Vancouver: Day 2 (Our Crazy, Awesome Day!)

Aka "Haley puked on the Seabus"

We set out in high spirits, but on the bus, Haley announced she had a headache. It wasn't quite bad enough to return to the hostel, but she was not a happy camper. Pressing on, we boarded the small passenger ferry (Seabus) to go to north Vancouver. It was a migrane after all, cause we had to beg our fellow passengers for a seasick bag. Luckily a couple of people had empty shopping bags :) Haley napped for a few minutes at the next bus stop, but then felt much better. Kind of an accelerated, mild migrane.

Grouse Mountain was a lot of fun. We took a skycar up the mountain.


We got to see a Birds of Prey show with trained birds flying about in front of the audience. We saw a hawk,


a turkey vulture,


and a bald eagle. He was too young to have a white head, but he really wanted to cruise the neighborhood. He took off during the show, and it took them a while to get him back. He got to spend the rest of the show being held by his jesses.


The lumberjack show was a lot of fun! They had various contests like a sawing race


and a log rolling competition.


But when nobody was looking a drunken tourist stole some equipment and climbed up the pole. "You're crazy!" the announcer screamed at him. "No, I'm Canadian!" he responded. (He turned out to be part of the show)


We got to ride the chair lift down the mountain and back up. The view was great!


Next we went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge.


I got Haley to take my photo too!


On the other side of the bridge they had tree platforms connected with smaller suspension bridges, à la Swiss Family Robinson.


Here's a view of the Suspension Bridge from further away... Wait a minute, we have to go back over that?!


We had a nice dinner at the White Spot. It ended up being our only sit-down restaurant meal during our whole trip!


Then we hustled back to the hostel to watch the fireworks from the beach. It was awesome to sit in the sand and watch the fireworks across the bay.


The fireworks show was choreographed to music. Luckily, another group had brought a portable radio, so we could listen in! Here's a movie so you can see and hear it too!

Vancouver: Day 1

We made it to our hostel last night just fine, though I'd rather not deal with rush hour in Vancouver again any time soon! There are three hostels in Vancouver; 2 are more or less downtown and one is out on the coast in Jericho Park (that's ours). Our hostel is great -- even though the dorms have lots of beds in them, they're divided up into little 4 bed suites with a walkway on the side -- kinda like a train car without the doors :)

One of our roommates was a lady from Quebec named Claudia, who has hair like Andrea. She recommended a hair cream that she makes herself, and was kind enough to give me a jar! It has the recipe on the side, so I can make some more myself if I like it :)

Today it was raining. Undaunted, we took a bus to Granville Island, and explored. We popped into the brewery, stopped by a hammock store, and visited a kitchen stuff store (I love gadgets!) We went to the Public Market, which has all kinds of booths. We bought fresh fruit,


olives,


and fresh bread.


Then we hit a wine store -- the sales clerk was from France, so we spoke in French! I've been able to speak in French with lots of people (like Claudia), which has been awesome!

Last we visited the Kids' Market, which was a building filled with shops aimed at kids. We managed to escape after buying a "Haley" pen.


Then we left Granville Island, walked a few blocks, and jumped on the bus to the iMax theatre. There we watched Deep Sea, which was a really neat 3D movie about (duh) underwater stuff, mostly centered on the coral reefs. It was pretty neat, and only occasionally nauseating *grin*

Finally we got back on the bus and came back to the hostel. Here we made dinner -- canned soup left over from camping, fresh fruit and bread from the market. We had a rambutan fruit for dessert -- it doesn't look edible, but inside the funny skin it's sweet and kind of rubbery -- a bit like a gummy bear :)






Tomorrow we hope to go see the Capilano Suspension Bridge, Grouse Mountain, and then walk out to the beach from our hostel to watch a fireworks show :)

Vancouver Ho!

So we left the campground this morning and headed over to the famous Butchart Gardens. They really were beautiful. Here is Haley in front of the Water Wheel Garden:


They had hanging begonias!


There were lots and lots of different kinds of roses.


I liked the Fountain of the Three Sturgeons.



After enjoying the gardens, we drove over to the ferry terminal. Wow, it's a *lot* better than the one in Port Angeles. We got there at 1:40, and left on the 2:00 ferry! Our ferry was the Sannich Queen.


Since it was light outside, we were able to enjoy the spectacular view :)

Haley wanted to go home

We got lots of sleep last night -- we went to bed when it got dark (about 10) and didn't get up till 10 this morning. Unfortunately, Haley had a migraine today, so she wasn't having a very good time. She feels all better now, so she's a lot more enthusiastic about our vacation again. We didn't get much done today, mostly just hung out around camp. I did manage to drain my car batteries charging my computer, so we had to get a jump. Oops. Anyhow, if we can find a room at the Vancouver hostel, we'll probably head that way tomorrow. Otherwise, we'll probably spend another night at Goldstream and head over the next day. Hopefully we'll be able to catch a daylight ferry this time -- that would be a lot more fun :)

We thought the stairs were going to kill us

We left Victoria at about 9am and drove all of 17 kilometers to Goldstream Provincial Park. We stopped at a grocery store on the way. I might have to move here -- they had my favorite cheese that I used to eat in France. I haven't gotten to eat it for 7 years, so I was pretty excited to see the gouda with cumin. They also have chocolate milk in these tremendously cute 1 liter jugs. It's a good thing we don't have them back home, or we'd drink way too much!



When we got to the campground, people hadn't finished checking out, so we went hiking while we waited for our campsite. We hiked along the river, up a hill, and then down a crazy set of stairs to get to the waterfall. Here are some photos:

The beautiful river:




Here's a photo of the crazy stairs. You can only see part of the stairs in this shot -- if you look closely, you can see another chunk over Haley's shoulder, and they keep on going! Down was bad enough...



Once we got to the bottom, it was worth it. The waterfall really was beautiful.



Naturally, we took photos of each other before we crawled back up the stairs:





On the way back, we got to meet our first Goth banana slug.



The Goldstream campground has two presentations every day, at 2:30 and at 7:30. Haley got to go up to the stage during the 2:30 Parkopoly game.

Victoria: Day 2

I bought an audio file for my iPod that was a walking tour of Victoria. The cool thing about it is that it's like your own personal tour guide, but you can pause and go check out this or that shop, wander off course and then come back later.

Of course, the tour led us in front of the legislature buildings.



It was officially 1 1/2 hours long, but it took us much longer.

During the tour, we stopped to watch a street performer. He preformed such feats as stepping through a tennis racquet while balancing a golf club on his chin and juggling flaming torches while riding a 6 foot unicycle. Very entertaining!



Then we hopped on a little ferry and went to check out Fisherman's wharf. We had lunch at Barb's Fish & Chips.



Since we'd paid for hop on, hop off tickets for a tour bus, we hopped on and hitched a lift back to the downtown. We went in to the UnderSea Garden, which was ok, but not awesome. I did get a couple good photos though:




Then we crossed the street back to the legislature building. They seem much more approachable than the capital buildings in Sacramento -- there were people napping and playing frisbee on the lawn. We thought that sounded good, so we snoozed for a bit too. Then we pressed play and finished up the last bit of our tour.

I was still full from our Fish & Chip lunch, but Haley insisted she was starving. On the advice of the helpful hostel guy, we went to QV, a local burger joint. They have the 2nd best milkshakes I've ever tasted (Toni's truckstop on Guintoli holds my 1st loyalty!) They use the coffee syrups to flavor their shakes, which works *really* well! I had chocolate with a shot of caramel, and Haley had a root beer shake. They had the best-presented burger I've ever seen :)

Victoria: Day 1

Today was our first day in Victoria. Parking here is a pain. The street is metered, so we can park on the street between 6pm and 9am, but then we have to move to a paid lot for the daytime. Haley had a bit of trouble waking up in time for me to move the car -- we didn't get to bed until 12:30, so 8:00 was pretty early. We did a lot of walking today.

Here's a photo of Haley in front of some cool flowers. I forget what they're called, but Mom has some in her yard. They tend to be the same color, normally, more reddish or blueish depending on the soil content (I think). I thought it was really interesting that there were two bushes with different colors right next to each other.



Victoria has lots of hanging baskets of flowers :) They're really pretty :) Here's a shot of the parliment building with some flowers in the foreground.



Our last adventure for the day was the ghost tour. It was cool :) We got to hear about all kinds of hauntings in downtown Victoria, and apparently they have so many ghosts to choose from that they do a different tour every night of the week!




I'm still wondering whose job it is to water the hanging flowers... I think I'll have to ask about it and maybe I'll let you know tomorrow :)

The Ferry

Here's a picture of the ferry.



Informed readers might notice that this picture is of the ferry in *Victoria*, not Port Angeles. Yeah, well... That's because we *just* missed the ferry we were planning on taking. That doesn't mean that we arrived as it was pulling away from the dock. Oh no. That means that we arrived at 4:05 for the 5:45 ferry. You would not *believe* how early people get there! Plus, there are these things called reservations. Didn't even occur to me... I really thought we were going to get on, but when the van ahead of us pulled in and had to park sideways, I knew they were full up. So we got to hang out for another 4 hours until the 9:15 ferry. We stopped at a book store and then had a lovely dinner at the Golden Gate restaurant (umm, Chinese :) about a block from the ferry. And then we went back to wait. And wait... I was pretty ok with sitting around in the car reading, but Haley was less patient. Eventually, she went to go play in the empty terminal we were parked next to. I could see her through the windows, but I couldn't hear her, which probably saved her life, or at least my sanity. When you're traveling with grown ups, you can get some alone time. When you're traveling with a kid, you can't say, "Hey, go amuse yourself -- I need a break, so I'll see you later!" Oh well :)

Anyhow, the was only one other person in the terminal. He was hanging out, listening to music on his laptop. Over the course of a couple hours, Haley went from playing with her doll, to miming, to dancing to the music he turned up for her.

I wandered in, to make sure she wasn't bugging the poor guy. Turns out he's got at least one kid himself, so he was pretty tolerant :) We got to talking about computers and webpages, and he joked that I should google him. Just did, and found out he's a musician. Kinda neat :) I listened to some of his music on his webpage -- not bad :) Kinda jazzy. Anyhow, there's our brush with a mildly famous person. Almost as exciting as Mom going to high school with Sally Struthers... *laugh*



Alas, the ferry didn't leave till 9:30, so it was very dark, and not as neat as it would have been during the day. When we got to Victoria, we *did* get our passports stamped (they normally just check, but don't bother to stamp) and Haley was able to ask about BC's official bird and flower :) So the day wasn't a complete wash... *grin*

Portland Zoo

We spent Monday and Tuesday nights at the Grandparents' in Silverlake, WA. On Tuesday we drove down to Portland with Grandma and visited the zoo. Grandma's favorite part was the 35 minute train ride through the park.



Haley's favorite animals were the elephants



And, of course, who could forget the rutting gazelles?!



Tomorrow we'll drive up to Port Angeles and take the ferry across to Victoria. This is Haley's first trip outside the US, so she's extra excited :)