BC Trip Day 8: Wedding Festivities

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Saturday morning we headed to Siegel’s Bagels for a delicious breakfast. Best bagels in Vancouver, I tell you! We picked up a lunch to go at Capers and then we headed to the north shore. We avoided the expensive tourist trap of the Capilano Suspension Bridge and went instead to Lynn Canyon, where the suspension bridge is just as cool and totally free.

There were lots of people on this sunny Saturday, but we were expecting it. We luckily had the suspension bridge to ourselves for a few brief moments.

Right as I took the picture above, a group of teenage boys came dashing onto the bridge behind me and proceeded to jump and down as hard as they could to make the bridge jump and sway.

Quickly getting motion sick, I hastily got off the bridge. We walked upstream to the cool green 30 Foot Pool up there (I’m not sure where it gets that name because the pool doesn’t look 30 feet deep). The people-watching here was rather interesting. A different pack of teenage boys were jumping off the cliffs into the creek. There were also LOTS of people with dogs. Nothing unusual there, except that all the dogs were off-leash. There was a big sign in the area clearly stating that all dogs had to be on-leash. I see that dog owners read signs about as frequently as cell-phone-talking library patrons do, which is to say, NOT AT ALL.

We headed over to Rice Lake and found a few geocaches there and read about the history of the place. We had our picnic lunch in the shade there, watching all the roller bladers and cyclists as they headed up the Seymour Mainline to the Seymour Falls Dam. We’ll have to do that next time. It’s too far to hike, but not so far when you’re on wheels!

We headed back to the B&B to get ready for the wedding, stopping at Purdy’s along the way to get a box of some of the best chocolate ever (it lasted about 48 hours).We got dressed up for the wedding and headed down to Richmond, to the lovely UBC Boathouse, to watch my friend Jenna and her wonderful fiancee, Mike, get married. It was a lovely ceremony out by the water, with the distant mountains as a backdrop. And fortunately the rain held off until we moved inside for the reception! (You can see the pictures from their wedding photographer here.)

I got to see two other grad school friends, Hanna and Becky. I’ve really missed all these gals since we graduated nearly four years ago.

During the reception we got to see the most amazing sunset. Dark brooding clouds had moved in, threatening rain. They made for a pretty awesome sunset, which turned all those clouds red and orange for a short time.

After the sunset we had quite the lightning storm! Vancouver, like Portland, rarely gets thunder and lightning. We were all pretty wowed by the show. The Celebration of Light fireworks were going on that night. We didn’t see it, but it must have been quite the show with both lightning AND fireworks! You can see a few photos here and here.

BC Trip Day 7

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Friday morning we headed to one of my favorite places in Vancouver: Grounds for Coffee. They claim to have the best cinnamon rolls in the world, and since I’ve never tasted better cinnamon rolls anywhere else, I’m inclined to believe them! The place was busy and stuffy, so we got our cinnamon rolls to go and ate them at a small park by the beach. Oh the sticky gooey goodness!

We checked our e-mail at the Kitsilano branch library while Greg’s laundry was going at the laundromat. Then we took a little tour of the Kits Beach and Vanier Park area with some multi-stage geocaches. It was a beautiful morning to be out on the beach! I had the hairbrained idea to go Granville Island for lunch, but there was no parking to be found there. Just lots of cars and people. So we continued on to our next destination: Stanley Park. We parked just inside the park and then walked to Denman Street for lunch, followed up by gelato. Greg had a scoop of black sesame and a scoop of green tea. He has weird taste in gelato.

We spent the afternoon seeing Stanley Park and finding geocaches there. I love this park. It has some beautiful trees (unfortunately, many of them blew down in a windstorm a few years ago), walking trails, museums and cultural sites, and the fantastic seawall that goes around the whole perimeter of the park. I’ve never biked it, but it’s a great place to walk and see some great views.

One of our stops was at Prospect Point. While there, we saw a raccoon. Stanley Park has lots of raccoons and people stupidly treat them like pets. For lots of reasons, the park staff don’t want people petting or feeding the raccoons. So I was surprised at the lack of signs stating this fact. This particular raccoon didn’t get any handouts this time.

However, a short while later when I was taking pictures, I happened to glance across the parking lot and saw a huddle of people all focused on the ground. Another raccoon (or maybe it was the same one) was getting handouts. Oh dear.

After dinner at Nat’s Pizza (best pizza in Vancouver!), we toured the West End via a series of geocaches there. One of the things I love about geocaching is the cool places it takes you to, places you would never go otherwise. We saw Barclay Heritage Square and the very cool Mole Hill Community, a neat community revitalization project. We also visited a cool fountain that you could walk through via stepping stones. It was surrounded by lovely summer flowers.

We returned to Stanley Park for sunset. The Lion’s Gate Bridge looked cool silhouetted against the orange sky.

And we saw a fantastic sunset from Prospect Point.

BC Trip Day 6 – Vancouver

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We ate breakfast at our B&B, but it was a pretty pathetic meal. We were offered meat and eggs. Although I’m not a full vegetarian, I almost never eat meat anymore, and I’ve never liked eggs. Greg wasn’t up for either of those things either so we ate cereal and fruit. The last time we stayed at a B&B, we had an English muffin with our choice of honey or jam, along with fresh fruit, and a few other things. I much prefer that kind of breakfast. Oh well, Vancouver has lots of great breakfast options that we would partake of in the days to come.

We rode the bus downtown to see the Vancouver Public Library. I’ve been there many times and even did a two-week practicum there when I was in grad school. It’s a pretty cool-looking building. We checked our e-mail before heading out. Our next stop was Gastown where we just had to stop and see the steam clock go off!

We stopped at a dim sum place in Chinatown for lunch. I’d never had dim sum and was game to try it. Um yeah, so I’m not such a fan, it turns out. After lunch we visited Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Park. We didn’t go inside the neighboring Chinese Garden, but we explored the lovely park outside. What a delightful place!

We hopped a bus to Granville Island. The place can be a bit overrun with tourists, especially in the summer, but it is undeniably cool. I finally got myself a late lunch of pizza and then we wandered around the public market. We got a cup of fresh blueberries, which lasted all of five minutes. Mmmmmm….. I picked up some day-old bagels from Siegel’s (such a deal!), got some delicious-looking cakes from one of the pastry places, and stocked up on some of the best tea I’ve ever had at Granville Island Tea Company. If we’d had a kitchen to cook in, we could have gotten so much more. There is an endless abundance of fantastic food at this market! We found some geocaches around the island and then had fish and chips for dinner at this little hole-in-the-wall place called Tony’s Fish and Oyster Cafe. Ooooh, yummy! Full and satisfied, we hopped the bus back to the B&B.

Later in the evening we drove down to Kits Beach and ate our desserts from the market while we watched the sunset. I do love me a good sunset. Vancouver has good ones, being on the coast and all. What a great way to end the day.

BC Trip Day 5 – From the mountains to the city

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Wednesday morning we packed up the campsite and got ready to leave. Before departing we headed down to a little spot at the edge of the campground called Coudre Point. It was a rocky beach where the Green River made a sharp 90-degree turn. It was a beautiful sunny morning and the river – full of glacial silt – lived up to its colorful name.

We did the short hike out to Nairn Falls. It’s not much to look at. The sound is more impressive than the sight. The rushing waters of the Green River shoot through this gap in the rock and then tumbles over a frothy drop.

We had planned to stop at Brandywine Falls on our drive back to Vancouver, but road construction kept us from doing so. Dang it. We tried to stop at Brohm Lake for lunch, but the place was totally packed. We snagged the only parking spot available, but we couldn’t find anyplace to have our picnic lunch, so we continued down the road to Alice Lake. It was packed there too, but there was a lot more land for people to spread out. BC Parks is sneaky about the day use fee here. There are no signs at the entrance or along the access road about a day use fee. There aren’t even any signs in the parking lot. It’s not until you’ve parked, unloaded the car, and hauled your stuff down to the path to the lake that they say “oh hey, please pay at this machine and walk back to your car to put this ticket on your dash.” It was a minor inconvenience, all things considered, but I really would have appreciated a heads-up.

After a windy lunch at Alice Lake where the screams of hundreds of swimming and playing children provided the soundtrack for the afternoon, we stopped at Shannon Falls just outside Squamish. I’ve been here several times before. The water flow is pretty small this time of year, but it’s a huge waterfall and still looks impressive despite the low flow of summer.

We snuck into Vancouver just ahead of the afternoon rush hour, which was a huge relief. When I lived in Vancouver, there were many times I sat in the long lines of traffic waiting to get onto and across the Lion’s Gate Bridge on my home from a hike. The bridge only has three lanes and the middle lane switches direction depending on the time of day. In the afternoon there is more traffic going north out of town than going south into town, but there are still four lanes of traffic being funneled into one southbound lane and it creates long backups. I was glad to avoid all that.

We checked-in at our B&B and took showers. Oh boy, post-camping showers feel so good! We headed down the hill to Broadway to grab some dinner, then went back to the B&B to chill out for a few hours before the fireworks. Greg had twisted his ankle on the Joffre Lakes trail a few days before, so we took the bus for the short ride down to Kits Beach. We staked out a spot on the grass and watched the evening light SLOWLY fade. Summer evenings in Vancouver are utterly fantastic. This far north, the days are long and the evening light lingers for a long time. Another advantage of being this far north is that the weather is pretty mild. “Hot” in Vancouver is a lot more tolerable than “hot” in Portland.

I’ve loved the Celebration of Light fireworks ever since I first saw them in the summer of 2004. Every summer there are several different countries that compete. They each produce a 25-minute fireworks show that is synchronized with – not accompanied by – music. The distinction is important because the timing of the fireworks and the music actually match up. It’s all computerized, and when it’s done well it is very very cool. The music on this night was the soundtrack from the Wizard of Oz, which worked so-so for this. It was still great to watch them with my sweetie on that beautiful evening!

BC Trip Day 4 – The most beautiful lake

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Tuesday morning was warm and sunny. It promised to be a hot day. We spent the morning in Lost Lake Park, right outside Whistler Village. The centerpiece of the park is Lost Lake, but there is also a network of hiking and mountain biking trails throughout the park. Apparently the trails are also used by bears, and there are signs warning you to yield to them, which is pretty obvious to me, but maybe not for everybody.

We explored one of the loop trails on the hill above Lost Lake. Like most of the trails around here, our trail had a goofy name: Tin Pants Trail. (Some of the others include Jellyroll Gumdrop, Fountain of Love, Pinocchio’s Furniture, Toads of the Short Forest, and Gypsy Drum.) There was a viewpoint looking out towards Blackcomb Mountain and next to the viewpoint bench was a little tree decorated in Christmas ornaments! How strange.

We ate lunch in Whistler Village at a place called Crepe Montagne. Oh, such yumminess! I had a dessert crepe for lunch (hee hee!). It was a chocolate and caramel crepe and it was divine! Greg had a goat cheese with tomato sauce crepe which was also really really good. We ate outside in the shade and it was oh so lovely! After lunch we visited the Whistler Public Library, which has beautiful new digs right in the center of Whistler. Gorgeous building!

After lunch we drove south of town to the turn-off for Cheakamus Lake. As the crow flies, this lake is quite close to Whistler, but as the car drives, it is not. Finding the correct road right now is a bit of a challenge. Everything looks different and the area is all torn up because they’re constructing the athlete’s village here. Once we found the right road, it was a very bumpy 5.5 mile drive along a potholed forest road.

The hike through the forest to Cheakamus Lake is exceedingly pleasant. The trail is nice and the forest is really lovely, full of big old trees that provided welcome shade on this hot day. Within the hour we had reached the lake, which we seemed to have all to ourselves (indeed, we would only see a handful of people hiking by during the afternoon). We hiked past the first group of campsites until we reached a nice beach where we decided to set up camp for the afternoon. We ate our snacks and soon had a visitor. A persistent jay hovered around, hoping for some handouts. Even after we were done eating he would swoop down to where our packs were and poke about for some crumbs!

It was an absolutely gorgeous afternoon at the lake. I took off my boots and went wading. How refreshing! I sat on a rock with my feet in the water and enjoyed the fantastic view.

I’ve been to this lake twice before. I came here with my library school friends in 2005 and again with my sister in 2007. If I were to continue this pattern of visiting this lake every two summers, I would be a happy happy girl!

After several hours enjoying the lake, we tore ourselves away and headed back. We’ll be back again someday. We’d really like to camp here. It seems like a wonderful place for it.

On the way back to the campground we stopped at a roadside viewpoint over Green Lake, looking off towards Blackcomb and Whistler Mountains. Then we headed “home” for dinner, for our last night in the mountains before moving on to Vancouver.

Day 3 – Mother Nature’s Stairmaster

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On Monday, we headed to Joffre Lakes Provincial Park to go for a hike. It was about 40 minutes north of our campground. I remember reading a lot about this hike when I lived in Vancouver. It’s very very popular. One of my hiking books says the trailhead parking lot is packed on weekends. Which is why we went on Monday instead of Sunday. I had never done the hike when I lived in Vancouver. For one thing it’s a three-hour drive from Vancouver. Plus it always sounded too hard. But when Greg suggested we try it, I reasoned I was in better hiking shape than I was four years ago so I was game to try it.

The drive through the mountains to the trailhead was beautiful. And mere minutes after setting off from the parking lot we were at Lower Joffre Lake.

After stopping to enjoy it for a few minutes, we continued up the trail towards the middle and upper lakes. The nice flat gravel trail soon deteriorated into an obstacle course of rocks, boulders, and tree roots. We also had to cross a large boulder field, picking our way across it for 15 minutes before reaching the other side.

The boulder field I had read about and been prepared for. But I had read nothing about a trail that was littered with rocks and boulders and laced with tree roots. It was like a 3.5 mile long stairmaster. We don’t have many trails like this in Oregon.

We were pretty tired by the time we got to the middle lake. The mosquitoes were bad and it was a warm day, but the lake was lovely!

We pushed on. We had come this far, and the upper lake was only about a mile away now. We had another boulder field to navigate (hadn’t known about that one) and more rocky rooty trail to hike through. The sight of the upper lake was most welcome!

We hiked around to the far side, picked a boulder along the shoreline, and enjoyed a well-deserved lunch. I dipped my feet in the icy cold water. I could see the glacier that the water had melted off shortly before, so I wasn’t surprised at its coldness. It felt pretty refreshing, actually!

After we had enjoyed our little dip and hanging out for awhile, we put our boots back on and continued the short ways over to the campsites that backpackers use. We took photos of the lake, enjoyed the scenery, and found a geocache. We also admired the enormous glacier – only a tiny part of which we could see – that sent a cascade of water roaring down the mountainside into the lake.

There were other hikers enjoying the place, but I’m sure it wasn’t the zoo that it was the day before. One couple set up camp while we were there.

Although it would be nice to camp along this beautiful lake, the mosquitoes would be a bit difficult to deal with. We had read about how bad they can get on this trail, but we came prepared. Greg and I kept our headnets on as well as our long sleeves and pants. It was too hot for all the clothing, but we would have been eaten alive otherwise. (For an hilarious bug’s-eye-view of this trail, read this.)

We headed back down the trail at 2:45 and made it back to the car at 5:30 (only 15 minutes less time to hike out than to hike in). We were exhausted. That evening we paid $5 each for showers at the new Pemberton Community Center (an awesome new building that also houses the library, which was unfortunately closed when we stopped in that evening). After two days of warm weather hiking, the showers were $10 well-spent!

As we left, we could see the light of the setting sun shining on the mountains above Pemberton (which is actually surrounded on all sides by mountains). Beautiful. It is just so very very beautiful up here.

BC Trip Day 2 – The $88 Hike

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For maybe the first time ever, I was PLENTY warm sleeping in the tent. Despite the fact that we were surrounded by mountains, we were at only about 750 feet elevation and it didn’t cool down very much overnight. It felt very peculiar to be sleeping in a tent and NOT be cold!

Our plan for the day: ride the Whistler Village Gondola to the Roundhouse Lodge, then ride the Peak Express chair lift to the summit where we would begin our hike on the High Note Trail. I’ve ridden the gondola twice before and was dismayed to discover that prices have gone up A LOT. I see they are practicing for the fleecing of tourists that will happen next February during the Olympics. It used to be that you could pay only for what you would ride. But since they installed the new Peak 2 Peak Gondola that travels between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, you buy an all-or-nothing ticket, even if you have no intention or desire to ride the Peak 2 Peak.

Well, we wanted to do this hike, so we forked over the money. Two tickets were $88 after tax. GASP. Well, the money was paid and our tickets were bought so we put it out of our minds and enjoyed the ride up in the gondola. At the top we had a five-minute walk over to the base of the Peak Express and hopped on for our ride to the summit. Not being a skier, I’ve never been on a chair lift before. It was pretty fun! After the relatively noisy gondola, the chair lift was amazingly quiet.

At the summit we visited the Inukshuk rock statute and Greg tried to find a geocache there. There were so many people around, though, that he wasn’t successful. Everybody who comes up there wants to pose for a picture in front of that thing, so I figured we might as well do the same!

We started off on the High Note Trail about 11:15. From the beginning the views were fabulous. Up top we could see north over Whistler Village and the mountains beyond, as well as all the mountains to the west. This is looking west with the Whistler “suburbs” down below:

Looking down the north side of Whistler Mountain to Whistler Village far below:

Once we had dropped down a little and we were hiking across the back side of Whistler Mountain, we had amazing views to the south of the mountains of Garibaldi Provincial Park. After awhile we could see down to Cheakamus Lake. As if that weren’t enough, we were walking through some beautiful meadows filled with lupine and other wildflowers. There were clouds hovering over the mountains and there were lots of mosquitoes, but it was still an incredibly beautiful hike. This is Black Tusk (on the left) and the Cheakamus River flowing far far below us:

This marmot was clearly used to people and paid us no mind:

Beautiful Cheakamus Lake, which we would hike to in a few days:

Lupine meadows and rugged mountains….ahhhhhhhhhh

After hiking along the back side of Whistler Mountain for several hours, we connected up with the Musical Bumps trail heading back to the Roundhouse Lodge. That trail goes all the way out to Russet Lake in the other direction, but that’s a much longer hike. It really should be backpacked. Another time. (By the way, if you sense a musical theme going on here, you’re right. Most of the trails and peaks around here have some kind of musical theme.)

Hiking along the front of Whistler Mountain, we had a good view over to Blackcomb Mountain:

Lovely Harmony Lake backdropped by mountains:

We got back to Roundhouse Lodge at 5:30 feeling pretty tuckered out. The last part of the hike had a descent and ascent, then another descent and ascent. Kind of tough at the end of a hike! The hike had been breathtakingly spectacular, but two disappointments awaited us at the end. The Peak 2 Peak Gondola that we had been forced to pay for had stopped running 30 minutes earlier, which seemed pretty ridiculous since there were many hours of daylight left. We hadn’t originally planned to ride it, but since we paid for it we figured why not. But it wasn’t to be. Thanks for nothing, Intrawest.

The Peak 2 Peak as seen from Whistler Mountain

The second disappointment was that the lodge cafe was closed. Last time I was there I had some of the BEST french fries. YUM! But they had closed it down to have some kind of expensive patio BBQ.

So we rode the gondola back down the mountain to Whistler Village, stumbled tiredly to the car, and drove back to the campground where we had dinner and went to bed with much daylight still about. Light lingers for a long long time in July this far north. Except for middle-of-the-night bathroom breaks, we would not see darkness our entire time in the mountains.

BC Trip Day 1 – The Long Drive

We left Portland about 10:00 and headed north on our wonderful nine-day vacation. Hooray! Seattle traffic was predictably awful, but it could have been much worse. We got stuck in backup from an accident, but only for about 10 minutes. The accident had just happened and emergency vehicles were just arriving as we passed the scene. Looked pretty nasty: a multiple rear-ender including an SUV that had driven up on top of a trailer loaded with stuff being towed by another car. Yikes.

We also got pretty lucky at the border, where we only had to wait 10-15 minutes. The Canadians have a lovely new border crossing with lots of lanes. And almost all of them were open! The U.S. Border Patrol could learn a few lessons here.

After stopping at the tourist info center to change money and grab some brochures, we continued north, driving through Vancouver, North Vancouver, and West Vancouver and continuing north up Howe Sound. That is SUCH a beautiful drive, but in the lovely summer evening light it was particularly nice. We stopped in Squamish for dinner and continued the scenic drive north past Whistler to our campground at Nairn Falls Provincial Park just outside Pemberton. We arrived around 8:30. I guess 10.5 hours isn’t bad when you’re driving 410 miles, dealing with Seattle traffic, crossing a border, driving through Vancouver traffic, then driving the twisty Sea to Sky Highway. After setting up the tent and then a short walk through the campground to stretch our legs, we headed to bed.

Beautiful 4th of July

We had an absolutely gorgeous 4th of July weekend in Portland this year. It got a little toasty (high 90s!), but the sun was out so I’m not complaining. You can’t count on a nice 4th of July around here. In fact, people who live in the Pacific Northwest have a joke about how sunny summer weather doesn’t start until July 5. In fact, quite the opposite happened this year. The weekend was beautiful, and today is gloomy with a threat of rain.

July is my favorite month and I’m usually so busy enjoying the outdoors that almost everything else gets put on the back burner. We are blessed with precious few months of good weather in Portland. I’m not going to waste it by staying home and cleaning! Here is where I was on the 4th of July this year. Doesn’t get much better than this!