Blair's Blog

We got a reasonable start on the day on Wednesday, leaving Salmon Arm about  10:00 am.  We stopped in Hope for lunch and to let the kids run around in a park for a bit then headed into Vancouver.  Our timing wasn’t the best, we were headed right into the rush hour, so Brenda googled up some attractions in the lower mainland and we decided that a visit to For Langley would be interesting.

Fort Langley turned out to be a great stop, it is a Parks Canada site and they have retained much of the historical character of the place.  It was a bit drizzly out and we pretty much had the place to ourselves – the staff gave us one on one guided tours of the buildings and site.  There was a lot for the kids to do as well, feeding livestock, making barrel staves with a spokeshave and, later in the evening, cooking bannock over an open fire.

After Fort Langley we stopped briefly for tea with some friends of the family, Ralph and Marilyn Bagshaw have know my parents for years and we dropped by their house for a short visit before heading to our hotel in North Van.

Thursday, we started the day with pannekoek for breakfast and then headed to the Vancouver Aquarium.  The aquarium was quite busy, so we just took our time and saw what we wanted to over the course of the day.  There was a new baby beluga whale again this year, which was quite cool to see.  There was also a brand new (opened just 2 days before we were there) “4D” theater that we got to see.  Feeding the bullfrogs was a highlight too.

We didn’t get out of the aquarium until 6:00 and by the time we got to Tsawassen, we ended up on the last ferry of the day.  It was midnight before we settled into our hotel (The Royal Scot Hotel), which is a suite with a kitchenette.  It is spacious and quiet and one block from the harbour and parliament building.  It seems luxurious compared to the run-of-the-mill Best Western’s that we’ve been in so far!

Now that we’ve had a sleep in, breakfast and an hour or so at the hotel pool, we’re about to head out to see what sights we can see in Victoria.

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Today was a full day, but not a lot of memorable vacation moments accrued.  Yesterday we did a bunch of prep for the holiday and I cleaned up the van so that it would at least start out neat and tidy.  Today we finished up the packing and did all the last minute things around the house – drank the last of the milk and ate up leftovers, mowed the lawn (thanks, Steve!), watered the plants and so on.

We hit the road about 2:00pm and by 2:03, Brenda and Alyssa had conspired with Tim Horton’s to begin returning the van to it’s natural state by purchasing a blueberry-filled, powdered-sugar donut.  The spotless exterior then joined the interior in the quest to maximize entropy by attracting a rainstorm less than an hour later…

The driving was good, Tuesday afternoon and evening is pretty quiet on the highway.  We had a little picnic supper just before Golden at the Kicking Horse River rest area.  From there it was straight through to Salmon Arm, we had just enough daylight to go for a little walk as a family and then the kids got a little dose of TV in the hotel room before turning in.

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After a successful, but slightly difficult, set of “mobile” blog posts from California while on vacation in February it turns out that there is a WordPress app for the iPhone. Cool! This summer’s holiday to the west coast is the perfect excuse to try this out. It even looks like it is possible to add photos right from the iPhone.
Here is our luggage – ready to load in the van…

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