Tuesday September 15, 1998 - BC

New Westminster - sunny and warm.

There was a little lake at the rest stop I had pulled off at the night before, I woke to see ducks there. Very peaceful and pretty. I stopped in the Osoyoos - Summerland area for groceries at one of the many well-stocked fruit stands. Then I stopped for lunch at the Hope Slide, a huge landslide just outside of Hope on the eastern end of the Fraser Valley. Then it was straight on to home, stopping only for gas in Abbotsford. On arriving in New Westminster I went uptown to arrange for a phone to be installed at my condo, then home to a nice clean empty apartment. Yohan plopped down in the entrance way and I don't think he moved for two hours. I on the other hand spent the rest of the day unpacking the truck. What a mess!

And so ended my four-month journey across the country and back. The only territory I failed to visit was Nunavut.

When I arrived home there was a letter from Laurene saying that I should call them right away as Ray had been diagnosed with lung cancer (again) and this time it was terminal. The breathing problems he'd been having in northern BC and the Yukon were the first signs of it, they had had to cut their trip short when Ray was airlifted back to Victoria. I managed to see him one last time at their home in Victoria.

Yohan was old (16 years) and not well, I knew before I set out on this trip that it would be his last. He died the following December. The vet thought he might have pancreatic cancer; that may have been why his liver was swollen when I took him to the Copper River clinic in Whitehorse. Josh eventually turned up. The police in Castlegar did track him down but they did not tell me his whereabouts, just simply that he was alive and well. Sam spent the full nine (eight?) months with Katimavik before returning home, he spent three months each in Quebec, Newfoundland and Ontario.

And that's the end of my travel tale.

Monday September 14, 1998 - BC

Grand Forks - sunny and warm.

I crossed Alberta and reached the mountains by early to mid-afternoon. I stopped in Castlegar around 7.00pm to try to locate Josh. I talked to a lady living in his old house, then tried to get a hold of the police. The Police Office was closed but there was a phone at the front door. After hours everything is routed through Nelson, which means long distance; and because of the new long distance plans, all circuits were busy. Some of the guys at the Fire Department next door were watching from their second floor lounge and offered to help. I went in and they called the Nelson police from their phone, I guess they had a better number to call. I made my report, they said they'd be in touch.

I got gas and made a quick supper—I was starving at this point—and continued on. I pulled off the road for the night at a rest stop somewhere past Grand Forks.

Hapi and Hiro say good bye

The last time they saw each other before I headed home to Nova Scotia.

Island hopping and more visiting

View from train crossing Fraser River in New West

I am on the train heading for Seattle to visit a friend there. I have a "window seat" but really it is between windows so not much of a view. And I overhear another passenger saying that the real view is on the other side of the train anyway. Oh well.

I've been scrambling around, Vancouver Island, Hornby Island, Gambier Island, Whistler, back and forth between North Vancouver and Langley with stops in between in Vancouver proper. Too busy to stop and write about it.

Also repairs to the truck, had to replace all of the tire rims and in the process found out that one rear brake was leaky. After that was fixed then a front brake hose gave out. Then I thought the heater core gave out but I think now that it didn't, I was just low on coolant and there was a bunch of water under the floor carpet that was causing the windows to steam up. The source of the water is as yet unknown but most likely due to intense rain the other day.

My brother did the rear brake repair. It took a long time and he was not pleased to be doing that job, a lot of things went wrong. It took him a whole day. He thought I ought not to be driving such an old truck so far. The mechanic who replaced the tire rims said as much too.

Totem in the woods, Denman Island

Hornby Island deer

Hornby Island water tank, in lieu of fire hydrant

Hapi is staying in Langley and I think she is reasonably content there but I sure do get an ecstatic welcome when I do show up there. One time, she jumped up into my arms and then Hiro thought he should jump on me too---he never jumps on people---so he jumped on my back. Sam had to haul him off, between the two dogs they were going to knock me over. It was gratifying though that Hapi missed me so much.

I think the time I spent on Gambier was the most relaxing, we didn't do much except the occasional dog walk with my hosts' dog.

Whistler was interesting, my hosts there took me to see Nairn Falls and the Sunday Market, and on Sunday evening we went for dinner at one of their friends' place. It was quite magnificent, with a fabulous view from the deck and windows of the mountains, surrounding forest and lake below. Their house is situated on a high slope surrounded by tall trees. The slope is so steep that from the deck you are looking at the tops of the trees below. Besides myself there were four couples, all of whom were recently returned from world travels. Our hostess wanted each couple to give a ten minute synopsis of their travels before dinner, so I heard about Peru and Equador, China, the West Indies, and the El Camino. There were some interesting things from each trip.

View from Whistler home deck

One thing I learned is that there is not one El Camino but many. You can go back again and again to try a different one and some people do exactly that, making the El Camino a kind of obsession.

One night I had dinner with some friends in Vancouver who were recently returned from a vacation on the canals of England. They discovered the canal boats several years ago and every year now they go back to explore another canal. They quite love it. They also often take a guest along so who knows perhaps one day I'll get an invite and go too. It did sound quite lovely.

The train is still moving slowly through the Vancouver area, we are just now crossing the bridge from New Westminster to Surrey over the Fraser River. It is quite neat to see my old home from a very different perspective. At the rate we are going we will reach the US border in maybe an hour! It is probably a 15 minute drive on the highway.

One day in Vancouver I was going to meet a friend in the morning and go for a walk. She had something to do in the afternoon, we thought that I could find something else to do and then we would meet again for dinner. We decided to walk in Van Dusen Gardens, which was very nice but rather brief. I've been there before but each time has also been brief so I hadn't ever seen the entire Gardens. This time I decided to stay in the Gardens while my friend went off to her other activity and I quite enjoyed spending another three hours systematically following every trail and path in the Gardens. I can now check it off my list, I have well and truly "done" the Van Dusen. Of course it changes with the seasons but that's another story. My favourite part of the Gardens was the Canadian Heritage area, where among other things they grow many plants that First Nations use for medicinal purposes. Very interesting.

Harp concert in the Gardens

Model of Haida dugout canoe in Van Dusen

Afterward my friend picked me up and we went to All India Sweets for their all-you-can-eat vegetarian buffet. It hasn't changed much, although for $5 you can now get a meat addition to the vegetarian buffet. There are a couple of TVs in the restaurant playing Bollywood movies and music videos all the time, I quite enjoy that as well. They are so colourful and joyful, it is hard not to be uplifted by them. My opinion anyway.

The train has picked up speed so maybe it won't take an hour to get to the border after all.

Once I get back from Seattle I will be just about ready to head back to Nova Scotia. I had intended to be back by this weekend but I won't even leave until sometime after the weekend. There was just so much to do, so many people to see.

Coastal visiting

I've been couch surfing a lot the last week or so, Langley, North Vancouver, Sechelt. Next up: Hornby Island, but that is a few days away so in the meantime I'm visiting friends around Vancouver and trying to get my truck fixed.

While in Sechelt I accompanied my friends there to a workshop at a potter's place. It was a workshop called Spirit in Clay conducted by a former church minister-turned-potter. I was there for only part of the workshop, a couple of hours while my friends glazed their pots and another couple of hours watching the kiln be fired up.

Glazing pots

The latter event was quite interesting, it was an outdoor homemade gas kiln designed and built by the potter's son, a skilled potter in his own right. We watched flames and smoke shooting out of peekaboo holes in the kiln walls, the potter was controlling the rate of rise in temperature by viewing cones in various parts of the kiln and then opening and closing the holes to lower and raise the temperature. Quite fascinating.

Kiln flames

Sometimes the potter would open a viewing hole, flames would shoot out and he would blow them back in to be able to see the cones at that particular viewpoint. Seeing him blowing the flames back in was like watching an imaginary hero battling a flaming dragon. The cones are designed to melt at particular temperatures and they come in sets so you can tell the temperature by which ones and how many are melting and keeling over.

Viewing the cones

The entire family had lived with a tribe in South America, I guess as missionaries or something, and they had interesting stories to tell about that. They now live in a kind of old hippy house on the BC coast, a funky little place that felt quite comfortable. We were offered mate which I didn't drink but my friends did. It is I gather similar to coffee or tea in effect. One of my friends probably had too much of it and was babbling on like a maniac. It is supposed to be healthier than tea or coffee.

My friends' dog is old and probably not going to live much longer. She is partially deaf, blind and lame. I spent a lot of time with that dog, she licked and licked and licked. Watching her try to climb up on the sofa was excruciating, but she made it and laid her head in my lap. She's not supposed to because she leaks, but after watching her great efforts to get up it is very hard to tell her she's not supposed to.

Hapi and Hiro were very glad to see me when I returned to Langley, Hapi made it clear she considered me hers and Hiro should just stay away. We took the dogs for a walk together and then later I took Hapi by herself. At one point we found a place by the Fraser River where we could let both dogs off leash to romp in the water and the mud. They had a wonderful time getting wet and dirty and chasing each other up and down the shore and into a nearby field. A flock of Canada geese watched from a safe distance offshore, I think the dogs were using "their" bit of shore and they were waiting for them to go away. The river current was quite strong so sometimes the geese appeared to be swimming backwards: facing upstream but moving downstream.

Hapi and Hiro in the Fraser River

Wet dogs playing

Hapi is a little more agile than Hiro, she climbed up a muddy embankment and Hiro attempted to follow and slipped and fell backwards. Hapi immediately turned and went back to him. He was fine, they resumed their chase game on the shore below.

Later we met a woman walking her malamute, she was very interested in our dogs. She had just gotten her dog and was finding him tough to control. At four years old with yet another new owner he was pretty independent. She was hoping we could give her advice, but really, with a dog like that you need professional help. He was very handsome, blond-and-tan in colour, and very interested in Hapi and Hiro, I think they would have gotten along but there was a fence between them and my son was reluctant to let Hiro cross the fence. Chances were good it would have been fine but no point taking chances.

I am enjoying being on the west coast again. There is a very distinctive and different "flavour" to this place. I commented to a friend that it felt like being in a different country altogether and she agreed. She's been to Nova Scotia and has the same feeling about going there. Hard to describe, but interesting how different places can be in the same country. This place feels very lush. Lots of green, giant trees, mountains, ocean, rushing rivers... You see it in native art, the lushness of the environment it comes from.

Even the suburbs here have that feel, you can see the mountains from almost everywhere and the trees are still giant, looming over the houses by several house heights. The environment you live in shapes you, you get that meeting people here. I can understand why people put up with terrible rush hour drives home to the suburbs, the peace of those residential areas is quite intoxicating.

I was returning to the mainland on a ferry and waiting to board while watching cars drive off. The cars were full of folks getting out of the city for the weekend, you could see that in their smiling faces, the bikes and kayaks and surfboards strapped to roofs and bike racks. People complain about the ferries all the time, but they do provide an essential service, however inadequately or expensively.

Final destination, the lower mainland

Mount Robson, near Alberta-BC border

The trip to Vancouver took 3 days, I think I could have done it in 2 if I had pushed. There were no further tire or wheel incidents.

Once I crossed over from Alberta to BC the road traffic increased exponentially, lots of RVs and tour buses. A couple of times I happened to stop at rest areas where there was a tour bus, they were generally full of Asians who loved Hapi on sight. We would get mobbed by people with cameras who I guess thought we were part of the whole BC experience. Hapi loves attention and would rub up against all the women, to their great delight.

One woman had the dickens of a time trying to get her photo because Hapi just wanted to be petted and the woman wanted Hapi to pose for her. After much running around and calling and backing up she finally got her photo. It's kind of funny to be the subject of excited tourists' cameras when you are sort of a tourist yourself.

At another rest stop a car pulled up behind me and let their little dog out who proceeded to run in excited circles. Hapi gave chase. It turned out the grassy area was full of prairie dog holes and the little dog's owners were locals who would bring the dog there for exercise. After a few minutes of chasing pop-up prairie dogs the dog was done and they drove on to their destination. I tried to interest Hapi in the game but she didn't get why all those holes were such a big deal.

There was lots of scenery, mountains and big trees and rushing rivers, it was nice to see but I am afraid I've become a bit inured to mountain scenery in my old age. Nothing new.

My truck, parked below one of the sites of the big forest fire of 2010

I stayed at my friend's brother's place again the first night out from Hay River, only this time he wasn't there. However he had told me that the lock on the back door was broken so I could just let myself in if I wanted to stay there again while he was away. It was and I did. The next night I stayed in a rest area that was fairly nondescript but I was the only person there. It rained. I got up early and drove away without breakfast, figuring that I would stop as soon as the rain did and make coffee and breakfast then.

When I did stop for breakfast I let Hapi wander around. Another car came in, a man got out and whistled. Hapi made a bee-line to him. Boy, if that guy had wanted to steal my dog he would have had no problem at all. A few moments later another truck and camper pulled in and a guy got out and started walking towards Hapi and me. He asked if she was a malamute. When I said Yes he said he had a giant malamute in his truck. I looked and sure enough there was a giant dog face in the side window of his truck. He said that his wife spotted my dog in the rest stop and instructed him to pull over, that there was another malamute there.

He let his dog out and sure enough it was giant malamute, all 180 lbs of him. Giant malamutes can run to 250 lbs so as giants go he was actually on the small side. He was excited to see Hapi but I think Hapi found him a little intimidating. What a goof. OK to intimidate a shih-tsu but doesn't like being intimidated by giant dogs herself.

I stopped for gas in Abbotsford, from the past I knew it was the cheapest place to buy gas in the entire province. Believe it or not, gas in Hay River is cheaper than in BC, the price in Abbotsford was on a par with Hay River. In Vancouver itself the price is $0.10/litre more expensive. In BC they have a carbon tax that makes gas quite expensive, but everything in Vancouver is more expensive than anywhere else, which is why I don't live there anymore. That and the rain. Beautiful, but expensive and wet.

The long anticipated reunion of Hapi and Hiro was a little anticlimactic: Hiro was delighted, Hapi not so much.

Sam was out when we arrived there but he gave me the door code via text message so we were able to go in. Sam was away all day and left Hiro in a darkened apartment with all the curtains drawn, so when I opened the door I could not see him at first. He came to check out who was at the door, sniffing and sniffing. I watched his tail rise and wag faster and faster, until his whole rear end was wagging as he sniffed Hapi all over. Hapi looked quite alarmed.

Hiro's rear end just a blur of tail wagging,
Hapi looking a little apprehensive

Hiro made all sorts of efforts to get Hapi to play with him but she would have none of it, she was looking at me with a kind of "Get me out of here" expression. Hiro would tap her on the shoulder with his paw and bow and scrape in front of her but that didn't do any good. The only time he could get a rise out of her was when he greeted me, she was jealous and tried to push him away. When Sam finally arrived home Hapi recognized him instantly and was ecstatic to greet him. I no longer existed for her.

Here I was thinking that she would miss and be happy to reunite with Hiro, when it was really Sam her heart belonged to!

The next day we took the two dogs to an offleash dogpark and they did play with each other like old times. After that things seemed back to normal between them, I think Hapi is quite content to be with Hiro now and especially content to be with Sam again. I am leaving her with him while I go visit friends, she didn't even notice my unpacking the truck and driving off without her.

Hiro and Hapi at the dogpark

Sam lives in cohousing which is quite a tight-knit community, I got a lot of stares from people who wondered who I was when I walked around the shared areas. But several started up conversations to find out and once they knew who I was and why I was there welcomed me and were very friendly. Most of Sam's neighbours remembered Hapi from when she lived there before and were glad to see her back, as Hiro is inclined to howl when left alone and they all thought Hapi being there would put an end to that, even if only temporarily.

I do hope Hiro is not doubly disappointed when Hapi and I leave more or less permanently.

There was a community dinner while I was there which I attended with Sam. It was in honour of a renter who was leaving and there were several short speeches by residents wanting to acknowledge how much they had enjoyed this renter's presence in the community.

One resident told me there were 90 members, of which 30 were children. Sam didn't think there were that many children. It is certainly a space designed for families as well as single people. There are quite a lot of older people there who like it as an "aging in place" kind of community.

The building layout is one central hub with two wings of residences. The hallways in the wings have glass roofs so the lighting is all daylight, with a few "street lamps" at night. The hallways are called "atriums" and are quite wide, like small streets. Many people have chairs, couches and tables in the area by their front doors, so it does give the impression of a friendly neighbourhood street.

When kids are playing in the atrium the echoiness of it makes the noise quite loud but they are fairly strict about quiet in the evening. In addition the building is on 5 acres of land, half of which is left wild, mostly an unmowed grassy area with a stream running through it, and the rest is lawn and garden. There is a good sized allotment garden for residents where many people grow vegetables.

There is underground parking and workshops on the basement level. In the central hub area are a children's indoor play area, a common kitchen-dining-meeting area, several studio areas for art and dance, a guest suite, a TV room, a common laundry room and large lobby area with nice plants and comfy old furniture. and of course the requisite community notice board.

Dogs are supposed to be leashed but apparently I was the only one following the rule (and I wasn't even aware that it was the rule, I was just doing it out of caution). I gather this is a bit of a bone of contention between dog-owning and non-dog-owning residents. Like any community there are ongoing dramas and issues, but the general ambiance seems friendly and relaxed. If I could afford to buy into such a community I certainly would consider it. Sam would like that, if only to keep the two dogs together.

Today I am at a friend's place trying to work out schedules for visiting with family and old friends. It's a bit tough, I am trying to fit into my friends' schedules and just when I think I have it all worked out, someone changes their own schedule and that has ripple effects all the way down the line. So today I have fired off emails and text messages to all affected and am awaiting replies in order to rework the schedule. I have a month so hopefully it will all work out in the end. My friend is out for the day attending to family business (ailing parents, etc etc) so I am at her home with the cat.

Since the last time I was here (2010) there have been significant renovations, I am staying in the brand-spanking-new guest room cum TV room and I just had a shower in the super-dooper latest and greatest of shower stalls.I had to be shown how to work the controls. I tried it on my own first, but couldn't figure it out.

Before I leave Vancouver I also hope to try the super-dooper bathtub, its controls look a little more straight forward, although they did tell me that it uses up the entire hot water supply to fill it. So one must book its use at a time convenient for all.

And that's it for now.

Heading eastward

The Duffy Lake Road was fine, no construction line-ups, no snow, spectacular views, and even a rainbow.




I stopped to look at Seton Lake near the end of the Duffy Lake Road; this lake connects to Anderson Lake at its far western end, and D'Arcy is at the south end of Anderson.


On my first day on the road I got as far as Valemount on Highway 5, just before the Yellowhead Highway.

Just before Valemount I stopped for gas and the attendant there eyeballed the stickers on my windshield. One is my Nova Scotia safety sticker, the other is my Toronto parking sticker.

He recognized Toronto City Hall on the parking sticker and asked if I worked for the City of Toronto.

I said, No but I used to live there.

He said that he used to live in Ontario too, in Kingston. He liked Toronto he said, he felt safe there.

He said he'd walked the streets of Toronto at night---he rhymed off a few---and he never felt unsafe there. Vancouver, he shook his head, is a different story. Downtown Eastside...

I agreed with him.

He said, You know, Toronto is multicultural, but Vancouver is,
...is...
...is just mean. The people are just mean.

Hmmm, haven't heard that one before, I wondered what his experience was. It's a beautiful city set in a fabulous landscape, but some parts of that city are very hard.

He wished me a good trip.

The next day I drove through Robson Provincial Park and Jasper National Park on the Yellowhead.


The boundary between the two parks is also the border between British Columbia and Alberta.

I think Jasper is way more interesting than Banff National Park just south of it, but not nearly as famous. I saw lots more wildlife in Jasper Park than I did on my trip through Banff on the way to Vancouver in August. But that may have had something to do with all the road construction going on then.

I saw mostly elk and mountain goats, hanging out close to the road. In Jasper Park, the valley between the mountains is relatively broad so you can get wonderful views of the mountains without craning your neck upward. There are broad swaths of grass along the highway and I think that attracts the elk and goats in the fall, they appeared to be fattening up for the winter. On one occasion the cars slowed to almost a halt, passing by a couple of nonchalant mountain goats on the shoulder. They seem unafraid of vehicles, or of the people that emerge from them with cameras in hand. And they are huge, easily as big as large deer, almost as big as the elk. And fat.

I stopped in the town of Jasper just to see it, and also to deposit a cheque that Sam gave me in exchange for cash to hold him over till the next time he got near a bank machine.


The next town on the highway after Jasper Park was Hinton. Passing through Hinton brought back memories. It is the gateway to the Rockies on the Yellowhead, it is also the CN train station where the Mounties used to come on board westward headed passenger trains to remove the drunks. For all I know they still do, but it's been a long time since I travelled on that train.

In 1969 I headed west on the train with my boyfriend, for the grand price of $50 for a one-way ticket from Toronto to Vancouver. That got you a seat in coach class for the 3-4 day trip. They were bench seats, if you were lucky you snagged two facing benches so you could sleep more or less lying down. Everyone smoked and many drank. The air was pretty gross by the time you got to Vancouver.

The drinkers got their come-uppance in Hinton, the worst of the lot being removed by the aforementioned Mounties. I am not sure why they did that in Hinton, maybe it's OK to be drunk in the north woods and across the prairies, but not in the mountains. Or maybe it took that long for them to become obnoxious enough for the train people to be fed up with them.

And that is pretty much all I know about Hinton.

In a rest stop somewhere after that an old dog was wandering around. There were a lot of vehicles there, but after a few minutes most of the vehicles were gone and the old dog was still there. An older fellow in a car gave the dog scraps and asked me if it was my dog. I said No, and we looked at each other and the one other truck still at the rest stop. The fellow in that truck didn't own the dog either. The truck driver tried to read the dog's collar, but the dog growled at him. The old man phoned somebody to report the stray dog.

Aside from growling at the truck driver, the dog seemed friendly. If I wasn't planning to spend the night at a friend's place I would seriously have considered picking him up. He let me look at his collar but there was no tag. I hope whoever the old man called came to get the dog.

Goodbye to D'Arcy

I am staying at Sam's place in D'Arcy before heading east for the winter.

Doesn't that sound backwards? Shouldn't I be heading west or south? Silly me!

On Tuesday night I slept in the truck. It was cold but fine in my warm sleeping bag.

On Wednesday night, knowing that it would be colder than Tuesday, I thought I'd sleep in Sam's guest room, the attic. But the place is absolutely infested with stink bugs. I started out killing a bunch of them, they are slow-moving and easy targets, but it didn't stop the tide. I read in bed for awhile, occasionally smashing a stink bug, but when one crawled up onto my chest I gave up. Shaking out all my bedding and clothes I beat a retreat to the truck.

Sam has closed off his attic in hopes that the cold will do in the miserable creatures, but at the very least the closed trapdoor should keep them up in the attic rather than downstairs in his living space.

They're fairly harmless, just disgusting. Sam tells me they are not native to North America, so they have no predators here. They are vegetarian and cause problems for some farmers, but do not bite humans or carry disease. They are large and slow-moving and when they fly they seem incapable of landing, they just crash into things. Also they emit a bad smell, hence their name.

Nights are getting cold, in the truck it dropped to +3C. By the time I reach northern Ontario it should be closer to -3C.

I am debating whether to take the Duffy Lake Road (the switchback road from hell) from here, or retrace my steps to Vancouver and take the Coquihalla. Apparently there is construction on the Duffy Lake with one lane of traffic for almost 50 km. On those switchbacks that means a good hour or more, so if you get to the flag point at the wrong time you could be waiting for up to 2 hours to go through. Normally that road would cut hundreds of kilometers and a couple of hours off the trip east, so it's a dilemma. Also it's very scenic when driven during the daytime with no snow on the road.

I have friends in Edmonton that I will stay with and visit, a night on the road in Saskatchewan---hopefully I will make it back to Buffalo Pound Lake Provincial Park for that night---and another night with my niece in Winnipeg. Then two nights on the road in northern Ontario and a visit with my brother in Kirkland Lake. Another dilemma. Take the colder northern route or the slightly warmer but considerably longer southern route? I will have to play it by ear, it will depend on just how cold. I think I can handle -5C, but I am not sure about -10C.

Yesterday I went walking on the mountain with the dogs, and they took off on me. There was no hope of finding them, they move a lot faster than I can. I didn't know if they had found some shortcut home or if they were off hunting (they do that sometimes). I called them a bunch of times and then started walking back to Sam's place. The lousy buggers caught up with me about 15 minutes away from the cabin. Hapi (the female) is the instigator, Hiro (the male) is more inclined to return when called than she is, but he gets anxious when she doesn't come too so he tends to stay with her.


While walking home without them I was thinking bad thoughts about them. They don't like to abandon each other in the mountains, but they sure don't care about abandoning me. However they did stick close to me after they returned, waiting for me to catch up whenever they got just out of sight. And they were completely beat for the rest of the day when we got back to the cabin.


This will probably be the last time I visit this place, I will most likely not return before Sam moves to Windsong.

Whistler

I finished the last Larsson book and packed up to leave Vancouver on Friday. Beofre leaving however, I had to get snow tires on the truck, and Dave insisted I get the engine noise checked out before I left. It has been noisy for so long that I was used to it and didn't think it was unusual, but he did. He thought it was my water pump and as it turned out, he was correct. Good thing I got it checked out I guess, but between that and the snow tires I dropped $1400 in two days at the same auto shop. That hurt.

My intention was to visit yet more friends who live in Whistler and then pick up the last of my stuff at D'arcy before heading east. I had wonderful sunny clear weather for the scenic drive to Whistler, and arrived in time to go for a lengthy hike around the neighbourhood. Lots of great views of the surrounding mountains. This picture is of the Armchair Glacier, just to the "left" of Blackcomb and Whistler ski mountains.


We walked out to Green Lake, where we saw a beaver lodge built into the shore and considerable beaver damage among the nearby trees. They had felled a bunch of trees, some of them quite large. One tree had been girdled but not felled. Several trees had fallen only partially, hung up in other trees. The girdled tree had another felled tree leaning on it so if they ever chew threw they will get two very big trees in one.


Whistler is a well-known resort town, houses there sell for millions of dollars. We walked through a neighbourhood of some of those million-dollar homes. They are fairly spectacular, with large wooden beams and lots of glass to take advantage of the surrounding mountain views. But they are also crowded together like a subdivision. If you want privacy in Whistler, you pay way more than a million or two for it.

My friends in Whistler live in a cabin that he, Keith, built in the early '70s, before Whistler was a money destination. It is well done, he being an engineer, but he says that for Whistler it is a tear-down. They are doing some renovations to make it more comfortable but there is no point in renovating for resale value because all the value is in the site, not the house.


We watched the Stellar's Jays on their deck, they come for the peanuts that Keith and Judy throw to them. One jay is quite fearless, he takes the peanut from your hand. In the morning he perches on the patio door frame, insistent on his peanut handout. Other jays are not so bold, they wait hidden in the surrounding spruces to pounce on a thrown peanut. They are very beautiful birds with large black crests bigger than the eastern Blue Jay's crest. But just as raucous.

On my second day in Whistler we drove out to the Olympic Village, built near the old site of the town dump (I have to laugh at that). We then followed a trail up the Cheakamus River, across a suspension foot bridge and back down the other side of the river. Along the way we looked at many mushrooms. Judy had recently been on a mushroom identification walk in Whistler and wanted to reinforce her newfound knowledge of mushrooms. It was quite interesting all the different kinds of mushrooms we saw, but being rank amateurs none of us knew their names or edibility status.



At night we could see lights on the two skiing mountains, Blackcomb and Whistler. Tiny lights outlined the lifts to different ski runs and one bright light identified a shelter high on Blackcomb. We speculated as to why it was lit up, Judy told me their was a summer road up there and we wondered if maybe they were provisioning the cabin for the winter when the road was closed.

Besides the Stellar's Jays I also saw my first Clark's Nutcracker, hanging upside down from spruce branches prying loose the seeds from the spruce cones. Smart and handsome looking bird.

My alter ego

Johanna and I in our matching jackets, holding our matching water bottles.

I'm off on the road again.

Sechelt renos, Vibes, smugglers and eagles

I visited friends who live near Sechelt for a few days. They are in the midst of renovations, so it was hard to pick a good time to visit between all the scheduled (and rescheduled) rounds of contractors and renovations. They were redoing the floors, windows and doors, and installing an all-new kitchen. We finally managed a couple of days when they were between contractors. The floors, windows and doors were done and the old kitchen largely dismantled, but the new kitchen still in the works. That meant no kitchen cabinets and no dishwasher or kitchen sink. Dishes were stored temporarily in a laundry room cabinet and water came from the laundry tub (good thing they had one!). Carpets were rolled up and furniture was shoved into corners.

The visit was fun though, we spent one day in town doing errands and shopping and another day hiking out to nearby Smugglers' Cove. While in town I checked around for the cost of snow tires for my truck, I need new tires and they may as well be snow tires at this time of year.

I told my friends about a car that friends in Nova Scotia think I should consider for my next vehicle, the Pontiac Vibe. We saw one parked on the street in front of a store where they cut keys, it turned out to belong to the store owner. When he wasn't running the store he was out gold prospecting, he said he used the Vibe for everything and it was a helluva good car. He couldn't understand why they discontinued it, it was so good. Maybe that's why.

Anyway, after that Morrie was spotting Vibes everywhere. It's based on the Toyota Matrix, and looks almost identical to it, but Morrie quickly determined and pointed out the small differences in styling. I would never have figured that out.

Smugglers' Cove is a little cove hidden from view on the coast, as most smugglers' coves are. This particular smugglers' cove was used for human smuggling. When the first national railway was completed in 1885 many Chinese labourers were let go and had no work. They were unable to leave the country and were mistreated because of racism. So human smugglers transported them, for a price, into the United States to find work there. This was one of the points of embarkment.


We hiked out to a rocky point where we enjoyed the sunlight and beautiful view. A bald eagle in a tree there was disturbed by our arrival with three dogs, but it did not budge from its perch. We took a few pictures of it while it pretended not to notice us.


We watched a tugboat slowly towing a huge log boom, the logs looked to be very large and at least three deep. I think the tugboat was moving at no more than one knot, it took a very long time to cross our line of sight. We had lunch while watching its progress.


On the walk back we encountered a couple of mushroom pickers. They were from one of the yachts moored in the cove, and were looking for edible mushrooms in the woods. They said it was a poor year for them, too dry.

We later went for an early supper at a nearby pub with a view of another cove just up the way. I had a hamburger and fries with beer. Although the walk was not strenuous or long, we were quite exhausted by the time we got back to my friends' house.


While at their place I was happy to be sleeping in the truck, it was not cold and was more comfortable than an air mattress on the floor. I don't much care for air mattresses.

The ferry trip back to Horseshoe Bay was uneventful and I got in some reading. Johanna and Dave, my hosts in Vancouver, and I have been working our ways through the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy (The Girl Who... books). I recently bought the last one and am trying to get through it in time to leave it behind for Johanna and Dave to read after I leave. So I have a bit of a deadline and it is a huge book. Reading time is valuable.

A walk on the expensive side

Marina and I went for a walk around the Olympic Village on False Creek in Vancouver. The buildings are mostly empty, they are having some difficulty selling off the condos there.


We took a look at a couple of open houses and I guess I am not surprised. They seem tiny for the prices being charged (starting at half a million, and I am pretty sure the "two bedrooms plus flex" that we were looking at were well beyond that), and one was unbelievably dark in the middle of a sunny afternoon. You would never find your way around in there without the lights on. How depressing!

I guess the main selling feature of these condos is location. The views (from those condos with views) are of False Creek and peekaboo glimpses of mountains between highrises. You're right downtown, you have a community centre in the middle, and you're not far from the skytrain. But the condos themselves don't much appeal to me. Neither do peekaboo mountains.


I liked the giant sparrows near the community centre. They were cute.

Friends

I have visited with several friends in the Vancouver area over the last couple of weeks. In particular I saw Marina, Irene and Catherine.

I spent an afternoon and evening with my friend Marina. She and I each have three kids, hers are all girls mine are all boys. She has two grandchildren and up until recently so did I. Now I have three (Yay!). We enjoy comparing notes.

Marina and I first met when we were both attending the Shambhala Buddhist Centre in Vancouver in the late nineties. Neither of us go there any more, but Marina is still in contact with many people from the centre. We used to go out to a nearby coffee shop, the Java Hut, and Marina still hangs out there. She's taking courses at Emily Carr College of Art and Design and the Java Hut is a place for her to read and do homework, not to mention eat, drink coffee and meet friends.

Anyway, that's where I met Marina that day. We hung out there for a little while and then went down to Kits Beach to walk. We walked along the beach and then past the old planetarium and boat launch and marina to Granville Island, we kept walking along False Creek a ways past the island. The Bard on the Beach tents were still up but I believe that is over for the season.

We decided to go to the Heaven on Earth Curry House for dinner, another of our old haunts. The restaurant is owned by a Sikh woman who comes to our table to chat with us about our respective families. She has two grown children, a boy and a girl.

The daughter married into a Washington DC family, it was an arranged marriage. In their culture, once a girl is married she becomes part of her husband's family and her own parents have very little to do with her after that. She continued her university studies in Washington along with her husband, graduated, and eventually had a baby. Her mother has only seen that baby once and has no plans to visit again in the near future.

The son is attending university here. He wanted to go into accounting but his parents insisted that he study engineering as they needed someone with an engineering background in his father's business. The son was initially not happy about that decision, but his mother says that he likes it better now. They plan to find a wife for him from India.

It seems very strange to Marina and I, we spend a lot of time comparing notes on our various children and grandchildren and can't imagine living like our host's family does. It is a view into a whole other way of living.

The food there is heavenly. Can't eat there too often! I've never seen this restaurant full so I don't know how she keeps it going, but it has been there a very long time. Maybe her husband's business is so successful she doesn't have to worry about making a profit, but she seems more practical than that.

I had dinner with Irene at a local pub. The food was unusually bad. I have eaten there before and don't remember the food being particularly bad, but this time it was. Irene complained and they gave us free appies in compensation, but the appies were only marginally better. What can I say.

Irene and I know each other from the strata we both lived in (in BC a condo corporation is called a strata). She sold her condo shortly before I did, and then I house sat for her after my condo sold and she went on vacation. That gave me a place to stay over the winter until I was ready to leave the province in the spring. For a while we were on the strata council together when our strata was going through a leaky condo envelop rehab. Stressful times.

Irene's parents are in a nursing home, her mother had dementia and her father is older and frailer. They share a room and are private patients so they pay over $8500 a month. Irene is not impressed with the level of care they get for their money, and is constantly on the nursing home's case to do better.

Irene doesn't let things go, she's a formidable "complainer". At one point this summer her father had an infection and both the nursing home and the doctor gave him up for dead. Irene insisted that they do better and as a result they gave him a second round of antibiotics that cleared up the infection. Irene also insisted on aftercare to get him back on his feet since his musculature had deteriorated from being sick in bed for so long.

The doctor complimented Irene for her dedication, but Irene felt that she shouldn't have had to do that, that if the doctor was doing his job then he would have seen that the first round of antibiotics had not cleared up the infection and would have prescribed a second round, instead of telling her that her father was dying. But Irene sees that the end is not far off and she should prepare for the worst.

Catherine and I went for lunch at a restaurant near where she works in downtown Vancouver. We met years ago when I was a manager and hired her as our senior technical writer. She and I had about the same level of experience as technical writers, but I moved on to become a manager and she remained a writer. That was a conscious decision on her part and I think she made the right choice. I think I would be less disillusioned about working if I had done the same, being a manager was not particularly fun. [Joke: What is the Middle Management Prayer? Sorry, middle management doesn't have a prayer!]

We exchanged a bit of gossip about what various people we both know are doing now, and caught up a bit on our lives thus far. Catherine has UK citizenship as does her husband, so she would like to move away from North America. Her dream home is near Toulouse, France. She's keeping her eye out for jobs there. More immediately though she's thinking about moving to Victoria; her boss at her current workplace says she could keep her job and work from home there. She's tired of Vancouver, it's too big for her she says. She has come to the conclusion that she's really a small town girl.

If she moves to Toulouse I will have to go visit her there! She says I can forget about her ever visiting me in Nova Scotia, she and her husband plan to avoid that end of the country indefinitely. I know that he grew up in Nova Scotia and does not have happy memories of the place.

Windsong

Sam came into town last weekend to visit his new niece and to show me Windsong.


Last spring he bought a small one bedroom plus den unit in Windsong Cohousing out in Langley, BC. It is the oldest cohousing place in BC, 14 years old this year. As luck would have it, the unit next door to Sam's also came up for sale shortly after Sam bought his unit, and he wanted me to buy it. Everything Sam told me and everything I already had heard about Windsong made me very interested in the idea and I did put a bid in on the unit, but it was beyond my price range and another bidder got it. I was kind of disappointed at the time, and it made looking for a place in Nova Scotia that much harder, emotionally speaking.

Sam won't be moving into Windsong for awhile so in the meantime he has rented his unit out. But he is already a part of that community even though he does not live there himself. The afternoon that he took me on a tour of Windsong almost everyone we met there greeted Sam by name and he stopped to chat with them. There were two women having tea on the lawn behind Windsong and it turned out one of them was a founding member of Windsong and used to own Sam's place.


Windsong sits on 5 acres smack in the middle of developed suburb, surrounded by condominium complexes on a busy road. The buildings occupy one acre and there is a salmon stream surrounded by wetland taking up about half of the property. The rest is visitor parking, residents' garden plots, lawn and play space.


The complex is laid out as two wings, north and south, with a central building of community rooms. Each wing is two large buildings with a wide glass-covered "atrium" between them. Units range from one bedroom to four bedrooms, all with main entrances onto the atrium. Many units have furniture or decorative objects in the atrium, kind of like tiny front yards. They are all brightly painted in different colours.


The central building has a large dining-lounge-kitchen room, another large lobby-lounge area, and several smaller rooms including meeting space, a dance studio and an art studio, and a guest room for visitors. Another large room is a children's play area with a separate exit to an outdoor play area.

Being a sort of intentional community, there are the obligatory committee meeting notices, newsletters and event announcements posted in the lobby and lounge area. Children's toys and bikes are scattered everywhere. This cohousing community is one of the more varied in BC, comprising children and adults of all ages.


Sam had let his tenants know that we were coming; they told him that they would be away but would leave the door unlocked so we could walk through and view the interior of Sam's unit. Sam knocked on the door and sure enough there was no answer so we just walked in. It was rather dark inside, the window space is not really sufficient for decent lighting. But otherwise the unit is nicely laid out and has a small overgrown and private patio. The original owner of this unit had planted the patio as an edible landscape, but I don't think it was maintained after she moved out. No doubt many of the plants growing there are edible, but not very recognizable.

This would be a nice community to be part of I think, especially for someone my age. And it would have been nice to live next door to Sam and his dogs. His idea had been that I would take one of the dogs and he the other; that way they could stay together but apart. As it is, it is doubtful he will be able to keep the two dogs when he moves to Windsong, it will just be too crowded and he will have to find a job there that will probably necessitate leaving the dogs alone and cooped up every day.

I have considered taking the dogs to Nova Scotia, but if I do then that will be the end of my travelling days, there is just no way I could travel with two giant malemutes. Unless I got myself a giant RV, which I really don't want to do. We are extremely reluctant to separate these dogs, they have been together all their lives. But finding a home for them together is a big problem. There's still some time to find a solution, but right now I don't see a good one.

There are quite a few cohousing places in BC but they are mostly fairly expensive and/or not close to urban centres. I like the look and feel of Windsong, but I think I would go a little crazy living in the middle of Langley suburbia. It'd be like living in a small island community in a sea of anonymity. The price Sam paid for his unit was unusually inexpensive for cohousing in BC.

There are a few cohousing places outside of BC, but none in the Maritimes that I know of.

Eva

I've been trying to spend as much time as I can with little Eva, visiting for a few hours every day last week and a few days this week. I took a few pictures with my iPhone, but they are not very good.




Josh and Kim received a wonderful gift of professional photos of Eva shortly after she was born and those photos are beautiful.