Deep Cove’s Grey Rock

This post will serve two purposes today. The first is to write about out little adventure to Grey Rock in Deep Cove, the second to test out the lightbox portion of the Flickr Photo Album plugin for WordPress.

I’ve been using the Flickr Photo Album plugin for WordPress for quite some time now, but mainly to allow me to easily integrate my Flickr photos into blog posts. A feature I have not looked at, until now, has been the use of a lightbox. Lightboxes (in terms of web sites) allow you to pop up a photo over-top of the regular content, this allows to show a larger photo to your visitors without changing your layout or redirecting them. Some people might dislike this, but others I find generally like the effect it creates. To check out the larger photos, just click on the photos below. A larger (800px wide) photo will load over top. It should not hinder your browsing experience and you can just click on the photo again to make it disappear.

Deep Cove is about 30 minutes east of the City of Vancouver on the North Shore, and located in North Vancouver. The trail head is located next to a private property along Panorama Drive.  It is just before a small bridge that goes over a small creek, so it can be easily missed.

The trail that leads from Deep Cove to Grey Rock is not terribly difficult, but there is a large amount of going up. Even though the elevation gain is only 100m, if you are not used to going up so many steps, switch backs or rooty areas you will want to take it slow. Just be sure not to wear flip-flops or Crocs as we noticed some people had been wearing.

Eventually (roughly 45 minutes) you will come to Grey Rock. This over looks Deep Cove, Belcarra (the the left) and parts of Port Moody and Burnaby (straight ahead). Definitely a great spot to have a picnic or enjoy the sun.

After you have spent time in the sun, you just follow the trail back the way you came. It’s much easier going back down to the parking lot than it is going up to Grey Rock.

Be sure to check out the rest of my photos in my Flickr photostream, including more photos from our litle day hike to Grey Rock.

So far using the lightbox I find to be quite useful. This particular WordPress layout allows for only 500 pixel wide photos within the content of the posts. The ligthbox allows me to display the 800 pixel wide photos (bigger photos is better right?) to people who wish to see the larger size. it also allows people to easily navigation between photos within a blog post as well.

At this time, I have also decided to go back to posting my photos here on Tyler Ingram dot com. I have seen a recent slip in traffic numbers that is primarily due to the fact that I have not been posting very much here. With the use of the lightbox, I can proudly display my photos here without having to change my layout. I love being able to show off larger photos to people, and I find that anything really below 800 pixel in width is a bit small.