Moscow, Idaho

This summer I went on a road trip to Idaho for the first time (other than a drive through Coeur D’Alene as a kid).  Our destination was Moscow, Idaho, home to the University of Idaho and a fun disc golf course, and located on the border with Washington in the heart of the Palouse (kind of a fun word no?).  It’s also home to Katie and JB – good friends of Rod and JS – who got married over the August long weekend.   

It was interesting to cross over from relatively liberal Washington and Oregon (where I normally visit in the US) into conservative, rural Idaho.  Being a university town Moscow is probably as progressive and diverse as they get and it’s still 92% white (2000 census), has Smith&Wesson gun demo trailers similar to food carts, and you are greeted on the highways by signs such as “Be cautious of drunk drivers”  (with sad pictures of victims) rather than signs saying “Don’t drink and drive”.    The picture above is the view from our hotel room; I loved that it captures the US flag, the university, and the rural setting.

Also fun is the name itself, which probably wasn’t too popular at the height of the cold war although they pronounce it Mos-co rather than Mos-cow.  I find the name-your-town-after-a-famous-international-city-but-pronounce-it-different phenomenon fascinating.   Did you know there are no less than 16 Oxfords, 16 Florences, and 12 Athens’ in the US?  My favourite creative pronounciation is Versailles (“Ver-sails”).  I think Louis XIV would turn in his grave.

But enough tangents and onto the festivities and the Idaho visit itself.  This was probably the most relaxed, well-organized and down-to-earth wedding I’ve ever been to.  They got their flowers from a U-pick, transported guests to and from the ceremony in charter buses, invited everyone to the rehearsal dinner and Sunday morning bagels-n’-coffee breakfast at their place, and there was even a Thriller flash-mob (led by the bride herself) at the reception.    This couple also has a great sense of humour, where the opening line at the ceremony by the officiant was “Ma-widge is wat bwings us togeder too-day” (from the movie the Princess Bride in case you didn’t recognize it). 

I didn’t want to get into the bride and groom’s faces (there are professional photographers for that), but here is what I (and handing my camera off to others) did manage to snap:

Our trio looking sharp at the ceremony before wilting in the heat.

Selfie.  As a result of taking this picture the happy couple behind us struck up a conversation.

The bride spent several years in Japan and I think she wanted to touch of the Orient for the wedding décor.  She and her friends spent hours folding ~800 paper cranes (their goal was a 1000, but hey who’s counting). 

Loved the light and dark cake and fresh blueberries.  

Moscow has a vibrant main street with a charming farmer’s market and great brunch places.

Brunch!  Monster omelettes, bottomless coffee, and delicious huckleberry zucchini bread.  JS prepares to attack his chicken-fried-steak and gravy.

On our way back to Vancouver we stopped at Ginkgo Petrified Forest State Park.  Very dry but extremely hot (close to 40 degrees) we hopped out of our air-conditioned car for a quick tour.    The park features over 40 species of petrified wood created when trees were buried in volcanic ash ~16 million years ago and the organic matter in the trunks was gradually replaced by minerals in the groundwater.   I loved the mix of bleached wood and multi-coloured stone.

The park also has over 300 petroglyphs created by the Wanapum tribe.  

 The park is on the shoreline of the Columbia river offering great views.

Another highlight of the trip was our last night spent at a campground just outside of Leavenworth, Washington.  This town is modelled on a Bavarian village and having experienced the real thing I was pretty darn impressed!  Unfortunately we got there a little late in the day and the bakery and beer gardens were shutting down, but I still enjoyed it and felt like I could pretend I was back in the Alps.  Incorporated in 1906, its transformation to Bavarian-theme-town wasn’t carried out until 1962 as an attempt at revitalization. 

Summer re-cap, Vancouver

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.

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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. 

Whale Watching, Vancouver Island

I went whale watching with my Mom one sunny afternoon this summer.  We left from the harbour in Cowichan Bay on a speedboat, zipping all the way down to the Strait of Juan de Fuca where two resident pods of orcas were hanging out (J pod and K pod).    It’s too bad they didn’t get more creative with the names!  J and K pod are kind of lame for these magnificent creatures. 

Leaving Cowichan Bay for our whale watching adventure:

Even during the summer and with our heavy insulated suits on it was pretty cold on the speedboat when it was moving full speed.  While waiting for some whales it was time for a few less exotic people pictures.

I think my Mom looks like a seasoned Arctic explorer in this one:

Quick primer on orcas:

There are two main types: resident and transient orcas.  The resident orcas travel in bigger groups (~20-40 whales per pod around Vancouver Island at the moment) and eat fish (97% salmon in these waters).   They tend to hang out in the same locations and have lots of vocalizations since these don’t seem to scare away the fish.  Transient orcas travel in much smaller groups (2-6) and mostly eat marine mammals.  They’re also a lot quieter since their prey can hear their clicks and chirps.  Based on genetic tests, these two types of orca haven’t interbred for over 10,000 years!

We only saw resident orcas on our tour, although we tried to track down some transients spotted earlier in the day.  Our guide was excellent and had been out doing tours for years and could identify most of the orcas by name based on their fin and dorsal patches.    They are pretty difficult to photograph since they appear all over the place, but only for an instant before diving again, but I did manage to capture a few shots:

Other interesting facts (from Wikipedia and other):

·         The females can live up to 90 years old, and male life expectancy is 50-60 years.  In captivity life expectancy is only 20-30 years.

·         Residents are all mommies’ boys (and girls), living with their mothers their entire lives

·         Orcas have the second-heaviest brains among marine mammals (after sperm whales, which have the largest brain of ANY animal).  Orcas have brains ~5x the size of humans.

·         Orcas will deliberately beach themselves to catch seals

·         They can swim up to ~50 km/hr

·         Orca pregnancies last 13-17 months.  That seems like a long time to me, but I guess they aren't on their feet with their baby-weight.

The two pods seemed to be swimming together and we thought we might be in for a rare treat of a “super-pod” which is when multiple pods merge together.  Apparently these are raucous parties with lots of spyhops, tail slaps, and screeches, chirps and echolocation.  Plus a lot of orcas use the time to fraternize and flirt with each other.  Unfortunately the matriarch of K pod decided to slow the pod down so we didn’t get a chance to see the mega-pod-party.

On our tour we did however catch a glimpse of Tucker, the whale-scat-sniffer-dog.  He’s a black lab who can smell orca scat from over a kilometre away.  He stands on the bow of the ship and helps tell the researchers where to go.  He’s so useful because the research ships can stay further back from the whales themselves (i.e. not stress them) and still scoop up enough whale-poo samples before they quickly sink out of sight.   The samples are jam-packed with genetic, dietary and physiological info.  Useful stuff to countless marine biology PhDs and post-docs.  On a nice day it makes me wish I had studied something cool like orcas!

Tucker has got a funky K-9 Ruffwear lifejacket and special goggles to protect his eyes, and is a graduate of the “Conservation Canines” program at the University of Washington.  They apparently modify methods used to train dogs to find narcotics. 

On our way back we made frequent stops for other wildlife sitings, including harbour seals sprawled out on rocks catching some sun. 

Mandarte Nature Preserve  is a hunk of rock home to thousands of nesting cormorants.  (I think the white rock is mostly bird poo).

A dignified bald eagle posing for us. 

And because I was still on my wildlife photo kick I snapped some hummingbirds gathering at a feeder after a delicious lunch at Genoa Bay.