6 Days in a Tiny House on the Sunshine Coast, BC

I’m a bit tardy (as usual) with my post but two weeks ago, Tom and I spent a week out of town together on the Sunshine Coast, west of Vancouver, BC. We’ve been discussing tiny house living for a while, so this was a bit of a test run for us and overall we found that we really enjoyed it except for the open stair/ladder leading up to the loft that was directly over the place we put drying dishes, leading us to sprinkle dirt from our feet onto our clean dishes – yuck. Generally though, we didn’t mind being in the small space and it was really cozy, particularly with the (somewhat loud) rain on the roof throughout the week.

Estimated trip expenses (in USD) for both of us were as follows:

• Food and drinks: $30 x 6 days = $180
• Gas (for the Prius): $40
• Ferry tickets (and reservation fees): $100
• Tiny house airbnb: $500 (for 5 nights, including taxes)

Total: $820

The ferry was a pricey $95CAD including reservation fees one way for the both of us but we figured out the way back was free – Canada’s way of making sure you don’t get stuck somewhere you have no way of getting off of without money.

Pre-Trip Trip: 12 Hours in Portland and Seattle Bar Hopping

Since this was (sort of) my birthday weekend and we don’t make things easy for ourselves, we opted to drive to Portland Friday night (stopping by Pike Place before we left to grab a growler of Rachel’s Ginger Beer as a host gift), have drinks with a friend, grab breakfast with another friend, do a quick walk down Hawthorne Street, and then drive back up to Seattle in a whirlwind of a trip.

I do always love Portland though and I even got a cute necklace from Oro on Hawthorne street as a belated birthday present! We stopped into the cute plant store (maybe just called “Flowers”?) next to Oro because they had these adorable “Fresh Cut Flowers” shirts, but for $44 it was a bit too pricey for me to shell out for and their unisex small still looked like it would be pretty large on me, though the fabric felt lovely, like a cotton hemp blend.

Back in Seattle on Saturday, we had a few hours to hang out before grabbing dinner with some friends and heading to Cap Hill to play pool at the Garage for my birthday, finishing up the night at Pine Box – a mortuary-turned-bar with a great selection of German beers and a great semi-outdoor covered seating area.

Day 1: Sunday, Ferry to Roberts Creek, BC

Sunday morning, we packed up the car and started driving north to BC. My friend from Vancouver shamed me into buying ferry tickets in advance the night before and I was glad of it on Sunday so we didn’t have to wait three hours for the next ferry.

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We got in to Roberts Creek by 6PM and checked in to our adorable tiny house, before stopping by the grocery store to buy some (pricey) provisions for the week. For having the exchange rate work on our favor, everything seemed to be marked up to more than enough to compensate for that.

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Day 2: Monday, Exploring Smuggler Cove

As promised by the weather report, we were awoken early Monday morning to the sound of rain on the roof and braved the tiny shower (not that scary).

We headed to the Beachcomber’s Coffee Shop in Gibsons for some morning work on our laptops and then migrated over to the Gumboot Cafe in Robert’s Creek for lunch and a bit more work. (Beachcomber’s I could have passed on in terms of ambiance and outlet unavailability but Gumboot Cafe was lovely with outlet access, great ambiance, and great burritos and baked goods, even if the internet didn’t totally work for our first half hour.)

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At this point, the clouds broke and we took advantage of the few hours of sunshine to drive down the coast (where we promptly saw a black bear) and explore the Smuggler Cove Provincial Park – so named for its sorted history with smuggling the Chinese into America in the 1800s and alcohol during the Prohibition.

The park was a lovely couple mile walk and we went at low tide, meaning you could easily scrabble up the exposed islands just off the coast.

Day 3: Tuesday, Rainy Day Beer Tasting

As promised by the weather report, Tuesday was an all-rain affair with only a few breaks throughout the day.

I got up early for morning meetings and snuggled into my coziest hoodie to sit through the three hours, rain plinking on the roof – before the power was knocked out at 8AM during the start of my third meeting.

Tom was a real champ and we drove until I got a good signal and could call back in over my phone for the last twenty minutes.

We went to coffee shop (MORE coffee, OK generally though the toilet in the bathroom kind of sucked) until our Airbnb owner informed us the power came back on and we could head home to shower.

The rest of the day was a sleepy but productive work day and we hit up Tap Works Brewing Company in Gibsons after work to grab a pint and watch the rain from their enclosed (and heated!) patio. Great beer and lovely ambiance with awesome looking (and smelling) food!

That night around 6, back at the tiny house, we even saw a bear cub and mama bear that we’d been warned about by the host, and they were super adorable! They came very close to the house and we snapped some ok pics of them.

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Day 4: Wednesday, Exploring Hidden Grove and Failing to See Bioluminescence

Since this was the one day this week with a guarantee of nice weather, we wanted to do something outdoors, ideally with hiking. I woke up early for some morning meetings and did some more work before we headed out and attempted to go up north to Tetrahedron Provincial Park. Through the Canadian parks website had said that we would only need 4 wheel drive to make it up to the park in winter, the roads were pretty gnarly and we turned around part way up because of the steepness and road unevenness.

Instead, we diverted to Hidden Grove, just north of Sechelt, and walked around through the adorable locally up-kept walking trails through the forest. It was mostly flat with some inclines and an easy walk of about 3 hours to do the longest way around the trails, including the Sechelt Heritage Forest trail.

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After work, we headed back to rest before our planned night excursion of attempting to see bioluminescence on the coast. There’s a place in the north that does (spendy) night kayak trips to go out to see it but we didn’t want to shell out over $150 for the two of us, so we went over to Egmont after the moon rose at 9:33PM to see what we could glimpse. Skies were clear but the moon had only just gotten up over the mountains and didn’t have enough time to do its work, so we opted to just get back in the car and drive back. We did stop at a few other beaches on the way but couldn’t really see anything. I’ve heard there’s better viewing over by Quadra, so I’ll have to head that way during the season some year! It looks like idea viewing time is between August and October.

We had a nice drive though and only two deer, one cat, and one coyote attempting to kill themselves in front of our car, which seems pretty good considering the dense forest around us. It was at minimum very lovely and dark out and we stargazed for a bit and admired the Milky Way, which I hadn’t seen in a while!

Day 5: Thursday, Exploring Cliff Gilker Park

This was the one day that Tom had a scheduled afternoon activity so we were mostly tiny house bound but we squeezed in a brief trip to The Bakery (very cute with nice muffins) for coffee and treats in the morning.

In the afternoon after his online session, we took a short walk through Cliff Gilker Park in Roberts Creek. It was a smaller park but had some lovely small waterfalls (with a lot of iron? in the water) and lots of signs warning of a local coyote pack (leading, of course, to logistical discussions about how we’d try to fend off a pack of coyotes).

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After the park, I insisted on ice cream, so we stopped by The Folly Artisan in town (still Roberts Creek) and I sampled the Cardamom Strawberry, Vegan Black Currant Chip, and Grapefruit Marmalade Chip (my final choice, which tasted just like those orange chocolate wedges).

Day 6: Ferry to Seattle

This was our last day in the tiny house and we were sad to say goodbye to our petite airbnb (and return to our seeming “huge” 550 sqft apartment) but we had a last lovely ferry ride back home and stopped through Vancouver on the way home for lunch at Meat and Bread – a sandwich chain that has a location in Seattle that neither Tom or I had been to.

Tom got the buffalo chicken sandwich and I got the meatball sandwich, which were both super tasty!

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The following day, we drove across Washington another 5 hours to go to Walla Walla, WA to see some friends before Tom continued on to Boise, where I’ll be shortly visiting him, so look forward to a post on that!