Greetings from Beautiful British Columbia!

It’s been an exciting first few weeks in Canada as we make our way north to Alaska. We’ve covered some ground and have been really enjoying watching the landscape change and become less and less familiar. The road signs are more frequently featuring moose, and though we haven’t yet spotted one yet, we did see a sleek little silver fox slinking around a park as we pulled in for the evening in Prince George! So that will tide me over for quite some time.

Our first adventure over the border began in Vancouver, BC. I briefly mentioned our stay in Vancouver in my last post, but now that I have all the photos uploaded I thought I’d fill you in further on the fun we had while we were there. Especially since, despite the fact that both of us have lived in Seattle, neither had ever been to nearby Vancouver so we were really looking forward to seeing the city.

One of my favorite resources as we visit new cities has been the online Atlas Obscura site, which suggests interesting attractions that aren’t found on most other “Things To Do In _______” sites. This time I told Andy that I was going to take him on a surprise tour of Vancouver and lead him to all the spots I thought sounded fun without telling him what they would be. He’s a good sport and agreed!

Our first stop was the VanDusen Botanical Gardens, which was one of the loveliest botanical gardens I’ve ever visited. The grounds are enormous, and the circuitous layout lends itself to a full day of wandering through paths and gardens reminiscent of Alice’s Wonderland.

Check out this delphinium garden:

Ok so if I’m being honest, the gardens were lovely, but the real reason for going here was something that’s been on my to-do list for as long as I can remember:

A hedge maze!

It’s one of only six Elizabethan hedge mazes in North America, and it was so much fun and more challenging than we gave it credit for going in.

Afterwards we went to the Granville Island Market, which my uncles in Seattle had highly recommended to us. It took us some time to find a spot to park, and it came in handy that Andy is a wizard. Look at this park job!

We wandered around the market and were totally in love. It was a bustling throng of people and the wonderful smells of hot espresso, cooking meats, fresh flowers and herby soaps. After picking up some darling wood map pins, we had lunch at a tiny Chinese restaurant downtown and then hit the road for the next stop on the secret tour . . .

The Steam Clock in Gastown. It’s a working steam clock built in 1977, which you can look inside and see the gears and levers moving. We were even there to hear the hourly musical whistles blow. In honor of the clock, we popped into nearby Steamworks Brewing Company for a beer.

Next we walked a number of blocks to the Marine Building, a remarkable Art Deco building that was conceived to look like it had risen from the sea, and it truly does. I mean it looks like something from a movie . . . oh wait, it is! To my fellow nerds out there, it’s also been featured in a number of movies, as the Baxter Building in Fantastic Four and for The Daily Planet in Smallville. Fun!

Afterwards we walked to see the Digital Orca sculpture, which we weren’t able to see up close due to an event that had the terrace roped off. (If you look closely, you can see empty glassware at the tail.)

It was a full day in Vancouver, and we left very satisfied. But after over a month staying in cities, I’d been so looking forward to getting back outside, and was happy to arrive at our next campsite at Gillis Lake. We stayed two nights, and got plenty of reading and swimming done.

When we woke up the morning of third day, the entire forest was flooded with smoke, which we later found out was due to dozens of forest fires throughout BC. A handful of towns had been evacuated, and the road we’d planned to take was closed. So we rerouted and drove through Kamloops to Prince George, windows rolled up to minimize our smoke inhalation. It was so thick my eyes watered, and you couldn’t even see the mountains beyond the freeway through the grey. And in the areas that we could see a fair distance, we saw fires licking the mountainsides. It was unreal.

We spent a two days in Prince George, or “PG” as the locals call it. (Which is pretty cute for a city in Canada, where everything is sweet and friendly and very “rated PG”.) When we got to town, we went to one of the best Railway Museums we’ve been to so far, and that’s saying something! We go to a lot of railroad museums, apparently.

We rode the little train around the grounds, and got to go inside most of the cars and engines. Andy had more fun than all the other museum-goers combined.

We stayed until they closed, then walked right next door to Cottonwood Island Park. I’d read that a local artist sculpted little pieces right into the trees, and as you walk through you can treasure hunt for them.

It likely comes as a huge surprise to nobody that my favorite was the gnome houses.

We stayed the night at the park’s lot and that’s where we saw the silver fox!

It’s a poor picture, but it was the best I could do at twilight while squealing with joy.

Over the next few days, we found ourselves in more picture-perfect campsites, all of which are free! We stayed a few nights at Co-op Lake, where we noticed a strange bubbling at the shoreline. As we got nearer to investigate, we saw that it was a massive mob of tadpoles!

We all had a wonderful time there, reading, hammock-ing, swimming, fetching frisbees in the lake, pouncing on bugs, paddling out to the middle of the lake in our floaties and watching the clouds roll by.

We then moved to another great campsite at the Eagle Creek Opal Beds, where we went on a gorgeous hike, hunted for—and found!—raw opals, discovered and ate the huckleberries along the path, and then hiked up a hill at midnight where we saw the Northern Lights flickering on the horizon. It was a pretty magical spot.

Scout even remembered how to pick huckleberries!

 

I could have stayed in any one of those campsites for weeks, but there is much to see in these parts, so we pressed on. We wanted to see Prince Rupert, a darling coastal town in northwestern BC, even though it was a few hours out of the way. On our way there, other things happened and they looked like this:

When we got to Prince Rupert it was a brilliant sunny day, which—we were informed by the locals—is not usually the case. We walked all around town, in and out of cute little shops, through the Museum of Northern British Columbia, and ended up on a bright patio overlooking the ocean.

We looked down and noticed crabs walking along the ocean floor, and the next day’s plan was born. After all, we’ve been carrying our crab traps around for over a year!

The next day we got our licenses and some bait, and headed down to the docks, where we discovered the depth off the edge was around 80 feet! We spent the entire afternoon into the evening sitting on the dock, chatting with locals, fishing, and reading books. We caught three crabs, one was a keeper, and Andy caught a small flounder.

So all in all the day was a success, and as we packed up we were treated to a perfectly picturesque coastal sunset.

Today was our last day in Prince Rupert, and we visited the North Pacific Cannery Museum on our way out of town. We accidentally stayed three hours, and enjoyed every last minute.

We’re now back in Terrace, BC, heading north for some serious camping way-off-grid, so the next post will be on the other side of the wilderness when we have service again. And though the silver fox was a superior thrill, here’s hoping that next post will include some photos of a moose. 🙂