Today has been a day of flexibility and plans changed and changed and changed again thanks to the vagaries of weather!  It started out a glorious day with the sun shining, the skies blue, the humming birds flitting about at breakfast … just beautiful.

Went for a drive to Glacier National Park with the intention of going to the Great Glacier Walk for Mum and a wander down to Bear Falls for me – there’s so much to do here, a divide and conquer approach seemed sensible. Anyway, we get to the visitor’s centre and find out the Great Glacier walk is closed due to snow… still. So we decide to go to do the Bear Falls walk together. Get to the jumping off point for that walk and I take one look at the straight down path and weigh up the probability of pain and nausea and go ‘nup!’ Mum, who doesn’t have my clicky neck decides to give it a whirl while I decide to catch up on some correspondence in the warmth of the car for bit. And thank fuck I did… about 15 minutes after Mum goes wandering off down, down, down the path to the waterfall it starts to rain. Big fat drops of rain, which preceded squishy but solid hail stones! Weirdest hail storm ever. No green skies, no build up. Just sudden dark clouds and then down it come, enough hail to cover the ground in white and cause me to move our car under a nearby tree. What? Some nice polite snow wasn’t available? :S

I wait feeling vaguely satisfied that I was warm and dry feeling sorry for poor Mum who had gone off to the waterfalls with nothing but a light flannel shirt and a lightweight quasi-waterproof jacket. She eventually comes back up at a half run, not quite dripping wet but with half soaked shoes and camera equipment. She tried too warm up a bit while we waited for a break in the weather and we figured out yet another back up plan for the day. We decide to try the Merging Rivers Walk… supposedly flat enough and short enough that we can scooch back if it starts to piss down, only to find that one too is closed due to snow!!

So now we are up to what? Plan D? We decide to go for a walk at the Rock Gardens instead which is even shorter and more accessible in case we have to dash back followed by hopefully hunting down a picnic table and another walk around the Hemlock Grove. Get down to the Rock Gardens which were fun and, ‘lo and behold… more rain. Make it round the loop without getting too wet, camera gear well protected this time and head for the next port of call, the Hemlock Grove with a view to having some lunch and another walk

 Wouldn’t you know it – no huts or picnic spots at all. Dammit. By this time we are getting a bit, ‘hmmmm’. So we decide to head back to our cottage, have our lunch there, get Mum into some warm and dry things and then go down to town to have a poke around (and buy more wine because we is totally out!) and try the Hemlock Grove in the morning because we will have the time.

Get back to the cottage and the weather is glorious again! Who knows. Have lunch, head into town and it’s literally sunny and blue as we walk into the bottle shop and pissing down rain when we come out! Talk about unpredictable. So we potter around town (Revelstoke), which reminds me a LOT of Methven in NZ… quaint buildings, lots of ski and adventure shops, mountains for a backdrop and a very laid back atmosphere. We try not to get too wet and finally end up back here, where I am attempting to photograph the hummingbirds before heading back to the hot springs for our last dip here before we leave tomorrow. 🙂

Better look ahead and check the weather for Banff I think. 😛

And that was the hardest part of my day today really… sitting in the sun deciding if it was leaves rustling above me or a distant river that I could hear. 😛 We have been exploring Revelstoke National Park today – going on a few nature walks, checking out lots of strange plants and flowers, admiring the freezing cold glacial river that runs through the area, and driving to gorgeous mountain look outs.

We went on a walk through a Giant Cedar Forest which was only a short walk but had some of the most enormous red cedars. Standing at the base of these huge 500 year old trees, you could lean right back and look up but never see the top of them. They are about 20 foot around the base and solid as a rock, but where people had been touching their bark, they were rubbed to a deep reddish-orangey brown colour, very vibrant and very much alive.

Some of the trees in the forest had come down due to the weight of snow on their branches or unusual rainfall levels destabilizing their roots and these massive trunks were laying beside the walking paths covered in moss and fungi in amongst the ferny undergrowth. Whole thing was very green and very beautiful, rather cold and rather special. Every now and then a gap would part between the trees and you could see the snow capped peaks of the mountains in the distance… absolutely gorgeous. (I’m going to run out of superlatives on this trip, I can tell already).

After the cedar forest we went to a board nature walk over some swamp or marshland called, of all things – Skunk Cabbage Boardwalk. On the way there I had no idea what to expect of a placed Skunk Cabbage Anything but it turns out the skunk cabbage is a rather unique plant that grows near the glacial rivers here that does indeed look like cabbage leaves – if a single cabbage leave was about 75-100cm long! These things were huge but they looked like cabbage leaves. Don’t know about the skunk bit, didn’t wanna try the old scratch and sniff trick!

Anyway the boardwalk meanders through the swamp keeping your feet politely dry and above water level allowing you to get in amongst the reeds, and crazy arse plants and see if you can find any of teeny tiny migratory birds that they track from here – crazy little fuckers come up to this specific spot every summer and spend the winters down in Central and South America EVERY year. For a bird that is about the size of a finch and weighs about 60gms, that’s some crazy arse shit right there… mind you I can totally understand the desire to get out of here in the winter – it’s early summer here at the moment and I’m in long sleeves.

Decided to drive up Revelstoke Mountain for lunch as far as they would let us go anyway, as the road wasn’t totally cleared due to the snow line still being down quite low. Had a great lunch of TIm Hortons bagels with cream cheese which is going to become a bit of a habit I think… it’s a very easy packed lunch to take anywhere with you, sun dried tomato and herb bagels with a little triangle of cream cheese and a plastic knife and we were all set. Stopped about half way up the mountain and found a picnic table to have lunch at and just watched the view while munching on some bagels and wondering what everyone at home is doing right now (at that time probably you lot would have been all sleeping, but I was thinking of you and you know, they say it’s the thought that counts!)

Then it was off to brave the supermarket to pick up some supplies for dinner. Saw some of the craziest stuff on the shelves of the grocery store – minced salmon? frozen meals that all came with a brownie? oreo pudding? frozen guacamole? chocolate cream cheese? pizza crust in a tube (like cookie dough)? All sorts of weird shit that didn’t look edible too. Oh, and steaks the size of dinner plates – two for $10! Needless to say we played it pretty safe with the food shopping and no monster steaks.

Must be time to go off to the hot springs again… this travel stuff is hard.

Early start this morning out the the Capilano Suspension Bridge. It was only a 7km drive from our hotel and we contemplated taking a shuttle bus to go over there but I’m really glad we didn’t… We arrived about 9am and walked straight in and there was barely a soul in the entire place. We wandered over what I thought was a very wobbly suspension bridge and got into the red cedar forest where we had a huge complex of treetop walks, fish ponds, boardwalks and cliff top views almost all to ourselves.

Anyway, we wandered over the suspension bridge which is definitely not for the faint hearted and meandered around the treetop canopy walk which is definitely not for those afeared of heights and scampered around the cliff walks which is likewise not for those who can’t look down.

I took a lot of photos of the gorgeous red cedar and Douglas fir trees and it was humbling to be stand under this ginormous tree, and being able to reach out and touch it knowing that it is 1300 years old… I don’t know how people could just come along and hack through these amazing forests without massive pangs of guilt and huge amounts of heartache. They’re enormous and so majestic and are so beautiful I can’t imagine cutting them down. We really enjoyed the cool walk around the treetops and the amazing views down the canyon. And were so glad we got there early, because by the time we were getting ready to leave a few hours later there were hundreds of tourists lined up to buy tickets to go in, spilling into the complex and excitedly taking each others photos (what’s with that? I rarely want me in a picture that would otherwise be a nice landscape shot? but everywhere you go you find yourself surrounded by people going… ‘oh take my photo here… take my photo there’? I don’t get it).

Basically by 11:30am the place was like a shopping mall full of Japanese tourists making lots of noise and effectively despoiling the tranquil peace of the forest. If you ever come here, avoid the crowds and come early – that’s free advice. It also happens that the light is better for your photos at that time of day too, so bonus.

That is the view back down over the steps I had just had to come up after doing the nature walk around under the treetop walk… every step I take that goes down, in the back of my head is a little voice saying ‘Thank Christ I didn’t eat breakfast because I’m going to have to come back up these steps’, along with a fervent prayer not to throw up all over the place. I don’t think I’ve gone up and down this many stairs since I went for a walk down at Springbrook National Park a few years ago! I’m going to feel this tomorrow!

After Capliano we decided to head back into town to run a few errands and grab a bit of lunch. Found Big Jim’s favourite hamburger joint, Five Guys and had a kid’s sized burger for lunch… have to say, it was still a big burger and was pretty tasty, so I was impressed. Feel like I won’t need dinner though. 🙂

No rest for the wicked though, because after lunch we planned to go to the Dr Sun Yat Sen’s Chinese Gardens which are apparently the largest most authentic Chinese gardens outside of Asia (Vancouver, I am told is home to the second largest Chinese population behind San Francisco, outside of China… but I wouldn’t quote me on that). It was a lovely set of ‘roomed’ gardens with various reflection pools, Chinese stonework, paved courtyards and gorgeous foliage.

I imagine it would be a very pretty place to visit in the rain or even if it were snowing. The place as a very meditative feel about it and all visitors were on their best library behaviour while they were there which added to the tranquil feel of the place. Classically beautiful and very quaint, it was a strange counterpoint to the traffic and sirens of the city that were audible just beyond the garden walls.

Straight from our visit to the gardens, we caught up with the Canadian Relatives for another Magical Mystery Tour. Last night, Grandpa D took us to Granville Island and the Granville Markets, drove us past the hospital Mr K was born in, the house he lived in when he was a tiny guy, and the Safeway that he nearly beat a guy up in front of, after he pushed little Mr K over as a toddler – yep! Grandpa D was one of those Dad… protective and sounds like he had a bit of a temper if you messed with his little man 🙂 He also took us to Queen Elizabeth Park which had gorgeous views of the city and more fabulous gardens – I can’t believe how green this town is! It’s wonderful.

Tonight’s Magical Mystery Tour with Grandpa D took us out to some real Canadian favourites, starting with dinner at Swiss Chalet (very Canadian restaurant, eh) with a Cousin that I never knew I had 🙂 Was awesome to finally meet someone who I had heard so much about and she is very cool… would love to spend more time with her. Then after food, we went up to Mt Barnaby where the Simon Fraser University is (SFU… hehehe) and more amazing views over the city and the inlets and some beautiful rose gardens and all good things including living public art that looked like cranes and were covered in lichens and mosses. On the way back we stopped at TIm Horton’s for a cuppa and more travel goss and catch up. Having some locals to show us around has been great – we have seen a lot more of the city than we would have on our own, and when I’m not driving on the wrong side of the road, on the wrong side of the car, I have had a chance to look out and take in the scenery which has been great too. We are looking forward to catching up with Grandpa D and Grandma S once with hit LA for our great DisneyLand adventure in a few weeks…. but that would be getting ahead of ourselves now wouldn’t it.

So long day. Lots of fun. Lots of food. Lots of laughs and lots of stairs! Oi! Tomorrow a long drive to Revelstoke as we head for the mountains 🙂

Wow. Amazing what a difference a half way decent night’s
sleep will make… between the Alaskan Airlines stress, we also had
a bit of a snafu with our rental car (apparently a thing called a
Chevrolet Cruze is a ‘small’ car and it’s almost the size of a damn
Commodore, so we are cruising around town in a gigantic brand new
Cruze when I thought we were going to get a Corolla!), and also got
to our hotel and found they had allocate us a room with only one
bed… would have been fine for one night, but we really didn’t
want to share for three so had teeny melt down over that concept
before the lovely Dana at the Greenbrier’s Hotel sorted it out for
us.

So, went to bed as late as I could 9:30pm and I was completely
zonked on only a small handful of drugs until 6:30am! Unheard of.
Woke up, tea and bagels (breakfast of champions) pottered round a
bit before heading to Stanley Park to check out the little
peninsula area there… formal rose gardens, some Native American
totem poles, a cute lighthouse, the Vancouver yacht and rowing
clubs and all cool fun stuff. But spent most of the day at the
Vancouver Aquarium which was on my ‘to do’ list because of the …
OTTERS!! (I know, big surprise).

I’ve never seen sea otters beforeand I had no idea how huge they are. I swear the larger male they have is as long as I am tall! He’s enormous compared to the little river otters up at Mooloolaba. We also absolutely loved the jelly fish exhibits and all the cool arctic and North Pacific coastal sea creatures – anemones, starfishes, corals, shrimps, sea cucumbers etc,. Took lots of fun photos and had a wonderful time.

Saw some beluga whales, which are just gorgeous, and some harbour porpoises, fur seals, some pacific fin dolphins and tonnes of fishes from up this way. Had to laugh going through the Tropic Zone and running into a Tattered Wobbegong which was the last thing I expected to see today! That and an enormous cane toad that had a note beside his habitat describing how they’re destroying parts of Australia! We were very taken in by a gigantic octopus which made us think of Equinom… huge! There was also a large Amazon exhibit which housed Cayman crocodiles, macaws, anacondas and… wait for it… sloths! Yep, creepy creepy sloths at the aquarium just for shits and giggles. Go figure 🙂

We’ve had a great morning checking all the amazing sea life and are keen to see if we can spot some otters and other creatures in the wild once we hit the road and then the cruise boat. Tonight – dinner out with theCanadian rellies and then a tour of Granville Island apparently which all sounds grand, so will update a bit later.

See? I love this travelling gig, I just hate the travel! 😛

So with my back as cactus as it is, I was
indescribably apprehensive about taking this long haul flight to
LAX. We are 10hrs in and 2hrs to go and so far… I’m not doing too
bad. I have a sneaking suspicion that this is more to do with my
extremely low expectations and many years of learning how to
minimize back pain than actual comfort levels, but I’ll take it
either way. I also have a feeling that going for a massage and
getting all loosey goosey’d up before hitting the flight has helped
considerably too… all week I’ve been tense as they come thanks to
the Latin final from hell, so yay for Emma from Massage Philosophy
at Carindale for doing a good job of loosening up all those Latin
tension knots! We’ve also had plenty of turbulence – bonus! I know
most people wouldn’t look at it that way, but being jiggled about
this much is actually better than being completely sedentary for
the entire duration and the same joints and body points copping all
the pressure for the entire duration… it’s a bit like sleeping on
a boat or a train – almost doesn’t matter how crap your mattress
is, you’re kinda being rocked all night. It would have been nice to
get a few hours sleep, but even I know that was completely
unrealistic and hideously optimistic thinking. Even with a few
G&Ts, a coupla vinos, two or six Digesic and a pair of Valium,
there was never going to be any sleeping for this little black
duck… but I did give it the old college try. I’m loving the
Qantas inflight entertainment… more movies than you can poke a
stick at, and I set myself up a couple of playlists to keep me
occupied, and to drown out the aircraft noise. And while we are at
it… GOD BLESS SENHEISER and their noise cancelling ear bud
goodness! Can’t hear a damn thing while I’ve got these things in,
other than the music/movie of course which hopefully means the
whole ears ringing at the other end will be significantly reduce.
(Thanks too, Mr K for dropping me your adaptor thingy at the last
minute, awesome sauce 🙂 All things considered, this whole long
haul flight thing hasn’t been as awful as I anticipated and I feel
a lot of the anxiety surrounding it was heavily based on
experiences in the past when I was less adept at managing being in
pain – practice makes perfect and all that. Well, it’s 04:30 in LA
at the moment, so that means the flight crew are probably going to
start serving everyone breakfast any minute. :S I guess if this
gets posted up for you all to read when I hit LAX that means that
I’ve managed to find free wi-fi or have found a purveyor of
reasonably priced prepaid US SIM cards at the airport… 😀 …
probably also means there was no unexpected tropical islands,
hatches, weird arse lotto numbers or polar bears on our descent
into Los Angeles! Sorry to disappoint Mr K 😉 Totally spoke too
soon… Arrived at LAX and stood queue number 16 to be processed by
customs. Lots of strange old ladies standing around in blue
‘hi-vis’ vests officiously attempting to look busy while pushing
people from queue to queue. Stood in queue 16 for what seemed like
ages, then got shoved into ’15, cawse there’s no peeple ovar
therya’, before being bumped to 14 which saw us watching as people
from Melbourne that landed half an hour after us were wandering out
to collect their baggage in the Promised Land on the other side of
customs, while myself and other fellow Queenslanders remained
stranded at the mercy of the self important Blue Vest Biddies.
Grrr… So that wasted over an hour. Got out of the TBIT (dunno,
some big whig the terminal is named after while the rest of the
terminals at LAX have illustrious names like Terminal 1, Terminal 4
or Terminal 6) and high tailed it down to Terminal 6 where our
Alaska Airlines flight was going to take us to Vancouver. No
problem right? Except we arrive to check in and found out that the
details Qantas gave us on our itinerary are wrong… wrong flight
number, wrong time, no seating allocation and here’s the awesome
sauce bit – the flight is overbooked and even though we booked and
paid for our flights LAST DECEMBER for some reason we rock up to
the service desk and get told that they are currently looking for
volunteers to take a later flight. O_o We were there for nearly an
hour as the Alaskan Airlines ground staff were calling people over
the PA by name to check their passports, calling people over to
allocate them seats, putting a call over to ask if anyone wanted an
exit row sit (no stampede over that one… felt like I’d slipped
into an alternate universe where no one cared about leg room all of
a sudden?1?) Got called up to the service desk so they could check
our passports, again? And then got called to see them again this
time to give us a goddamn seat allocation! Thank fuck for that. And
thanks to the lack of takers on the earlier exit row offer… we
got asked if we were willing/able to sit in the exit row. So okay,
swiftly decide NOT to mention my chronic physical incapacities and
utter uselessness in the case of an emergency and say, ‘Yes please,
don’t care, just put us on the damn plane.’ *smiles sweetly* …
while thinking to self: I’m alarmed at the complete administrative
clusterfuck I had been watching for the previous hour that totally
looked ‘situation normal’ at Alaskan Airlines. Offered up a silent
prayer to the Universe that their mechanical and fleet maintenance
people are where the company is investing it’s resources… only to
be bitch-slapped by the ‘Verse in the form of a really, really
crappy old plane with broken air con vents stuffed with tissue
paper, strip lighting on the floor with wires hanging out and seats
with the padding visible through cracks in the leather. It’s okay,
it’s okay, must not be paranoid, I’m sure she’s mechanically sound.
And then we taxied out with a mysterious ka-dounk, ka-dounk,
ka-dounk noise coming from somewhere behind and beneath me… No
one else seems concerned though, so that’s something. Right? PS: If
we don’t make it, and someone finds this iPad… can you make sure
CJ gets all my good jewellery (someone has to teach that girl about
the finer things in life 😉 ) and don’t let Mr K sell my guns for
what I told him I paid for them! ‘kthanxbye.