cedarfoxy and I left the USA and entered Canada on July 4, which seemed vaguely meaningful somehow. For my part, this was made possible by the current administration creating a passport system that could put my proper gender marker on a passport, and without utterly irrelevant "proof of medical transition" that was once upon a time required.

We spent a night with their mom and her partner on Vancouver Island, and then another night camping with same, and then we entered the West Coast Trail for (planned) an eight-day, seven-night hike across 75km of beach and forest.

As planned, we stuck the forest as much as possible, and this was utterly delightful. Many beautiful trees, beautiful ferns, dubious ladders up and down, even more dubious bridges, chainsaw-hewn walking planks, some chainsaw-art, beautiful views of the ocean, and more. However, there were places where the beach was unavoidable. We encountered the first of those places on Day 2.

Now, if the tide was low enough, there was often a sandstone rock shelf to be walked on, if you trusted it. We learned about rock shelves off the east coast of Kauai, which are unlevel, jagged to the point of sawtoothedness, and slippery, so no, we didn't initially trust them. However, the evil of beaches made of 4-inch "river rock" alternating with playground pea gravel (chosen for playgrounds because it literally can not pack) induced me to give it a try. It was surprisingly un-slippery, given the warnings in our orientation! However, the rock shelf was not always available, which put us back on a sloping beach made of pea gravel. Each of our leg is the same length as the other, and the gravel under the downhill leg insisted on giving way more readily than under the uphill leg, so there was a significant unevenness to our gait that abused my patience and cedarfoxy's knee. At the end of Day 2, after 2 km of beach, we looked at the map, and saw there was another 6.5km of that bullshit coming on Day 5, and noped right the fuck out pivoted our plans.

Day 3 began with a cable car crossing, which is a special kind of exercise. It isn't possible to get proper leverage to pull the car along the cable from inside the car, because the rope is about a foot to the outside of your elbow. Furthermore, the person sitting backwards is using different muscles for this endeavor than for literally anything else. However, we made it all the way to the far side of Klanawa River -- with our 85 pounds (combined) of gear plus our own body weight plus the weight of the cable car -- and carried on our way. We trekked through more lovely trees, lovely ferns, mildly suspect ladders up and down, even more suspect bridges, chainsaw-hewn walking planks, some chainsaw-art, and lovely views of the ocean. We even saw sea lions and paused to watch some whales.

We ultimately reached Nitinaht Narrows and summoned the ferry by hollering up the bay.

Now, we had rented a cabin at the Crab Shack at Nitinaht Narrows for Night 3, and there's a water taxi available from there to Nitinaht Village. Back at the end of Day 2, cedarfoxy was able to get enough cell signal to arrange for their mom to meet us for extraction. The water taxi leaves only at 5:30pm unless one wants to pay an additional $200, so on Day 4 we left our big packs on the dock and made a little day venture south and then came back. During our day hike we met some folks who live in the area who guided us to a blowhole we had been looking for (the ferry operator told us about it). It wasn't blowing because the swells were low, but we also got to see petroglyphs, pretty sea shells, and a shipwreck that had washed up there from the Columbia River (yes, the one in PDX). After photos, cedarfoxy and I took our leave, and got directions that basically were "start at that buoy hanging in the tree over there, and just take the path of least resistance." Accurate. The path was well overgrown such that the salal was taller than I by a good margin, but we made it back to the main trail without any issue and went back to the Crab Shack, where we played yahtzee until time to taxi out.

Since we were early back to civilization, I was able to meet cedarfoxy's Canada family in a much more gradual and staged fashion, which was excellent for my face-blind, name-memory-deficient self. Over the next few days, we showered at the local aquatic center, walked a Totem Pole tour, went to Pagliacci's for dinner, spent some time in a park cedarfoxy had played in as a child, went to a street market, hiked to the summit of Mt Finlayson (which required Rock Climbing, what even), spent some time in a hot tub, bought a board game, ate wayyyyyyyyyyy too much cake, and had our wedding reception (where none of the guests had been informed of the reason for the party, so there was quite some surprise when the cake was revealed). I liked all of cedarfoxy's family. I should probably ask whether any of them liked me before I move our annual camping trip to their neck of the woods, but it seems like a safe bet.

On our last day we had Afternoon Tea (at 11am) at the Fairmont Empress, which was a wonderful, fancy, delicious, and expensive experience. I'm super glad we did it, but it will probably be an every-five-years thing, not an every-year thing. Then we took a ferry back off the island and into Washington, and booked it back home to Portland.

9/10, would absolutely do again, but with some adjustments now that we know better.