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 Almost all of the restaurants were closed, but we did find Homer's, an older place with outdated furnishings, but good food according to Yelp.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.....