Category: Travel (Page 5 of 12)

Today was a long driving day to get from Kelowna to Banff. It was my turn to sit by the window, so most of the photos you’re going to see of the scenery will have a moody, almost impressionistic feel about them.

Sharon, our tour guide, was telling us about how she survives the cold, particularly in the Canadian winter. “I feel the cold, but I know how to dress,” she said. “I have 4 levels of winter clothing and even when the temperature reaches -40C, I rarely have to wear Level 4.”

She has a Gortex parka which is too warm even in -40C. That must be some parka!

She has 3 levels of boots and she mentioned that even if mothers wrap their kids up with long scarves wrapped around their heads to keep them warm, the kids’ eyelashes will freeze.

She rides horses in the winter (indoors) to keep them exercised, and uses electric socks wired from a battery pack under the knees to keep herself warm.

“I have a friend who is totally wired up from head to toe in the winter,” she said. “I’ve told her not to fall in a puddle or she’ll die!”

I’m going to look at Sharon each morning to determine which coat/jumper/raincoat I should wear that day. I didn’t unpack my raincoat and I needed it in the afternoon. It poured!

As we were driving along, I saw several small signs for a roadside stall, stuck on a fence beside the road.

Apples. 

Toys. 

Fruit. 

Fishing gear.  

Did I say cold beer?

One of the other people on the tour, a retired teacher, said that it takes 40 litres of maple sap to make 1 litre of maple syrup . Wow.

We stopped at a place where the last spike of the overland railway was struck. Here’s a little red caboose for your viewing pleasure.

Sharon was talking for miles about the railways and blah blah blah but I fell asleep. Apparently the railways were important for important reasons that blah blah..

What’s also important is money. I was starting to wonder why I bothered to buy some Canadian and American money, but the gift shop here had no internet, so it was cash only sales.

I bought some Maple Laef coasters (useful souvenir!) and a moose for my Christmas tree. I got my purchases to reach exactly $20, but I forgot that over here, they ass the tax on AFTER the price. How stupid. I had to fish out an extra fiver, but now I have a looney and tooney.

We were driving through the Selkirk mountain range.

Lord Selkirk from Scotland in the mid 1800’s was upset at the displacement of thousands of peasant farmers from the UK, which happened when the landowners discovered that they could make more money from their land by mining coal rather than renting it out to farmers, which they’d done for centuries. He brought a ton of people over to Canada and helped settle them on their own farms. In gratitude, Canada named a mountain range after him.

This blurry photograph was taken just as the bus went into an avalanche tunnel. These are built over the road and protect traffic from any unexpected falls. Sharon said they work well and that deaths have decreased dramatically since these went in.

Good to know, especially when you’re hearing about it from inside a bus driving along that road.

Our first “comfort break” after lunch was in a visitor information centre at the top of Roger’s Pass.

They offered a video about what to do if you come across a bear in the wild. Apparently, the key is to work out if it’s defensive or aggressive. You’d better get it right because the correct way to behave towards the bear is completely opposite for each situation.

Play dead or go bananas.

Sharon was telling a couple of us that there was a couple walking their dog out in the woods near here and they messaged a friend that they were getting concerned about a bear that was following them. A search party was sent out when they didn’t return and sure enough – all three bodies were found the next day.

On the other hand, a woman was being threatened by a bear so she turned the volume up on her phone and played Metallica at it at full volume. The bear fled, the story went viral and the lead singer called her to thank her for the publicity!

Sharon put on a DVD about beavers. I kept falling asleep, but I learned that beavers fell over 400 trees in a single year to build a new dam. I also woke in time to see beaver sex. Despite the romantic music playing over the footage, it looked more like rape to me…

The Rocky Mountains can be seen from space. The whole range is 700 miles long.

I learned this when I woke up for a bit.

I also surfaced to hear about the Kicking Horse river.

It was named during the Palliser expedition, which had a Dr Hector in it. They were out mapping the area and they decided to cross this river Unknown to them, the bottom of the river was deep clay and a packing horse got stuck. Dr Hector went to free it was the horse kicked out and got him square in the chest.

He was knocked out cold for hours. The other men in the expedition thought he was dead and dug him a grave. As they were preparing to throw him in it, he managed to blink a couple of times to let them know that he was still alive. Hence the name – Kicking Horse River. 45 years later, Dr Hector came back with his son Doudlas to show him the place where he almost died.

Doudlas then promptly dropped dead from appendicitis. Dr Hector never returned to the Rickies after that.

We also passed under several animal highways, which were built to allow the wild animals to cross safely from one side of the highway to the other. The sides are built up with trees so the animals can’t even see the road so they have no idea they’re crossing a bridge. They’ve done DNA testing on bears a few years after they’d installed them, and they found that sure enough – bears were looking for love on both sides of the highway, so they’ve been a great success.

Sharon also mentioned the wolves really like the underground wild animal crossings. They hang around at the end, knowing that sooner or later an elk will walk out and BAM!

Dinner.

Just outside of Banff, we got very excited when we saw our first wild animal sighting – a group of elk in the middle of the road.

I hope they all made it off the road ok when they were finished eating.

Later, right in the centre of Banff, we saw a group of elk in the middle of the river, but I couldn’t get a shot in time.

Imagine living with a mountain in your backyard!

I decided to take a close-up of the snow on the top of one of the mountains.

Looks pretty, doesn’t it?

What doesn’t look pretty is this abomination. It’s poutine. A Canadian delicacy, comprising of fries, cheese curds and gravy. I thought I’d do the right thing and give it a go at dinner.

IT WAS AWFUL.

We have a free day in Banff tomorrow. Let’s see what we find!

Dad joke of the day:

Look at this! You know how when you read about neighbourhoods in American lit and they talk about people hanging out on the “stoop”?

I think this is a stoop!

Anyway, on with the day.

Sharon, our tour director, handed out these chocolate lollies of Canadian money. Their $1 coins are called ‘Loonies’ because when the Prime Minister of the day ruled that $1 notes would be replaced by coins, the people thought he was crazy.

When the $2 notes went the same way, “Toonies” just fit.

The toonies have the Queen (now the King) on one side, with a bear on the other. So Canadians have a coin with the Queen with a bear bottom…

We had a long day of driving planned, with a winery visit at the end. I was looking forward to this until Sharon confidentially told us that the organic wines at this winery were shit, but the sparkling wine was good. I began planning how to swap my wine tastings for extra sparkling. Still, a winery visit is always nice.

Our first coffee break was in a town called ‘Hope.’ It’s famous for being where ‘Rambo’ was filmed, as well as being the place where chainsaw-wielding lumberjacks create street art.

While everyone else got off the bus and queued for the loo, or raced to get coffee, I power-walked down the street to see as many wood carvings as I could.

This is one side:

… and here’s the other.

Here’s Harry the Sasquatch.

When we were driving here, Sharon said that she believes in the Sasquatch, because she dated a few of them in her younger years.

When I got back to the bus I told her that I’d found a former boyfriend of hers. She said, “Oh yes. His name is Harry.”

“He said to contact him if things don’t work out with you and your husband. He’s here, living in Hope,” I said.

Well, I wasn’t wrong.

There were all sorts of sculptures dotted around the town. It was fun to walk around and see what can be done with creativity and a chainsaw.

Rambo was filmed here. Sylvester Stallone is very short, so when the call went out for local extras, all of the local lumberjacks showed up. Most of them were big, burly men who towered over Sly.

So then the call went out in Vancouver for small extras.

This is my first sight of a bear-proof rubbish bin. Sturdy, isn’t it? It looks like a WWI tank.

We set off again. Look at this – it’s the last month of Spring and there’s still snow on the mountains.

All was good until suddenly the bus driver pulled over to the side of the road. There was something wrong with the bus. We were out of mobile phone range. Lovely.

After a few minutes, we set off again. Phew!

Ten minutes later, there we were again.

Fortunate Frogdancer strikes again. This time, they could call out and get help. Even though we were in the middle of nowhere, a mechanic and a replacement bus were coming to save us.

In two and a half hours.

So the bus sat by the side of the road, buffeted by every logging truck and heavy vehicle that passed. Another tour bus stopped to offer help, but we’re pretty much a full bus so they couldn’t help us.

The people at the back started complaining about heat and lack of fresh air. Sharon allowed them to get out and sit by the side of the road. Megan went out with them, while I stayed back on the bus and talked about the Royal Family with Pam from Liverpool.

(TLDR: We love the Queen; on the fence about Charles; Harry is lovely but shouldn’t have spilled the family secrets.)

We stopped right by an animal highway. It’s a tunnel under the road, so animals can cross without being skittled.

Finally, the cavalry arrived. We had to move onto the new bus. It was an old model which Mike, the driver, HATED.

“How does the bus feel, Mike?” Sharon asked after a few miles.

“Weird.”

“Maybe that’s because this bus is moving!” she said.

I tell you what – it wasn’t moving very fast. We didn’t get to the winery, though from what Sharon had said, it wasn’t much of a loss. We crawled up the highway beside a river which suddenly became a lake.

It was majestic.

The beaches are very precious to the people of the town of Kelowna. The Canadian Geese come along each year and try and mess up the place. To solve this, they hire people with trained dogs to chase the geese (but not hurt them) so that the geese fly away and leave the place in peace.

Cost? 45K/dog.

Look at our room. Twin queen beds. We both lost our minds when we saw them.

Luxury!

Dad joke for the day:

Today was the day we met our tour guide and our group. The plan was to have a whistle-stop tour of Vancouver before we leave the next day.

The first thing of interest that we saw was a very narrow building.

It was built out of spite, when the city decided to widen the road and appropriated most of this guy’s land. The building is 11 feet deep, which you’d think would make it unusable. It’s been occupied ever since.

We drove through Chinatown, mainly filled by older residents who have been there for decades. The younger people want better housing and more affordable rent, so they’re moving outwards.

Gas Town has a dream clock, that Andrew from the comments asked about in my last post. We got to the clock just in time to walk to it and take some photos.

Then this happened:

Megs took this video. Notice the steam coming out from the top!

I turned around and saw this building with a crash-landed UFO on top.

These wild and whacky Canadians!

Gas Town has these fake gaslights, probably put in for the tourists.

Gas Town was established when a guy called Jack sailed in with a boat with a big barrel of whiskey. And he said, “If you help build me a tavern here, you’ll drink free for a day!” 

A day later, the tavern was built. They must have been very thirsty.

The steam clock was built by a man who saw a solution to the problems that steam was causing. The steam was created in great underwater boiler works and it was venting out on the footpath and burning passersby. He designed this clock to put over that vent to protect people. Steam was working the clock but it didn’t do it accurately so it’s now all driven electronically.

Here is the official Olympic Flame, installed when Vancouver hosted the Winter Olympics at some stage. The citizens wanted the flame burning the whole time these next Olympics were going, but the mayor said that he’d only light the flame for an hour IF a Canadian won a gold medal. The flame costs $50K/hour to run.

Fair enough.

I noticed this building as we drove away from the airport to our hotel. It is covered with grass. This turned out to be the Olympic stadium. The grass provides excellent insulation, gives worms for the birds and has 3 different bee colonies on it. This was taken from the Stanley Park part of our tour.

Yes, we were here yesterday.

Speaking of Stanley Park, remember the ‘Girl in a Wetsuit’ sculpture from yesterday? This was supposed to be an identical replica of the little mermaid in Copenhagen Denmark and the ladies of Vancouver said, “You can’t put naked breasts on her in our harbour!!” So she’s now decently clad in a  wetsuit and flippers. When it’s high tide the water comes up to the bottom of her flippers.

After a half hour with the totem poles, which I spent getting to know Mad and Rhona from Phoenix, we set off for Granville Island.

This created a dilemma, because we’ve settled with Blogless Martha that we’ll be spending Sunday on Granville Island with her. So we stuck purely to the produce part, completely ignoring all of the art, jewellery, pottery and everything else interesting parts.

We still had a good time.

The first thing I saw when I entered the produce shed were these enormous, shiny capsicums. I’ve never seen capsicums like them.

Look at these insane cherries!

I’m not a foodie, but even I was mesmerised by these stalls.

They’re almost glowing with pride.

Or chemicals.

I had to take this photo. These could be nowhere else but in Canada.

THESE ARE NOT SCONES!!!!!

omg.

I was standing in the food hall, trying to decide what to get for lunch when I thought I heard, “Frogdancer!”

That can’t be for me, I thought. I don’t know anyone here.

“Frogdancer!”

Megan touched my arm. “I think she wants to save you a seat.”

It was Rhona and Mad.

We had a fun lunch, then we all jumped aboard the bus back to the hotel.

Megan and I wanted to see an exhibition by Emily Carr that Blogless Martha told us about, so we walked off to find the Old Law Courts. When we got there we were a bit cast down to find that the gallery was closed on Tuesdays.

Not to be deterred, Megan asked the receptionist what she would do if she had an afternoon to fill.

“Well, you could take the ferry to North Vancouver, walk around the market and have afternoon tea on the dock. Or you could take the Skyrail to cross the Fraser River. That’s always exciting – to cross the river.”

We looked at the time, realised we could do both, so off we went to the station.

When we emerged at the ferry terminal, look what was parked nearby:

Yep. The PLAGUE SHIP!!

We set out on a sedate trip across the water, then wandered onto the dock.

I don’t know if I’d like to be so rich as to own a yacht like this. Every time you tie up at a dock, you’d have to leave the shop because everyone who walks past peers in.

This reminded me of that bridge in Paris.

We headed towards these yellow umbrellas. I thought it was the market. Megan, however, knew that it was the pun. She wanted a beer.

I was reminded of that time in Beijing when I was with Helen, Rick and Matt and we ordered a cocktail in the middle of the day at a tiny bar.

Why not? I ordered a Shochu Sour. It was bloody beautiful!

I liked this.

We found the market, but most of the stalls were shut. We took the next ferry back to Granville station, then we took the line to cross the exciting river.

It was a subway station. So was the next one. And the next.

The carriage grew crowded. I leaned over to Megan and said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if this line went under this amazing river?”

Megan just looked at me and raised an eyebrow.

Suddenly, after 9 stations where we were crushed against the citizens of Vancouver, the train rose to the surface. We were about to see the river!!!!

Unknown to me, Megan took this video.

Yeah.

She felt the same.

Megan’s the navigator on this holiday. I’m experimenting with only using wifi. She worked out the closest station to our hotel, so we walked to our local supermarket, bought our meals for the night and crashed at the hotel.

But I wanted to leave you with this.

These are ordinary-sized pigeons.

Look at the size of Canadian seagulls!!!! They’re giants!!!

And they have a different cry to ours. Canadian seagulls sound mournful. Seriously, they sound depressed. If we had these guys in Australia, I’d give them all of my fish and chips, just to try and make them happier.

Dad Joke of the Day:

We’re here!

As you can see, the grey dress is back for another trip. My plan at the moment is to wear it for most days in the first 2 weeks in Canada, then switch to trackies when the cruise moves into colder areas in Alaska. Still, that may change.

This sculpture was the start of our first full day in Vancouver. We arrived just after 1 PM on a sparkling day and went straight to the hotel, then walked around the neighbourhood to see what we could see.

I was interested to see that the Canadians have the same electric bus system I saw in Pyongyang, North Korea. It’s the same system as Melbourne trams, with all the wires up over the streets. The Canadian buses were not nearly as dilapidated as the North Korean ones!

This city looks to be even more sport-mad than Melbourne!

I liked this mural I saw as we were walking around. Martha, whom we’ll all meet a couple of weeks from now, said that downtown Vancouver has a slightly dodgy reputation.

I could see what she meant. It has a very much” back-packers” kind of vibe, with hundreds of eateries, tens of dope shops and vape shops scattered liberally all around. Still, for travellers, our hotel (The Sandman) has everything handy around it.

We had a Cosmos welcome letter given to us at Reception when we arrived. In the middle of lots of handy tips was this sentence:

PLEASE DO NOT WALK DOWN EAST HASTINGS STREET FOR ANY REASON.

I don’t know what’s wrong with this street, but it made me want to go and see.

After we got tired of walking around we went to a gay bar just across the road from our hotel. I was looking at their menu and there were two items we had no idea about. I called a waiter over.

“What are Yorkies?” I asked.

“They’re little Yorkshire puddings stuffed with…”

“Oh thank god!” I interrupted him. “I couldn’t think what they’d be, and I had visions of you getting little Yorkshire Terriers and force-feeding them stuff, then cooking them.”

He laughed his head off. “No, no, we’re a cruelty-free establishment here!”

“Also, what are Hoagies”? (Megan had guessed that they were some sort of sausage.)

“Oh, hoagies are a long bun that you put the sausage into, then load it up with all the extras.” So Megs was on the right track with that guess… sort of.

After our refreshing bevvies, we went to a Vietnamese place for dinner, then back home where we slept for 12 hours.

It wasn’t an uninterrupted sleep, however, at least for me. Megan snores, but luckily it appears to be at the same volume as Jeffrey, so I was pleasantly surprised and went off to sleep. However, she also sleepwalks.

I woke to a slight scratching sound coming from what I thought was either inside or at the back of the bedside table. I’m sure you remember all the trouble we had a few months ago with rats? Well, that was my first thought.

I opened my eyes in the darkened room, just in time to see my water bottle lurching as something was pushing from underneath it. For a hot half-second I was terrified. A rat was emerging and it was a big one!

Then I realised it was Megan. She mumbled, “Ooogledy- boogeldy clock,” and was grabbing the clock radio on the table. She then got up, started to go into the wardrobe and then disappeared into the bathroom.

OK then. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

That lasted until exactly midnight. I don’t know what she pressed on the top of that clock radio, but the alarm went off. Megan didn’t stir. I unplugged the clock, opened the curtains to see if there was any Northern Lights action after the solar storm we’d been having – no – and then went back to sleep.

Megs went out to breakfast this morning while I ate the vegemite and Vita-Wheat crackers that I’d brought from home. After a little chat with Martha via Twitter about what we’ll do with her on our day together, we headed off to walk around a big 100-acre park called Stanley Park.

It was down a long hill from the hotel.

“I’m not looking forward to the climb back up this later,” Megs said.

We got to the harbour. The smell of the sea was wonderful. There were a fair few people around, all seeming to be young mothers with prams, retired folk and tourists from Germany. You can see from the photo that there were lots of ships lined up.

We walked along the seawall to get to the park. There were lots of birds enjoying the mild weather and their cries sounded beautiful.

Along the seawall walk, there were many benches for people to sit and take in the views. Most of them had dull, generic labels. You know, like “Joe Lunchbucket 1943 – 2023. He was a good bloke.”

I decided that my label would be something like, “Sit down and enjoy the view with me. My ashes are scattered underneath this bench!”

After consulting a map at the edge of the park, we boldly pressed on to see Beaver Lake. As you can see to the right of the photo, the city is letting the natural foliage just do what it will – as long as it doesn’t impede the paths, of course!- and the animals and birds are returning to the park.

Megs said that she saw a sign saying that a coyote den was nearby, so people should keep their dogs on leads. All the dogs we saw in the park were kept tightly leashed.

A little way down the track we saw this. “OO! A bridge!” said Megan. “I’ll have to go across that!”

Turned out that no, she didn’t.

Lost Lagoon is a place where beavers are living. There were a few clumps of trees, branches and other things that they’d put together. The reflection in the lake was amazing.

Bird song filled the air and it was very tranquil.

We swung around to a touristy hub, then started walking towards where we’d see totem poles and a sculpture.

I stopped for a pit stop. This is deeply disturbing to the eyes of an Australian. There’s SO MUCH WATER in the toilets!!!! What a waste!

As we wandered along, this group of buildings caught my eye. Pyongyang colours!

See?

Along the path, we kept seeing broken mussel shells. Here’s what was happening.

I watched this crow throw the shellfish on the path until the body fell out. Then the bird devoured its meal.

Very clever.

The totem poles appeared around the next bend of the path.

They’re quite large.

There was a lot to choose from, with plaques in front of each one explaining what they were portraying

At the bottom, this one has a man being held by a bear.

However, this one was my pick. I didn’t really like all the gaudy paint on the others.

After a trip to the gift shop, where I bought a Canada fridge magnet and a Christmas decoration for my eclectic tree, we headed off in search of this:

‘Girl in a Wetsuit.’ She’s just off the seawall path.

She symbolises the intense relations between Vancouver and the sea trade.

I loved the simplicity.

We came across a sundial. Megan tried to operate it on a cloudy day…

We saw this lovely bridge.

It looked very ferny and pretty as I peered under it. Maybe we could have a look on the way back? It wasn’t as if we were going to circumnavigate around the whole 1000 acres of this park!

Canada geese! They let us get so close to us. They also had bikes racing past them, but they didn’t turn a feather.

I had to giggle when I saw this lighthouse.

I mean… really? Call that a lighthouse???

We were getting tired, so we turned around and dived under that bridge. It was very pretty, with lots of happy ferns, water and birds.

It was almost like walking through the Dandenongs.

But a few minutes later, we saw something that would never be in the Dandenongs:

“Look!” said Megan. “On the bridge!”

It was a red squirrel. A RED ONE!

It jumped off the bridge and ran towards us. I was waiting for it to see us and dive into the bracken, but it came bounding over to where I was standing, stopping when it was only a few inches away from my feet.

It froze. I took 4 photos of this squirrel and they were all the same.

It then got itself together and dived across the road. A few seconds later, it emerged and came even closer to Megan.

I was rapt to see a red squirrel. I wasn’t expecting to see one. I know they’re in North America but in my head, they’re from England.

Many paths wind their way through the park. We’d see bike riders and joggers, but a lot of the time we were on our own. This was a Monday, so I wondered what it would be like on a weekend.

Megs looked up the population of Vancouver. I was surprised to hear that it’s smaller than Melbourne! They have around 2.5 million. We’re sitting on 5.3 million. Almost double the size.

I was pleased to see that the park rangers are prepared for fires!

We started to see them all over the place.

It was getting past lunch time. I wanted to get some food in mah belly, to nudge my body along to adjust to a totally opposite time-zone. We were looking for a way back to the café.

It took a lot of map-reading from Megan, who has internet on her phone, to get us back to where we started. (I’m trying the experiment of relying on wifi.)

Remember the ships at the start of the day? By the afternoon they were all lined up. As the clouds began to melt away, Canadians started to emerge from their houses, blinking in the sunlight.

The beach started to fill up with sunbathers, while a couple of intrepid souls were swimming.

One strange thing I noticed was that a lot of older people here use two hiking sticks to get around. You never see this in Australia.

And to finish the photos – I liked this tree growing on the roof of this building.

We walked up the hill (slowly) back to our hotel, where Sharon, our Canada tour group leader, was waiting to meet everyone. It’s a big tour group of 42, of which 36 are Aussies.

I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Dad joke of the day: