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Published: December 18th 2006
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Balcony View 1
We got the webcam view :-) The aftermath of a hurricane
Well, I don't have any really gruesome photos to share of this event. However, I am happy to say that we actually arrived one day AFTER the storm and we've been experiencing the aftermath of the turmoil. 250,000 people were left without power, loads of trees ripped out of the ground and deposited where least desired (cars and houses mainly). Major tourist attractions have been put out of action as well. For example, the WHOLE of Stanley Park which is a massive area in itself is currently closed to all vehicular traffic until the middle of the week!!! Though it might be interesting to rent a bike and see all the carnage while it still hasn't been cleaned up. The famous Capilano suspension bridge also copped a tree hit that broke one of it's cables and has been closed until mid to late January!!!
The main road through Stanley Park, the throughway to get to North Vancouver, was cleared pretty promptly as the city is pretty stuck without that...so we drove through and boy! Some of the cut up trees on the side of the road are nearly as big as our minivan in diameter!!!
Balcony View 2
We got the webcam view :-) It's Grouse!
Yep! Grouse Mountain is only 15mins drive from downtown Vancouver and quite a beautiful ski resort with nothing short of phenomenal views over the city. We could see the top from down below, and based on our last visit, knew that if you can see the top...that's when you go and visit, not go up whenever and hope to hang around long enough for the cloud to disappear or lift.
Parking was interesting, in that there was not much of it. Wayne ended up parking the car in another postcode I think. While we settled down to enjoy some Caramel Machiattos at the Starbucks. There are no fewer that 140 Starbucks within 15km of central Vancouver!!! 60 ALONE in the CBD! Even the famous 2 on opposite sides of the same intersection.
I spent some time mucking around with my helmet cam, camcorder and laptop to work out a viable recording solution. Got it working and headed off for the mountain. Unfortunately, we were to learn later that Cathy had left her Canon Zoom lens 400mm monster lens worth nearly A$2000 sitting in a bag in the cafe!!! But...thankfully, the honest Vancouverites left it alone
Capilano Provincial Park
Found this park after we accidentally overshot the Capilano Suspension Bridge attraction (which we later found was closed anyway!) and handed it in and it was returned OK later that day!
Up the top of the mountain, we saw Santa's Workshop, the Ice Skating rink, sleigh rides, skiing, beautiful views, soft fluffy powder snow (not slushy at all!).
Geocaching
Yeah...most of you were waiting for this! After Grouse Mountain, we hooted off to Coquitlam to meet up with Scruff and his friends to do a spot of geocaching followed by a hot chocolate party hosted by WildWigglyBeanz. TomTom got us there in fine form and off we headed to do some Canadian caches. The first was a doozy and set the scene for what was to come. We're used to the Aussie style cache hiding and it now looks very ho-hum compared to these efforts (though I must give kudos to Farmers 5 for very comparable recent efforts!). Once we had the first cache, the next ones just rolled on quite nicely...I had no real problems finding them once my "Canadian-Cacher Vision" kicked in. So we did a further 3 of the Diagon Alley cache series that follows a river.
At WildWigglyBeanz (Nina's) house we met many more fellow cachers and got stuck into some serious
Capilano Provincial Park
Looking down the Capilano River towards Vancouver (not that you can see Vancouver!) nibblies and chocolate! Our experience of meeting geocachers is the same every time...really fantastic people. There were several families and a vast geo-experience between them. Nina apologised for the small house...but you didn't notice the small house, you just noticed the warmth and friendship of the place. Their kids (3 of them) had the whole footprint of the house in the basement to themselves...it was a fantastic setup and I think Lauren wants something like that one day (dream on! It's mine!). I'm looking forward to hopefully catching (caching) up with these guys on our return to Vancouver towards the end of our stay.
Gastown
To cap the day off, we headed down to Gastown to check it out as it's supposed to be a major tourist destination. On a Sunday it was very quiet...except for the beggars. They're quite annoying, similar in scale to mosquitos...lots of them with that little whining noise asking for just 50 cents etc. It'd be easy to relent and start handing out the cash...but where do you start and where do you stop? There was one "bum" (for wont of a better word) that was hassling everybody on the street whether pedestrian or
Lauren Loves Snow
She's seen it before, but she can't get enough of it. even in cars. He managed to get a few coins and a cigarette from our group and then pursued all the others up the street. We last saw him wandering into the parking lot we were just leaving with the attendant lady yelling at him to "get off the lot!"...very upset she was.
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Dave
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Great views
Great views here. Boats, birds, and beavers. If you're going to miss a summer then this is the best palce to miss it - DAVE.