Adventures in Canada

We have kind of been out of communications for a while because we went to Canada for a few weeks and did not have good access to the internet. Our phones could not be used because data access was too expensive and it seemed that every campground we went to had terrible internet access. So, enough excuses.

From Seattle we went north, across the border and to Vancouver, BC. Our campground was pretty nice, but the spaces were a bit cramped and the internet was only available in their lounge which closed at 11:00 PM. But we had a great time visiting in Vancouver. We were there for 6 days.

• Day 1: We went into the downtown area, and got on the Big Bus. This took us on a tour of the city and we could jump off and back on at any stop. When it got to Granville Island, we got off and explored. We got back on a couple of hours later and rode it back to the starting point.
• Day 2: We took the tramway to the top of Grouse Mountain, a local ski hill, where we could see all of Vancouver. It was quite a view too. There were also some entertainment things going on up there and we made a day of it.
• Day 3: We went to Stanley Park, a huge, tree-covered park at one end of Vancouver. It has many gardens, an aquarium, and other attractions. After that, we went down to the beach and got some take out and sat in our chairs for about an hour.
• Day 4: We went back to Granville Island to do some shopping at the market. We also rode our bikes around False Creek and then took the water taxi back to Granville.
• Day 5: It was a rare, cool, rainy day and we went to the Capilano River Facility where they have salmon ladders and a salmon hatchery. We had a great day just watching the fish. When it cleared up, we went to a dam and a lighthouse.
• Day 6: We met up with our friend Dave Cole's sister, Cyndia and her companion, Angie, and they took us on a tour of Richmond. We had a great dinner with them and then ice cream. It was a nice round-out to our stay.

We left Vancouver on a ferry boat and landed at Nanaimo, BC on Vancouver Island. We stayed over night at a campground near there and then headed across the island. We stopped half way at Port Alberni, which is at the end of a long inlet from the Pacific Ocean where a lot of shipping is done. There we learned about the big tsunami which hit there in the 1950's.

Then we went to Ucluelet on the Pacific coast and its sister city, Tofino. We spent 3 days there and enjoyed strolling their shops, eating at their restaurants and a boat ride up the coast to the hot springs, where we dipped between the springs and the sea.

Then we headed back across the island and down to Victoria on the southern tip. This is the capital on British Columbia. We spent most of our time there in the harbor area, where there was a market, entertainment, food, and the Royal BC Museum, which had some fascinating displays on their First Nation people and an Imax movie about Amazing Caves. We also went back there the last evening to hear a group singing sons of the lumber jacks (and I am not referring to Monty Python either).

Finally, we got onto another ferry in Victoria and landed in Port Angeles on the northern coast of the Olympic Peninsula, our return to US soil and our beloved internet access.

Two Weeks in Seattle, Washington

We swept into Seattle, actually into Bothell, WA on July 22nd and scheduled ourselves into the Lake Pleasant RV Park for 2 weeks. This was so we had time to catch up on some tasks we had been too busy to accomplish, for a bit of R&R after skipping over the US like a stone, to visit with some friends from Ellyn's college days, and to do some sight seeing in the Seattle area. The weather turned out to be, for the most part, very delightful.

1. Day 1: A potluck lunch with Ellyn's good friend Sidney, who was just back from an overseas teaching job. Geoff made his fabulous baked bean recipe and it was its usual big success. THe weather was perfect for sitting in her backyard and just relaxing.
   
   While we were at the lunch party, we discovered that our friend Henry from Los Angeles was in Seattle visiting his brother. We contacted him and went to dinner and then took a walking tour of Fremont, a very quirky little portion of Seattle.
   
2. Day 2: Geoff hung out at the RV working on a few little projects, like scraping bugs off the front of the RV that had been building up for most of the last 2,000 miles and starting a washing job on the RV. It had also accumulated a lot of grime.
   
   Ellyn went out with Sid and visited some locations where their friend, Mary Cooper, and her daughter, Suzanne Stoddard-Cooper are memorialized. They were the victims of a brutal murder more than a year ago which still goes unsolved.
   
3. Day 3: This was a rainy day so perfect for running errands. We both got needed blood tests and made a Costco run to one we had passed on the way. We also went to a Barnes and Nobel with a gift card Ellyn had found while cleaning out a drawer in the RV that morning.
   
4. Day 4: Another cool day, although not so rainy. This day we spent mostly in the RV doing some much needed straightening up and cleaning. We did go out once to a local coffee house (not a Starbucks; this was a Tully's Coffee place) to meet another of our friends, Moss, who was newly back in town. We made arrangements to go on a ferry ride the next week to an undersea museum.
   
5. Day 5: The weather got warmer again so we went into Seattle to the water front. We had lunch at Ivar's Acres of Clams and shared some very good soups and a salad. Then we hung around a while and ran into a Native American working on a totem project to honor his late brother, also a totem sculptor, who was mistakenly shot by police a year ago. It was very sad but we had a nice conversation with him and wished him well.
   
   Then we went on a Segway tour of Seattle for a couple of hours. It was our third time on Segway's and we enjoyed it very much. The hills were more of a challenge than we had encountered before but the devices are very easy to handle and even the beginners of the group had no problems. We even got to zip on them a bit near the football stadium, although they are governed at about 13 mph.
   
6. Day 6: Ellyn and Geoff both had a day out with Sidney, going to visit their old stomping grounds; the University of Washington Campus. We started on "The Ave", AKA University Way and, after lunch, walked onto the campus. We were in search of yet another memorial to Mary Cooper. After some checking with the library staff, we eventually found a bench and two trees which are dedicated to her, as well as a bench inside of one of the buildings. We spent some money at the UW bookstore and did a little grocery shopping on the way back home.
   
7. Day 7: We took in the Flea Market at the Country Village stores near our RV park and then went for a bike ride on one of the many bike paths in the Seattle area. People here put a lot of miles on their bikes.

End week one. The second week will be continued in the next post.