April 18, 2009 by Rae

Journey to White Rock Across the Bottom of the Ocean

Today, all the elements came together to make a hike to White Rock possible. The weather was perfect, I was limbered up from all my hiking and walking, I knew what I wanted to see and do, and the tide was out (meaning that I could walk on sand instead of stones). It was a roughly 20km (12.5mi) expedition (according to my pedometre) on foot through Peace Arch park and down to the beach. It would have been much quicker to use the land route via eight avenue, but not nearly as scenic!

For the visual folk out there:

Google route in purple, my route in red

White Rock is a seaside resort town that seceded from Surrey, which surrounds it on all four sides, in 1957. The population is roughly 5,o00, but that number grows exponentially in summer. The community has a reputation for being balmier and sunnier than neighbouring towns and pilots actually call it the ‘hole in the sky’ because it often lacks cloud cover when the rest of the lower mainland is blanketed in fog! Walking Marine Drive with the ocean on my left, houses carved into the hillside on the right, and palm trees all around never fails to make me feel that I am back in southern California!

My mother has been to White Rock and was quick to advise me to try out the fish & chips at the Moby Dick restaurant. I figured that a 20km walk would mean a guilt-free indulgence in such a greasy treat, so I planned my day to have an early supper at this restaurant. I found the meal excellent, but it wasn’t quite the best fish and chips I’ve ever had (hint: the Lobster Barn, in York, Maine). The French fries were fantastic, the coleslaw was rather disappointing, and the fish was very good (not too greasy, light on the batter), but it needed lemon, which they don’t offer. I do highly recommend this place for fish and chips!

Today’s photo gallery tells the rest of the story. Pardon the French; I’ll be making my photo galleries bilingual from now on to save myself some work when telling my relatives about my adventures. 🙂

April 10, 2009 by Rae

The Difference Between Full-Time RVing and Tourism

Today, I had the great joy of showing my friend some of my favourite sites in the Vancouver area. How lovely it is to stay long enough in one place to go back and re-explore sites you enjoyed!

We had a really, really full day. The weather cooperated beautifully, being just warm enough to be comfortable, with a mix of sun and clouds.

Late morning, we took off for Lynn Canyon. It was warmer today than the last time I went, but not by much; it gets cool up there in North Vancouver in the rain forest! It was wonderful hiking weather and we earned the picnic lunch I’d packed.

We then headed to Stanley Park via the Lions’ Gate Bridge. The park was very full this time around, so I felt very fortunate to find parking quickly. We were just heading up to the aquarium to see the killer whale statue when my friend noticed a horse drawn trolley that seemed just about ready to take off. We learned that it was a one hour tour that would take us to all the sites we wanted to see, so we decided to get on, figuring that it would easier than trying to find parking at each location.

I’ll pause here to address the issue of horse drawn tours being exploitative. I had a theory about this before I got on and it was confirmed by the driver who addressed the issue head on. The horses pulling these trolleys are big draft horses which have very little use in our day and age. A lot of these older animals get sent to the glue or jell-o factory. The company running the tours rescues these horses, gives them purpose and needed exercise, and allows them a dignified retirement.

The tour was fantastic and well worth the 28.50$ per person. Our guide was funny and an excellent storyteller. We learned that Stanley Park was originally called Duck Head Point (because it really does look like the head of a duck!) and was home to ‘squatters’ consisting of minorities–Chinese, Hawaiian, Métis, etc. The government used this point as a strategic military location for a long time and when that purpose was no longer required, they wanted to develop the land seeing as Vancouver (population 2,000 at the time!) was booming. Real estate speculators were worried that the introduction of so much new land would devalue other properties, so some backroom dealing was done to turn Duck Head Point into a park. Of course, all the ‘squatters’ were expropriated without compensation. It is a sad story with a happy ending. Also, as Stanley Park used to be a logging area, all of the forest there is second regeneration growth, not primeval forest as some romantics like to believe.

After Stanley Park, we drove to nearby Denholm Street. My friend wanted to try sushi and I was eager to go back to Tanpopo, so I decided that its proximity to Stanley Park meant that was where we were destined to end up for dinner. We walked up and down Denholm for a bit, popping into a bookstore where I found a remaindered book about the Chilkoot Pass!

Dinner was just as good as it was the last time I ate at Tanpopo and I added spicy tuna rolls to my repertoire. They are soooo yummy. My friend liked everything but the teriyaki salmon because it was too dry for her taste. Otherwise, she bravely sampled everything. I must say I didn’t get anything too ‘weird’ as I didn’t want to turn her off suishi from the get go, and I’m proud of her for having several pieces of salmon sashimi and ordering the prawn tempura on her own.

We ended our night with a dip in the park’s hot tub.

I put up some new pictures, including lovely shots of Vancouver’s skyline that I missed because of fog the first time I went to Stanley Park.

February 21, 2009 by Rae

Lynn Canyon Park

Today promised to be a gorgeous, springy day, with sun and highs in the double digits. Things have started to dry out considerably and I was just itching to get out of the city and enjoy a hike in the woods. My first instinct was to visit the Capilano Suspension Bridge. It’s not a cheap excursion (30$ entrance fee plus 5$ for parking), so I did some research on tripadvisor.com to see if it’s a tourist trap. Apparently, yes, because nearby Lynn Canyon offers a comparable experience at a price that can’t be beat: FREE!

Free sounded especially good since I wasn’t sure I’d actually get across a suspension bridge. I sure didn’t the last time I was faced with one!

Well, it seems that continued exposure to suspension bridges and a gondola ride have made me a little less of a scaredy cat and I wound up crossing the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge no less than THREE times! I will admit that I got across as quickly as possible, didn’t stop to take in the scenery, and shook like a leaf the whole way, but what progress!

Lynn Canyon is situated in the heart of a temperate rain forest and is a world of towering redwoods and pools of clear emerald water. Until today, I’d only seen water that clear and beautiful in Alberta. I spent two glorious hours enjoying the perfect weather (mid-single digits there) taking the first steps to getting in shape for the Chilkhoot hike. I finished my morning with a picnic lunch and then a stroll through the excellent Ecological Centre (2$ suggested donation).

Pictures are on the Lynn Canyon page.

Something wondrous happened today. I don’t know if it was the weather, the minimal GPSing I needed to do to get around, the amazing lack of traffic, nature, or what, but I… Oh, the English language is failing me here. In French, I’d say ‘apprivoisé’, which means tamed, but not quite for this context. I guess I’ll say I made my peace with the GVR, found something about it to love, discovered a little corner of it where I was happy to leave a tiny piece of my soul. The GVR is no longer a big, bad scary urban enclave (shootings notwithstanding), but a place that I will remember as being ‘home’ for four months in 2009.

Good day. 🙂

September 30, 2008 by Rae

Banff

Today was the kind of day that makes you realise that you’ve been given enough gifts to last a lifetime and that asking for anything more is just greed talking.

I had a lot of misgivings and preconceptions about Banff. I expected it to be kitschy, expensive, and over rated. By the time I got to the town limits, I was in an absolutely foul mood and wondered if there was any point my being there at all. To enter Banff National Park (in which Banff is located), you need to pay an access fee of 10$ for a day or 65$ for a year for an individual or 130$ for a family. I decided that the annual pass would make more sense since it’s good at all national parks across Canada. I asked the attendant if I was going to need a second pass for my motorhome, even if I was towing my car behind it and only one vehicle would be on park roads at a time. She said yes. That was sort of the proverbial straw for me as to dealing with Parks Canada. In order to stay at their grossly overpriced campgrounds I had to pay an additional 130$ per year? I decided right then and there that I was taking the Crowsnest Pass on Thursday and not going through Banff again.

But I talked to someone else at the Banff Information Centre and what she had to say was much more logical, that I didn’t need a second pass. I realised then that Parks Canada employees are like a lot civil servants I work with and unable to see their jobs as anything but black and white. So if I get questioned for having just one pass, I’ll just tell them that the people at the Banff info centre said I didn’t need a second one.

My mood greatly improved then and one of the most amazing days of my life began.

Let’s start at the beginning.

I stopped for a bit of a break on my almost 1.5 hour drive to Banff at Lacs des arcs:

I’ve always wanted to say: “I’m Rae. From Canmore.” Non Royal Canadian Air Farce fans can just scratch their heads at that one. *ggl*

Entrance to Banff National Park

Welcome to Banff!

Banff Avenue

A lovely, eye-catching, sculpture on Banff Avenue

So, Banff. A compact, aesthetically pleasing but not kitshy, friendly town. The first thing that I noticed were gas prices; they were the same as in Calgary! Then I noticed all the signs announcing RV parking for two hours on the street and 12 hours (but no overnight) in special lots reserved for RVs. Then I noticed that all parking in Banff is free! I wouldn’t want to take Miranda in there at the height of the tourist season, but today I would have had no problem finding a place for her and she would have been secure all day, without my having to beg for a place to park her while I explored. I therefore award Banff the distinction of being the first truly RV friendly place I’ve been to so far. I’ve never felt so welcome!

First order of business in Banff was pretty funny and goes to show that I’m living my real life and not on vacation. Yesterday, I managed to lose my ATM card. I’d had my previous card for 15 years and I wasn’t able to hang on to my current card for more than a few months! So, off to the CIBC I went to get a new card. This illustrates one of the many reasons I love being with the CIBC; if a town has more than one banking institution there is usually a CIBC (unless you’re in Quebec where the same can be said about Caisse Pops). I was therefore not surprised to find a CIBC right across the street from the lot where I parked.

That done, I went to the visitor’s centre to raise hell about the park passes and to see if I could add anything to my day’s itinerary, which contained just two items.

I wandered down Banff Avenue for a bit and then went to Gopher Avenue to visit the Whyte Museum for the sole purpose of viewing the Group of Seven et. al. exhibition. Yes, we finally get a bit of culture! LOL

Of all the members of the Group of Seven, A.Y. Jackson is my favourite.

There were also some lovely pieces by Japanese-Canadian artist Takao Tanabe, another favourite of mine. I couldn’t believe I got to see this piece in person; it’s my favourite of his!

There was more to the museum, but it was way too nice a day out to stay inside for long!

Next order of business was something I learned about at the info centre: the Sulphur Mountain Gondola. Even though riding a gondola was in violation of everyone of my instincts, I’d never done it and figured that I could survive the 14 minute round trip.

I didn’t enjoy the trip at all, I’m afraid, even though the views were spectacular!

At the top, I continued up to the Cosmic Ray Station.

I have no problem being that high up when I’m on solid ground!

Coming back down on the gondola, I really impressed myself when I actually turned around and took this picture. EEP!

The ride down was a lot harder than the ride up as the first time around there had been people in the gondola with me and they were able to distract me.

Back on solid ground (and having lost fifteen years off my life), it was time to do the second item on my to-do list, something I found I’m not sure how. I got back onto the Transcanada Highway, then exited at the Bow Valley Parkway where I cruised along until I got to Johnston’s Canyon. It features an amazing hike through a canyon, mostly on cantilevered walkways (non-scary; they’re made of concrete and steel). There is a short hike to the lower falls, a longer one to the higher falls, and very long hike to pools of water known as the ‘Inkpots.’

Making an attempt to reach the Inkpots was no small decision on my part. I’d already hiked 3km uphill to get to the higher falls and it was another 3km uphill to get to the Inkpots. Add to that the climb at Sulphur Mountain and the late hour of the day. This was a case where a good decision could only be made with firm knowledge of one’s abilities. On flat terrain, I can hike 3km in about 30 minutes. Uphill, make that 45 minutes. Uphill and exhausted? Calculate an hour. So, that put me at the Ink Pots around 4. Add a bit of sight seeing, picture taking, and talking to people on the trail and I wouldn’t be back at my car before 5:30. I was dressed for the weather, had enough supplies on me to face a ‘worst case scenario’, and knew that I was smart enough to turn around if I reached my limit. I set off and decided to reevaluate around 3:30. I’d just about had enough by this point, but, thankfully, some hikers came up from the Inkpots right around then and told me it was a downhill shot from where I was standing. I knew I’d have to climb back up again, but that after that I was looking at mainly downhill to get back to the car. I pushed on.

I’m so glad I did. 🙂

The Inkpots

Doing the uphill hike up out of there, I had to keep reminding myself that I could not spend the night on the mountain. Someone was bound to question the car at the trail head and come in search of me! That would have been so humiliating! So, I pressed on and made it back to the trail head for bang on 5:30! There was an ice cream stand open now and I decided to treat myself to a double scoop cone! I’ve only just started to eat ice cream again and I have to say this cone was just fantastic! 🙂

Driving back towards Banff, traffic came to a standstill on the parkway because of these three little guys:

Since I had an hour and a half to go before home and I felt that I’d earned a nice dinner out, I treated myself to salmon and chicken in Banff, then ambled back to my car. I had to stop to take this picture:

I call it ‘Deer on Banff Avenue.’

Oh, wait. That name is taken!

I got home at 8:30; my longest day out as of yet and the first time I’ve been out after dark other than to go to the cinema!

One thing I didn’t get to do today since I went to the Inkpots was to catch a glimpse of Lake Louise. I’ll swing by there on Thursday on my way through the park.

I have two days left here. I had thought to go to Drumheller, but didn’t realise that it’s almost a five hour round trip drive. So, I’ll save Drumheller for the spring. Tomorrow, I’ll go into Calgary for supplies for Operation: Batteries and Wednesday I’ll putter around at home, do laundry, pack, and plan my trip across the Rockies.

I can consider Banff to be the perfect cap to this first portion of my incredible journey. Now, it’s a straight shot to the Osoyoos area (site of the only desert in Canada, not counting the Arctic) where I need to find a place to park my butt as I will be on call for a grape picking job as of Monday!

It seems that even good lives have no shortage of good days.

September 28, 2008 by Rae

Calgary, My Enchanted Land, and the End of the Road?

Calgary

The only thing on my schedule for today was a visit of Fort Calgary.

It’s a small museum, but the exhibits about the NWMP and the history of Calgary are quite interesting. I was accosted at one point by a retired RCMP officer who proceeded to talk my ear off for about twenty minutes about his career, his uniform, Mountie training, career opportunities within the force, his son who is serving at the detachment in Inuvik, our mutual feelings about Ottawa vs. The West, and more. It was really interesting!

As I was about to leave the fort, the lady at the admissions desk called me back and gave me some information about another museum that might interest me that is only open tomorrow (more about that tomorrow *g*) and then she gave me information on a walking tour of downtown Calgary, a scenic detour on the way to a cemetery, details on how to find a particularly interesting gravestone, a brochure about a rock garden that is a must see, and, finally, a map illustrating filming locations in the Calgary area. Whew!

I did only part of the walking tour, which was mostly a gentle stroll down Stephen Avenue, Calgary’s former main street. The architecture was exquisite!!! During a pre-WWI boom, a lot of Calgary’s original wooden buildings were replaced by sandstone structures that really reflect the amount of wealth coming into the city at the time. The Doll Building was my favourite.

The Hudson’s Bay store left me awestruck. It takes up a whole block!

I then returned to my car and proceeded to Spiller Avenue, from which she told me I should take the steepest side street I could find and that I would know why at the top; all of Calgary was laid out below me!

Next on the list was the cemetery.

The Reader Rock Garden was attached to the cemetery. I enjoyed clambering up and down the stone paths even if there wasn’t much in bloom at this time of year.

It was two by this point and I had nothing else planned for the day. So, I took a gander at the movie locations map. You wouldn’t believe the number of major Hollywood pictures filmed in the Calgary area, everything from Robin Williams’ ‘RV’ to Clint Eastwood’s ‘Unforgiven’ to Ang Lee’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ (a lot of which was filmed near the town on the outskirts of which I’m currently living).

My Enchanted Land

Until the late ’90’s, I could recognize a certain landscape, or a variation thereof, in numerous movies, but I didn’t realise that it was truly one landscape from one region. It was a landscape of mountains, plateaus, and valleys; the perfect setting for everything from ‘Legends of the Fall’ to ‘The Edge’, movies set in a gentler time or about a rough wilderness. Then one day I watched the dueSouth episode ‘Call of the Wild’ and recognized this landscape in it. I did some research and discovered that my enchanted land is called Kananaskis country and it is in Alberta.

Why my enchanted land? There is a book I reread many times in my youth called ‘Cat, Herself.’ It tells the story of a family of tinkers in Scotland. Tinkers are travelers not unlike the full-time RVer. The main character, Cat, had a grand-mother who referred to Ben Loyal as her enchanted land. The expression stuck in my mind.

So, looking at the movie locations map today, I noticed a route marked the Kananaskis trail. It looked like perhaps three to four hours driving time total.

I wanted to go, but I hesitated. What if my enchanted land turned out to be two beautiful peaks surrounded by condos? Perhaps I should do what I did in 1998 when I purposely avoided Sherwood Forest, just leave it as a land out of dreams.

But I was so close. I decided to go.

I’ll let just a few of the pictures I took tell the rest of the story.

The End of the Road?

There is so much work here in Alberta, more jobs than there are workers. From an employment point of view, this should be the end of the road for me until the spring. But I really don’t think that Miranda could be made comfortable enough to endure a Calgary winter and I’ve endured enough miserable winters in the mobile home to know what I’d be getting into. But all these jobs! So, I’ll confess that I’m looking, just for curiosity’s sake, for an indoor place where I could park Miranda for the winter and live in her, like a heated garage or plane hangar.

To give you an idea of what the employment situation is like, let’s go back for a moment to my very first morning in Alberta, back when I was in Lloydminster. I decided to treat myself to a Tim Horton’s coffee before pushing off. I went in, ordered my coffee and muffin, and was about to leave when someone called to me. It was the manager. He wanted to know if I owned the RV outside and, if so, if I’d be interested in a couple of weeks worth of work.

I haven’t shared that story because I felt no one would believe it. But the woman at the museum today did and she said she had a job for me for the winter if I wanted it.

That doesn’t make actually looking for work particularly appealing.

A Life By Design

"Sometimes in life, we reach to a right place by departing from a wrong port with a wrong ship!" ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Hiking

Journey to White Rock Across the Bottom of the Ocean

The Difference Between Full-Time RVing and Tourism

Lynn Canyon Park

Banff

Calgary, My Enchanted Land, and the End of the Road?