A couple of weekends ago we had an awesome family weekend getaway in Agassiz, BC for the annual Fraser Valley Slow Food Cycle Tour. The tour actually takes place all weekend with Saturday being the Agassiz tour (25 km) and Sunday being the Chilliwack tour. Since we are not regular bikers we decided to just sign up for one day to see how it went, next year I think we will definitely be back for both days!
Even though Agassiz is only a two hour car ride from our home, we decided that since we were travelling with our 21-month-old son that it would be a lot easier and way more relaxing if we just made a weekend mini-vacation out of the trip. I am glad we decided to do this as it was actually quite a relaxing getaway. For those of you that are not familiar with Agassiz, it is a rural area with a population that is probably less than 6,000 people.
We stayed at Mt. Woodside bed & breakfast. This is the first time we had ever stayed in a bed and breakfast and it was a wonderful experience. I would highly recommend it! The bed and breakfast is nestled in a mountain setting, just a 10-minute drive to the starting point of the bike tour. The accommodations were superb and breakfast was absolutely delicious. The couple that owns the bed and breakfast were extremely nice and were very accommodating to our son. The rooms feature extremely comfortable queen size beds, with a small sitting area, private deck overlooking the forest, and a private bathroom with bath and shower. Breakfast options include homemade bread, muffins, eggs, crepes, waffles, yogurt, porridge, and fresh fruit. Definitely a wonderful first bed and breakfast experience.
The 2013 slow food cycle tour was a 25 km bike tour of several local farms in which you can ride at your own pace. You can stop at the different farms to look around and buy fresh meats, dairy, produce, and other homemade goods. We took a hay ride tour of the dairy farm and stopped to have lunch at the cheese farm. There is a complimentary shuttle service available to pick up all of your purchases from the farms, keeping perishables cool, and delivers the items to the registration table at the starting point so that you don’t need to carry everything with you. I rode with my son in a seat on the back of my bike, my friend used a tandem attachment on her bike for her 5-year old daughter. There were many families on the ride. It was a nice flat ride on mostly paved rural roads, so there was not much traffic to worry about.
This was a very enjoyable mini-vacation for our family and a great opportunity to try the local goods produced right on the farms. When you taste the the food products sold by the farms it really makes you realize how processed our foods are by the time they reach the grocery stores. Tasting the foods produced on the farms was like tasting food in its natural state, the way it was meant to taste, unaltered, and fresh.
Lulu Island Mom 