Little River

Our young residents reflect on the home they’re growing up in

 

 

 

Our names are Annabel and Brynlee. We are nine-year-old identical twins born one minute apart and have lived on this spectacular island, on the beautiful West Coast of BC, for our entire lives. We love to live an adventurous life together with our family and we’re grateful to call this place home.

Starting with gymnastics at age one, we grew from tots, to pre-comp and then to competitive gymnastics. These skills have supported us in the activities we do by giving us strength, confidence, and great body awareness. We would highly recommend the local gymnastics programs for anyone looking to lay a strong foundation for embarking in all kinds of physical activities.

From one side of the Island to the other, there is so much to explore, but nothing is as all-encompassing as the Strathcona area. Our parents, who also grew up here, thankfully decided there is nowhere else they would rather be. There is so much beauty here it is easy to become an outdoors fanatic with so much to do every single day.

Starting on the board with mom and dad, we learned to wake surf at McIvor lake early on in life. We also love a good barefoot session off the boom, body surfing, tubing, and participating in the Eagles Waterski Club camps in the summer.

A fun and unique mission we like to tackle in the spring, just because we can, is hitting McIvor lake for a waterski, a tube session, and a wake surf and then jump in the truck and race up the hill for an evening ski and snowboard session in the evening. It’s pretty cool to go from a wetsuit to mountain gear in the same day. Not many people in the world get to experience that.

Recently, we have grown to love climbing at WIP, the new climbing gym in Courtenay. We originally started our love for climbing at On The Rocks climbing gym in Campbell River. This is an endeavour made much easier with our gymnastics background and also helps us in strength and coordination when we’re hike-a-bike’ing in the Cumberland trails or on Mount Washington.

Little River Vol 3 Gallery

The mountain bike trails have become a second home in the spring and summer for us and camps with Gravity MTB have been paramount to our success in bettering our riding skills. Cumberland trails were our first favourite and now we can’t get enough of the downhill riding on Mount Washington in the summer season. Jumps, drops, and corners are epic and it is an amazing place for riders of all ages and abilities to get up there and start learning how to elevate their ride game. We also love hiking to Battleship Lake for a swim, hanging with the Whiskey Jacks, the marmots and can’t wait until next year when we’re old enough to try the new Zip Line for the first time!

The summers are busy with outdoor experiences, but there is also a lot of adventure to be found at home on our farm. Learning to drive tractor since we could walk, riding quads, and how to pick corn and blueberries on a large scale has been a really cool advantage of being farm kids. Hard work isn’t a stranger to us. We love getting involved in the spring planting and summer and fall harvest to deliver produce island wide.

We have learned a lot about trees and lumber from our dad’s sawmill and also a lot about beekeeping from our uncle at Big D’s Bees honey farm. We also get to help label cider and wine bottles with our grandpa for Coastal Black and pick pumpkins and squash for our families Pumpkin Fest event.

All in all, we are in love with living here. This place we get to call home is magical and has something exciting to suit anyone who loves the outdoors!