Ah, The Coq......

The rv park we're staying in, Canyon Alpine, is located in the heart of the Fraser River Valley about 45 miles north of the town of Hope, BC, where we turned north yesterday. Not knowing much about Hope, we wanted to visit there and satisfy a long standing curiosity, so today we got in the car and headed south.

Hope is the home of Jamie Davis, Motor Truck & Auto, LTD. (yeah...?) The subtitle is "Towing, Transport, Recovery". Jamie's business includes a number of tow trucks for automobiles and standard trucks, all the way up to big rig tow trucks called "Rotators". His adventures have been featured for years on cable television on the program "Highway Through Hell". The name refers to Highway 5 through the Coquihalla River Canyon during the winter snow months. This road is a fine four-lane affair, what we would call in the US, a "freeway". Unfortunately, there are several long, steep, grades in both directions that are a challenge to navigate even in good weather. Come winter, multiple feet of snow combined with ice and sleet, along with high wind and poor visibility, result in hundreds, if not thousands, of vehicle accidents, many of them involving large trucks. BTW, the over-the-road trucks in Canada are about 20% larger than we see in the US, both in height and width, and most have multiple axles, up to 14, the most we've seen in our travels! Multiply by 4 tires per axle.....

At any rate, Jamie became famous for the tv show, where he and his crews rescued people and equipment under the most dire circumstances. We had to see.

After scoping the tow truck storage yard, we turned around in front of a cool old barn, gently groaning itself into tomorrow.

Highway 5 splits off from TCH 1 in Hope, going east along the Coquihallia River.

Looking back toward Hope from the summit, at 4081 feet.

The pass is decorated with many granite escarpments left by the glaciers.

On the way "home", we stopped for a picnic lunch along the banks of the Sowaqua River.

Tomorrow is Canada's 150th birthday! We hope to celebrate with a couple of dozen of our new friends from Canyon Alpine!

Granville Island, BC

On Tuesday we headed back west on the TCH toward downtown Vancouver and Granville Island. GI was originally a sandbar on False Creek, where shipping demands required a deeper and wider channel. Enter Ocean Construction. OC began dredging the sandbar and processing it to make concrete for the growing city. The Gilley Brothers opened the operation in the late 1800's and became the first building materials supplier on the Lower Mainland. Today, 125 years later, Ocean Construction is the very first thing a visitor to the island sees and hears and the huge concrete trucks are the first thing a visitor encounters on the Islands' streets!

It is a real shock to see such large vehicles navigate the narrow streets leading into and out of the tourist district! All of the concrete trucks are painted in striking patterns....where the drum looks like a huge strawberry or cob of ripe corn! Even the more traditionally painted trucks are kept clean and shiny!

Granville Island is home for artists and crafts people from across the spectrum, as well as one of the largest public markets in the area. Our first stop on a walking tour was at the Granville Island Broom Company, known for it's beautiful, hand-made brooms. Made onsite, these beautiful brooms are more works of art than utensils.

We ate lunch (Polish Dogs with all the fixin's) on the outdoor deck and watched people and boats for an hour or so, and admired the tall buildings of North Vancouver.

The public market, of course, has everything from soup to nuts (literally).

Pastries, pastiches and confections were everywhere!

We took a last stroll along the river, admiring the lady, the boat, and the handsome guy....

Then we braved the rush hour traffic and headed east toward home. Although touristy, Granville Island is a mix of art, glitz, and blue collar. Fascinating!

Granville Island is crossed by a major elevated highway, and the only entrance to the island is via a surface street under the highway.

Wednesday, June 28th, we elected to do laundry, go to the grocery store, and generally prepare for the next leg of our journey. We were fortunate to spend several hours in the evening with our new-found friends, Gord and Nancy. They are Vancouver(ans), and live in Eagle Wind Park while Gord works in the area. He has a fascinating career in the film industry, expediting equipment, trucks, and trailers to various shooting locations in the area. He is very good at this, and often will be away from home from 5 or 6 in the morning until the wee hours of the next day. As a former long haul truck driver, he evidently has learned to get by on very little sleep! His wife Nancy is an accomplished interior decorator and wine fanatic. She has a degree in wine(ology?), and is a wealth of knowledge about all sorts of spirits. We enjoyed our short time with them.

Today, Thursday, we have meandered 106 miles north on the Trans Canada highway to a small hamlet named Boston Bar. We're staying in site 3 at Canyon Alpine RV Park, an old park that is in the process of being rejuvenated by new owners. The park is nestled into the trees near the Fraser River, and is protected from serious weather by the surrounding mountains, but has minimum amenities. The sites are level but only dirt, and the entrance road is well used gravel. The owners are very nice, and after a bit of uncertainty about our reservation, invited us to a Canada Day Celebration this coming Saturday. We'll have to attend, since we're here for 3 nights, and there's nothing else to do in the area! Well, that's not quite true: the scenery is beautiful and the river is awesome. We'll check it out tomorrow.

Capilano Suspension Bridge Park

A few miles north of Vancouver lies a beautiful wooded park known as "The Cap".  From Eagles Nest RV Park, the Cap is about 40 miles distant, and just off the Trans Canada Highway. This attraction always shows up in the top 5 things to do in Vancouver list, so we had to check it out!

Near the park entrance a story pole tells the story of how the eagle helped a blind man by fishing for him. These poles were the way that the people of the First Nations passed on legends such as this.

The first thing we looked at was the suspension bridge. Two problems: many, many, people on a swaying bridge, and Donna, who doesn't like heights at all. Compound this situation with a bridge that is swaying in at least four dimensions all at once!

The bridge has been constructed in several iterations over the years since 1889 and is currently 450 feet long and 230 feet high. Donna retrieved a Hindi prayer chant from the deep recesses of her psyche, grabbed a handful of my shirt, and made it across with her eyes closed! What a girl!

Once on the other side, we walked on well maintained paths through a rainforest, and on to "Treetops Adventure",  a suspended series of seven bridges through a magnificent stand of old growth Douglas Fir trees. These contraptions were much sturdier than the suspension bridge, so D had no trouble navigating from tree to tree. Cool!

From the treehouse path we spotted a magnificent burl on a distant tree.

About this time, we realized that the suspension bridge was the only way back, so, trying to calm our nerves, we took a leisurely stroll along the edge of the rainforest with magnificent views of the Capilano River. With a deep sign and with sunglasses firmly in place, we braved the suspension bridge one more time and got our trophy!

Across the Port Mann Bridge on TCH 1 (also known as the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge), we made it home....eventually.

A quick stop at Lonsdale Quay to visit the Market took an hour or so, but got us to a slice of pizza eaten on the dock overlooking downtown Vancouver.

Strolling through the market, we happened upon The Soup Meister and shared a bowl of the most delicious clam chowder outside of New England!

So ends the second full day in BC!

First and Second Full Days in Canada

Arriving here without a fixed agenda has been somewhat disconcerting, but we've managed to come up with a list of about 100 things that we have to do while in/near Vancouver! Unfortunately, the laws of time and space do not allow that, so we've had to reduce our goals a bit!

Yesterday, June 24th, Saturday, we decided to visit the Pacific Coast. Heading toward White Rock, BC, we stopped at Darts Hill Garden Park. Over seventy years of work guided by the vision of Francisca Darts, and supported by her husband Edwin, has resulted in a garden containing an immense collection of now mature shrubs and trees from around the world. Donated to the City of Surrey, and maintained, through donations, by the non-profit Darts Hill Garden Conservancy Trust Society, who works to give Surrey its own garden to be used as a horticultural center.

A short drive west of the garden brought us to the village of White Rock. A pier juts out into the bay, affording a place for crabbing and fishing to take place. It was also the site of a graduation ceremony for the local high school, and a whole gaggle of young people were dressed to the nines and snapping pictures by the dozens! Nice kids, but they moved too fast for a picture!

After a stroll along the beach, we stopped for lunch at Dock's Fish and Chips for.....fish and chips, and a look at the locals enjoying the warm weather on a nice Saturday afternoon. Many hot rods and restored cars were out cruising.

We took the long way home, via the town of Surrey, where a music festival was the "thing o' the day". Canada highway 56 brought us almost back to our rv park, where we relaxed for the evening. A nice day, and a nice introduction to the area. OK, now what do we do....?

On Sunday, we decided to go in a different direction and drove east on Trans Canada Highway (TCH) 1 to the village of Bridal Falls. Just south of town is the BC Provincial Park named Bridal Falls, surprisingly. A short walk through a cool forest brought us to one of the most beautiful falls we've ever seen!

After our walk, we were a bit hungry, so we headed back west and bailed off the TCH in Chilliwack. Chilliwack is a good sized town, but one which rolls up the streets on Sundays. Almost all of the restaurants were closed, but we did find Homer's, an older place with outdated furnishings, but good food according to Yelp. We ordered Perogies (I added Schnitzel to mine), and found the food to be delicious, if a bit bland, and certainly filling! The perogies were advertised to be stuffed with bacon, onions, cottage cheese and potatoes, but came out with potato stuffing and bacon bits on the top. An interesting addition was the cup of sour cream on the side....

Downtown Chilliwack was closed off so that they could have a car show. There must have been 50 to 75 vehicles of all shapes and sizes! We walked up and down, down and up, looking at the beautiful cars and trucks. It was a bit odd seeing most of the brand names that we are familiar with from the US, but with different model names. A 1960 Pontiac Bonneville was sold in Canada as a Pontiac Parisienne, and Ford marketed Mercury pickups at one time!

Oh, yeah, almost like Gawie's first car.....

The restoration and rebuilding work done on these vehicles is amazing!

We stopped for a small cup of coffee at the local Starbucks on the way out of town, and headed back west to Eagle Wind RV Park. Traffic on the TCH was horrendous going back into Vancouver, so a trip that took us about 40 minutes this morning required an hour and a half this afternoon. We hear this is normal.....