Vancouver and Whistler, Canada
Hazelmere RV Park
September 15 - 18

I started this morning by cutting my little toe on a coke can. Boy that can make your toe bleed a lot.

Then Mark forgot that we had put the bikes under the "living room" popout, and started to close it this morning so we could leave the campground. Crunch! Then he remembered. Luckily he stopped it right away, and the only damage is to the band holding his bike's brake to the handle.

Next, he found out that our air compressor is letting air Out of our tires instead of forcing air In. That's not good, but we drove north and found a great truck stop and refilled them.

Had the usual great luck with weather on our drive to Canada from Seattle. It never rained when we had to be outside, only when we were driving. We knew this luck had to end somewhere. Got to the border and the guard let us in, after asking us with suspicion in his voice, "WHY are you coming to Canada?" I almost spilled the beans about our Real reason, to claim their country in the name of the United States.

Checked in to our RV park, Hazelmere, just northeast of the border. Another really sweet one, with a big playground for Katie and lots of permanent residents who plant their spots full of flowers, put in decks, etc. It even had a stream with a bridge and meadow, and little cabins for rent. We'll stay till Saturday.

Thursday, September 16

Well, our luck with the weather ended today. It rained softly all day, and was quite cool (9 or 10 degrees they said, but they have the metric system up here, so I think that means a foot and a half). Katie had her raincoat but Mark & I didn't--we'd stopped carrying them two states ago when we never needed them. We nixxed going to the kiddie farm and miniature railroad in favor of the Vancouver Aquarium, which we guessed would be indoors (unfortunately much of it, including all the eating places, were outside). The aquarium, the farm, the railroad and many other neat places were all in Vancouver's huge Stanley Park.

I should mention that the city of Vancouver is bordered on the south by beautiful farmland (no subdivisions or Home Depots to obstruct the view), and the break between farms and city suburbs is a tunnel. The suburbs that we saw along Hwy 99 were made of big beautiful homes with hedges (some enormous) hiding them (see pic). Then you cross a bridge to the downtown part of Vancouver, and it changes sharply again: now it is all high-rise high density housing (see pic). Unlike other cities I've been to, where it seems that most of the skyscrapers are offices, all of the ones I could identify were apartments. And there was a lot of construction that we passed, with at least four more being built (one, called www.shangrila-living.com, I think, would be sixty stories when it's done).

After seeing the park and the aquarium, we drove to Vancouver's historic district and went to the Storyeum, where actors lead you through different rooms and tell you a story from Vancouver's past. It was entertaining and I wish other cities had one. But like so many things in Canada, it was very expensive ($50 for the two of us, Katie was free). I think the aquarium was a little more than that, and lunch there probably cost $30 Canadian. Right now the U.S. dollar buys 1.3 Canadian dollars, so we're hoping that our Mastercard bill won't be as high as it looked in Canada.

Friday, September 17
Drove up to Whistler today, along the beautiful Sunshine Coast. And it lived up to its name, being pretty sunny if cold (8 degrees). Saw the big, calm inlet of ________, containing huge islands stuffed with trees.

Drove by numerous long red and white arms used to close the street when rockslides make it impassible. Saw sign after sign after sign such as "Debris Torrent Hazard. Do Not Stop on Bridges" and wondered how many signs and how many arms do we need to see before we should get scared. Then there were the blankets of cyclone fencing draped over the sheer rock cliffs (the cliffs rose a hundred feet or more straight up, some overhanging the road). I kept my eye on the road. Next we came to an abandoned mine, and stopped to take a picture of a huge mining truck, and also to buy Canadian candy bars (the best was Mark's--it was called "Eat More.")

When we got to Whistler, it started raining, but still the village was beautiful. and we wandered around and bought Katie some slippers that look like black bears. Then we headed back to Vancouver and walked around the historic section some more. They have lots of flatiron buildings, including one in Guiness' Book --it's only six feet wide--but we never found that one. We visited a funky 2nd-hand clothes store selling furs and costume jewelry just like my grandmother and great-grandmother used to wear. Their stuff is finally salable, but now I'm not sure I want to part with it.

After walking around and getting hungry for dinner, we tried driving back to the RV but got caught in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour, then finally made it to a grocery store to find the selection not great, the shopping carts costing 25 cents to use (we had no quarters at this point), the checkout girl to be the absolute slowest we have Ever experienced, the people in front of us in line needing Several price checks (by now we were just shaking our heads at each other, eyebrows raised), and to top it all off, you can't buy alcohol in the grocery store, to at least give yourself a break when you get home. No, wait, there was more: some exits do not let you get back on the highway going the direction you need to go, so we had to backtrack and try backroads, trying to get back on Hwy 99. It was all of our bad luck catching up with us in one evening. But we got home and ate the quickest meal we could find at 8:30pm. It felt So good to be back in the RV.

Saturday, September 18

Got questioned a little longer upon trying to get back into the U.S. today. I expected them to ask us about Katie (make sure she's really ours), but what they worried about was the frozen chicken we bought at the grocery store last night--asked us four times if we were sure it wasn't beef or lamb. No, the picture showed chicken, we explained, although we couldn't be completely sure, because we'd gotten in so late that we'd eaten chili out of a can instead (we didn't tell them that part). Finally, after asking us "so why DID you come to Canada?" (did the guards all have bad experiences in Canada too? Maybe they tried shopping at the Food For Less like we did, and can't see why any American would come here for fun) they let us back into the U.S. whew. I wouldn't mind living someplace as pretty as Vancouver, but I want real grocery stores stocking wine I can drink without having to make it myself (you could buy wine-making supplies but no wine).

Things Katie said today:
"Mom, for my next birthday I want sleeper wave bears."
"Poop is good for your bottom."

Here are pictures from our time in Canada:

approaching the border to Canada

Mark trying to talk our way in...

look at that cheap Canadian gas! (I know, I know)

Katie in front of the little bridge at the Hazelmere RV Park, which is just south of Vancouver. The whole place is very nice; this bridge is almost right outside our RV.