lunch at one of the local restaurants. Lunch was pretty tasty and we decided to head to the bookstore and wander around while we waited for the mechanics to finish up with Eeyore which didn't take too long. After the book store we drove over to the shop to collect Kait's car and
after visiting with her grandma a while longer, we left to go home.
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Looking towards the cliff. |
Kait had mentioned that she wanted to show me a monastery that was
located up on a hill just outside Mission, so off we went. The drive
there was pretty cool in itself. Kait gave me a tour of Mission and
there were several old houses which had belonged to some of Kait's
family back in the day with really beautiful yards. As for the
monastery, it was a very cool and creepy place. The grounds around the
monastery were gorgeous with lots of beautiful paths surrounded by
flowering plants and trees. One edge of the property ended at a cliff
that gave us a really nice view of the Fraser River and all the farmland
and mountains surrounding it.
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Top of the monastery tower. |
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Another shot of the tower. |
We started off along a
pathway that began right near the front door of a big church service
auditorium. The pathway led into the forest and then opened up behind a
hill dotted with some cherry blossom trees. Since this was the first
time we had a chance to use our new camera, we kept stopping every few
steps to take pictures of anything and everything, so the going was
slow. After about 10 minutes of walking along the path and taking
pictures, we
reached the cliff and as you may have guessed, we started
taking more pictures. Once we took all the pictures we wanted, we
continued on along the path. Often along the way we walked off into the
bushes to take pictures of pretty flowers and cool plants.
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Inside of the auditorium. |
While the trail is beautiful, it isn't all that long and so we quickly
found ourselves walking back up to the monastery. We decided to try to
sneak into the auditorium and look around. When we entered, there wasn't
a soul in sight and our footsteps echoed loudly around the large, open
room. The sunlight shone in through several different stained glass
windows casting all sorts of colours onto the grey cement walls. The
place gave me the chills and a bit of the hebey jebies . It reminded me
of an old, European cathedral, except without all the nice artwork that
helps you forget about the creepiness of the place. That and there
weren't any bones stashed away in the basement (that we know of). We
took our pictures and made our way back to Eeyore to head home.
We started driving back down the driveway to the road and made the turn to head to the highway only to decide that we wanted to take the really, really long way home and just drive around to explore all the cool little back roads we'd never been on before. I honestly can't give you even basic directions on the roads we took because I have no idea what the names of most of them were, but we headed in the general direction of Agassiz. Again, we stopped often to take pictures of the landscape and pulled many U-turns in search of roads and places we hadn't yet seen, but we mostly just drove and drove, taking pictures along the way hoping that they weren't blurry. Along the way to Agassiz, we came up on a small little residential area dominated mostly by farms and orchards. We were looking for a dike road to explore but were having trouble because they were all gated and locked with chains and padlocks. Only a few feet off the the side of the gate, however, was a beautiful robin sitting on top of a fence post that ran along a large, open field. It was pretty comfortable around people because we must have been only seven feet away from it across the road in the car and we took the opportunity to snap as many pictures of it as possible. As we were taking its picture, it even turned to stare right at Kait and the camera. It was pretty damn cool.
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It started a staring contest. |
After the run in with the robin, we drove another ten minutes or so until we reached through Agassiz. We passed through to the Agassiz bridge within about five minutes. As you may have guessed, Agassiz is pretty small. Just across the bridge though, we turned off to take the back road that passes underneath the bridge and continues on all the way to Chilliwack. This road was probably the most beautiful part of the drive, and if you are ever passing over the Agassiz bridge and have some extra time on your hands, I encourage you find and drive along this road. Along both sides of the road, tall trees wall you in and almost arch overhead too. In the Spring and Summer, when the leaves have all grown in it would be even better I bet. We took picture after picture after picture, and while most turned out blurry, there we still quite a few that turned out really nice. Towards the end of the drive as we neared Chilliwack, we even found a trail head that looked pretty nice which we may one day go back to hike.
Once we reached Chilliwack, it was about five in the evening so we decided to may our way back home. We were even lucky enough to avoid all that terrible rush hour traffic on the way into town.
It was a great day! More pictures below and if you'd like to see all the photos we took, visit our Facebook page!
-K & A
P.S. Stay tuned for our next blog post on our Easter Weekend trip to the Shuswap.
More Pictures:
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Looking out from the cliff. |
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Looking further to the right from the cliff. |
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An old man was smoking his pipe and enjoying the view. |
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Looking back towards the trail from the cliff. |
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There were lots of colourful plants and flowers along the trail. |
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Note: Don't bring a bike. |
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A shot of the monastery tower. |
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Beautiful stained glass windows inside the auditorium helped make up for the creepiness of it all. |
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Eeyore, our chariot. |
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Beautiful rolling hills just downhill from the monastery. |
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A shot of the tower as we left. |
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One of the dike roads. |
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The back road we took all the way to Chilliwack. This shot was taken just after we passed under the bridge. |
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Random bike we found on our drive. |
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The trail head we plan on returning to. |