After the
driest/sunniest/most wonderful September on record in Vancouver (at least in the last 160
years), fall and extreme rainfall
warnings have returned to the West Coast.
Time to re-cap some fun summer activities while they’re still relatively
fresh!
Title photo
is from a great BBQ+sunset in the West End.
Could it get any more picturesque?
I would have appreciated it though if our neighbouring-BBQers hadn’t put
Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call me maybe” on repeat for OVER AN HOUR, but I guess I
shouldn’t whine.
In late June
Rod and I headed out to Alberta to visit friends and family in Canmore,
Calgary, and Sylvan Lake. Lots of
driving in the span of a few days, but at least they know how to build highways
out there which has me smiling.
Only in
Alberta would I get stuck behind a pick-up with its own quadruple-life-size
gorilla reaching out to crush me.
Fun times
with Becky and family at Sylvan Lake.
Despite the rain we enjoyed ice cream every day and were serenaded by
precocious guitarists every night.
Canada Day bike ride down to Steveston for the
festivities and tasty salmon burgers. We
decided to Skytrain it part way back and then bike out to Jericho Sailing Club
for some great views and
pints. I bought a touring bike in May
and was so happy to have it after my knee injury. It’s definitely one of the best ways to get
around in Vancouver....except when it pours.
\
Spoils from
berry-picking with Hannah. These made
great strawberry coulis, strawberry smoothies and ice cream toppings. I've still got a bag or two in my freezer to get
my strawberry-fix through the winter.
My sis and I
on a lovely evening in Vancouver going for a walk after having stuffed
ourselves with sushi.
Visit from
Becky and Mike in July – we crammed a lot into a few days including a quick
look at the impressive blue whale skeleton at the Biodiversity museum at
UBC. Worth a visit if you’re ever out
here! It’s a pretty crazy story of how
they dug up a whale in PEI in 2007 which had beached itself in 1987, found all
the bones, figured out how to clean them, and then get them into the museum. If you’re
brave, you can even take a whiff of what twenty-year-old dead whale smells like.
I finally did
a good chunk of the Baden Powell trail, taking in the views from Grey Rock near
Deep Cove and working my way over to the Lynn Valley suspension bridge which is
very cool and absolutely free (unlike the ridiculously expensive Capilano Suspension bridge, currently running at $32+tax to cross).
For late
summer and my birthday I went car-camping with friends at Harrison Hot Springs
(/Freezing Lake). Seriously, this is one
chilly lake but it was smoking hot and we braved it for a little while.
Trev and Pat
doing their best Bo Derek imitations while the rest of us laugh it up.
The weekend
was great with good food (car camping is awesome when you’re used to hauling
everything up a mountain on your back and doing without), tasty drinks, and
guitar sing-alongs. Campfires were unfortunately banned although
one member of our group brought this crazy contraption he called a “Bubba” which was
essentially a propane tank with some indestructible insulation glued on
top. Turn it on and it looks like a fire
at night, although the insulation is pretty ugly in the daylight.
The Bubba:
The
campground was pretty much what you’d expect from most urban car camping
experiences; your tent is two feet from your neighbours who are inevitably on
the opposite schedule as you with kids up and screaming waaaaay too early and
Grandpa swearing like a sailor trying to retract the awning back into the RV
and pack up by 7 am. But what we didn’t
expect were the hordes of Muscovy ducks who lived
there. They were kind of creepy and
would hang around the washrooms, sleeping right in the middle of the path and
look at you with half slit eyes in the middle of the night and red cancerous
growths on their faces. Although I guess
they’re kind of cute during the day.
That’s it for
now, but stay tuned for highlights from the 3 weddings I went to this summer.
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