Disaster at Sea

10 days is a long vacation when you're James' age, and today I think we hit a 3 year old's limit.

After a spartan continental breakfast, we made our way down to the Fairhaven ferry terminal for an all-day whale watching cruise throughout the San Juan Islands, featuring salmon lunch.  There was just one other family with little kids, a gaggle of drunk college kids celebrating a birthday, and mostly older couples very interested is seeing whales.  We were told that whales are seen on 90% of the daily voyages.  Alas...

See him now as he stands on the bow of a ship headed for a new land 

The first few hours certainly tested James' patience, but he did manage to sidle up to the other family and make friendly with their 5 and 2 year olds.  Around 11:30am, we landed in Friday Harbor on San Juan Island itself, the largest village in the islands, and the hub of tourist activity therein.  We were greeted before we even left the dock by "Popeye," a geriatric seal who has loafed around these docks begging people for food for over 15 years.  Popeye has her pup with her now, defying both her age and an earlier generation of boatsmen who assumed she was male.

James and Erica checking out "Popeye" the one-eyed seal, and her new pup

The hoppin' little downtown area of Friday Harbor was full of upscale boutiques and quaint pubs, and classy in the way these types of places are when they're on Cape Cod or up in Maine.  Not fancy per se, since there's still advertisements for happy hours and stacks o' cakes and and things, but extremely expensive price-wise, and there's big yachts and sailboats everywhere.  We walked the main drag a few times, then headed back to the boat.  It was a beautiful day and I was feeling pretty good about everything.

James later on rides the marble statue of Popeye, erected seemingly too soon

James' face presages where this day is headed

James was not really having any of it, and it was about to get MUCH WORSE.  Upon reboarding, he noticed that his two little friends had each purchased two small orca whale toys.  Now, he HAS an orca whale toy, and he'd even brought it with him.  But it is (apparently) a "daddy" orca, not a "mommy" or a "baby" one, and he just melted down right then and there.  On a boat at sea, there is no place to take a screaming toddler.  Once the ship got going, he insisted that he couldn't stay outside because it was too cold and the spray was making him wet (neither was true).  Yet he couldn't stay inside because, taunted by the sight of orca toys, he only screamed and made a scene by repeatedly demanding the other kids share them.  None of the other passengers wanted him inside, but outside he became absolutely inconsolable, lost in fits of rage that I have never seen from him. There was punching and kicking (Erica has a legit eye bruise) and even some headbutting (new to the repertoire).   To calm him down, we'd take him inside, but he'd start right up again crying for toys, and this in/out process lasted most of the afternoon.  To make matters worse, there were no real live orcas, or any other kind of whale to be seen anywhere, for that matter.

As the hours ticked on, the boat chased whale-sighting rumors it was receiving from other boats all over the archipelago.  James followed the 5 year old around, endlessly hounding her to borrow her baby orca.  Time stretched into infinity; the lower deck, trapping the suns rays, heated up like a sauna, while the outside remained windy, but got wetter as the waves got rougher.  James screamed whenever forced to give the orca toy back.  The deck began lurching more violently beneath our feet.  We'd take him outside to keep him from bothering the other passengers, but he'd lose his marbles as the red mist descended.  This stupid, pointless cruise was never going to end.

Then it did.  We docked.  James, asleep on his feet, fell into his stroller, greeting it like an old friend.  We had a pretty incredible dinner at Aslan Brewing Company, one of Bellingham's 1,500 amazing brewpubs.  Bedtime went smoothly.  Erica and I drank beer while watching Game of Thrones.  Good night, actually.

Tomorrow, it's home, and Tuesday, it's work.  Oh, well.



Grant

Whistler

Since I missed yesterday, I'm doing a double shot here.  Two glorious days in and around Whistler!

Whistler is basically a made-up town from the later 60s, possible early 70s.  Someone said, "hmmmm...here's a place of extreme natural beauty, and I've got a ton of capital, so lets just build a resort town right here."  And some native Squamish probably put up a fight, but they lost, so here we are.  It's the world's premier ski resort destination (3 years in a row), and an Olympics host site, to boot.  It's basically Stepford, but with enough "extreme"outdoor adventurey-type of a vibe to be spelled "Xtepford."

In order to get to Xtepford from Vancouver, you have to take the Sea-to-Sky Highway (aka BC 99), up the Howe Sound fjord to a place called Squamish.  You'll recall how bad the smoke has been in these parts.  Friday was a wee bit better ("best in 9 days!" we were told), but still not great, since we missed out on a lot of the eye candy.  Our first stop was to the port inlet of Horseshoe Bay, where we breakfasted and watched some ferries depart to wilderness parts unknown.

BC Ferry Port in Horseshoe Bay

In Squamish proper, we did the hair-raisingly verticle Sea-to-Sky gondola, up about 2,600 ft. above the road.  This mountaintop had a bit more going on than Grouse Mountain.  We did about 2.5 miles of trails up there, some of which featured obviously stunning views.  Alas, the smoke obscured much of that.

The stock photo from the internet at the top of the Sea-to-Sky gondola ride

What we saw

Anyway, we still had our fun.

Suspension Bridge, with Sky Pilot Mountain in the background

Tried to make this look a lot more vertical than it was

Yipes!  On the way down.

After a brief stop off a Brandywine Falls Provincial Park to see a 200+ foot waterfall (because this area is lousy with that type of thing), we made it to Whistler in time for James to spend a good hour running back and forth between the extremely cold pool and the whirlpool.  Erica and I enjoyed some cider and chatted with some fellow stayers at the Aava Hotel, which, as fate would have it, was ground zero for the massive "Crankworx Festival" happening this weekend (and you'll note how extreme is was, given the unnecessary replacement "x" at the end of the title).  This is a gigantic mountain biking festival, where riders from all over the world come to risk their necks riding the very steep downhill ski runs on bicycles.  There were many of these hardcore bike bros wandering about, many of whom seemed to be sporting limb injuries.

Our first evening in town saw us grabbing "upscale pub grub" (what restaurant in the entire Pacific Northwest does not describe its menu thusly?) and a pint of craft brew, and then placating a tired and whiny James with a bit of chocolate gelato.  Did I tell you how lovely Whistler is?  It's just exactly the kind of pristine alpine village wonderscape you want it to be--like if they didn't make Hogsmede look 19th century for whatever reason--and in the summer you don't even have to worry about tracking dirty wet snow into your hotel room.  It was Friday night, so the entire town was jumping.  Thousands of bikers, hikers, Japanese tourists, and Australian service industry workers on their nights off (there are almost no actual Canadians who work in any of the bars, stores, or restaurants) crowded the pubs and eateries, and it was bangin'.  James puts the kibosh on all the coolest stuff!

This morning we got up early, grabbed a hot n' hearty Northwoodsman type of breakfast, and headed up the Whistler Vilage gondola to the top of Whistler Mountain.  Just about 3,400 feet up, no biggie (also there were lots of old people about, and I'm going to tell you that the gondola really open up a whole area of retiree entertainment.  Just hiking alpine mountaintops without any of the work to get up there.   Also this works well when you have a 3 year old on your back).  Wouldn't you know it, the smoke was by and large gone!  So the views were much better than anything we'd had to date.  Anyway, the three of us did a nice set of loops, 3 miles or so, on the top of the mountain.  It looked like this:

Pre-hike carbo load

Whister vistas

Ibid.

A boy and the rock he found

The gracious winner

After our hike, we got on the Peak-2-Peak gondola ride, over the Blackcomb Mountain, Whistler's other main ski area.  This extremely scary thing holds, per Wikipedia, the world records for the longest free span between ropeway towers (1.88 miles) and highest point above the ground (1,430 feet).  It  sucked!  James and Erica were somehow nonplussed, whereas I, as a sensible person cognizant of just what was at stake, spent a lot of the time staring at my feet.

View from the window

After planting our feet back on the solid ground of Blackcomb Mountain, we grabbed an extremely overpriced lunch at the ski chalet and, and rode the gondola back the other way.  Then, it was back down to the village.  After a long car ride (thankfully James napped), we landed in Bellingham, WA's Quality Inn & Suites, hit the pool (it was 70 degrees and windy, but James insisted), and then dinner at the Boundary Bay Brewery (salmon chowder, people!).  Tomorrow, it's over to the San Juan Islands for a whale watching cruise.  More on that tomorrow!

Grant

“I’ll have the ice cream, you guys can drink the beers”

Today was a good day, eh?  Whereas the smoke was actually somewhat worse than yesterday, the comradery and to-doery was wonderful.

The morning got off to a late start, which was ok given the hectic pace we’ve been setting on this trip.  First up on the ol’ itinerary was Grouse Mountain, one of Vancouver’s encircling mountains, which is noted for its steep gondola ride (it ascends about 2,600 vertical feet in 8 minutes).  It also featutes the “Grouse Grind”—a “trailcase” built straight up the side of the mountain, which is the province of superfit hardbody types who run up it, presumably for fun, and then there’s a large ski park at the top.  The gondola ride up was just the right amount of scary, given that it wasn’t an open air car, but the activities at the top left a bit to be desired.

I'm not going to lie, I freaked out a bit

There were certainly hordes of fellow tourists up there, but not a ton for us all to do.  They do have two grizzly bears, rescued as pups, who hang out all day in a generously-apportioned enclosure.  We saw a talk about barn owls.  James played with a beat up, oversized Jenga set that constituted almost the entirety of the so-called “Wild Wilderness Games” activity section.  Basically, what’s happened is they had this winter sports venue and they wanted to monetize the summertime, so they chucked a bunch of stuff up there, and that’s Grouse Mountain.  However, they did have a mildly entertaining lumberjack show.  It was kind of cheesy, but fun, and James like it (but not as much as Erica.)  Essentially, two beefy millennials, trussed up as lumberjacks, told corny jokes and competed in various lumberjack-related competitions (axe throwing, who can chop and saw the fastest, log rolling, tree climbing, etc.)  One of the guys climbed a 60 foot tree and then descended at basically free-fall speeds, and we later learned he is the 5-time world champion speed tree climber. Not bad, eh?!

 Bears!

Ye Olde Lumberjacke Showe

Our next stop was supposed to be the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, which is a very long suspension bridge (just as it sounds like it would be), plus a tree top walkway thing, but it was so crowded that we skipped it and headed back into the city to enjoy the very large swimming pool in Stanley Park.  James, who was terrible yesterday, held it together much better today, and of course loved the poor and its several water slides.

After, we headed out to Granville Island, a kind of touristy market warf kind of deal.  The restaurant was adequate, if overpriced, but we sampled some of the wares of the microbrewery on the island, and it wasn’t bad.  We'd promised James ice cream for being a good boy, and he's the source of today's post's title.

The hotel room is hot again tonight.  Tomorrow, we head up the Sea-to-Sky highway to Whister.  Toodles!

Grant

The 'Couve

Koo-loo-koo-koo-koo-koo-koo-koo!*

Greetings, eh?  We’ve taken off for the Great White North!  In one afternoon in downtown Vancouver alone, we’ve worn touques, downed a “2-4” of Molson, seen loons, hunted moose, trapped beavers, wrestled salmon from the mouths of hungry grizzlies, unhorsed a pair of brawny Mounties, panned unsuccessfully for gold, survived a grueling, 8-months-long blizzard on nothing but hard tack and salt cod, and then buried the vicar when the ground unfroze. Oh, Canada!

Our eventful day kicked off with a morning drive across the famous Peace Arch border crossing into the greater Vancouver area, which marked Erica’s first time in Canada, and James’ first time as a foreigner.  Sadly, the forest fire smoke continues to obfuscate the views in these parts.  It was bad in the North Cascades, but is worse here, where the smoke has settled into the lowlands surrounding the city.  You might have a mental image of Vancouver as this Hong Kong-like metropolis surrounded on three sides by mountains plunging dramatically into the bay, but today we were hardly even able to make out the shapes of the nearest foothills.  Still, there was fun to be had, so we went to find it.

Our first stop was the 2k-long miniature train ride in Stanley Park.  This park, which sits on the farthest northern promontory in the city, was voted “Top Park in the Entire World” TripAdvisor, and it does not disappoint.  The ride itself was a typically junky kind of kids’ train ride, but longer.  James loved it, so it was totally worth doing, and it wound through several peaceful groves of massive, old growth Western Red Cedar and Douglas Fir, which are prevalent in the park.  

Stanley Park Miniature Train

We then parked our car and rented two bikes and a “chariot” in which I towed Sir James, and did the 9k loop ride around the park atop its seawall.  We made a rather lengthy stop at one point to let James play in a kiddie splash park, which he of course didn’t want to leave and so threw a fit (one of many today—the no-naps-and-a-new-place-everyday pace is beginning to wear on the little guy).  After two long hiking days with James on my back, my quads about quit on me near the end of the ride.

James in his chariot, at a Second Beach stop for some ice cream

It’s uncharacteristically hot here (and, as an aside, there aren’t air conditioners anywhere because they don’t normally need them. And so our hotel room is hot and stuffy) so we went to the beach, which is just across the street. Vancouver doesn’t exactly scream “beach destination,” but there are three beaches near our hotel, one of which is, in fact, lined with palm trees. The beaches themselves are a far cry from the white sand strips of the Caribbean; think big, course sand strew with millions of scallop shell shards. James waded right in of course, so we had to follow. The water was a bit murky and full of bits of organic dross (feathers, dead seaweed, bark, etc.), but after a few minutes Erica and my lower halves were numb, so we stopped noticing, really. James played happily for a while before migrating, shivering, to the beach to lump up clods of sand together and pronounce them “castles.”

Dinner was…well, I made a mistake. Vancouver is known for its Asian cuisine, owning to its large immigrant population. We wanted to find something in that vein that was walkable from our hotel—and so I did. Plus, the Yelp reviews of this place were excellent. Well, as it turns out, it was really more of a takeout kind of place. As in, good for a lazy night in, but not really what you want for a vacation meal in a city known for its cuisine. James liked it, and positively loved both the dingy coy tank and stale fortune cookie. Erica and I not so much. Plus we misordered, and ended up with two dishes that were basically chicken in clear sauce, which no one looks forward to. After, we took a long walk through the southern part of Stanley Park and James found some playground equipment to screw around on for a while. He ended up melting down again and having to be dragged home, so here we are. Got some wine for our room, and I’m typing away (our hotel, the Sylvia, is one of those century+ grand dames gone slightly to seed. It’s still perfectly fine, plus our room is a suite with a kitchen and separate living space, but everything has about 15 coats of paint of in from years of trying to keep costs low, and the keys are still actual keys. I’d stay here again at this point, and the downstairs bar and restaurant look inviting, but it ain’t the Ritz anymore.)

Sunset view from our bedroom window.  The forest fire smoke has at least meant several hours of beautiful sunset per night.

Tomorrow it’s up Grouse Mountain on the gondola for some hiking and nature observing fun.  For now, good night!

Grant

*This reference to Strange Brew is basically in here just for Dad.

Something of a Mixed Bag

Welp.  There are those kinds of days in every vacation of which today was one.  Lemme explain.

I will go to my grave insisting that North Cascades National Park deserves a bigger slice of the attention pie that is apportioned out to America's national parks.  Sure there's Yosemite and Yellowstone and Grand Canyon, and some of the other big, giant heavy hitters.  But this bad boy, of which you may or may not have even heard, is basically a slice of absurdly vertical remote mountainous wilderness that rivals those places in gratuitous natural beauty, and just piles it on and on and on (OK, so it doesn't have a Yosemite Valley or "Grand" canyon, but gracious does it have an unfathomably huge number of towering, misshapen mountains with waterfalls busting out of glaciers everywhere.  Actually, it' kind of like the mountains that ring Mordor, but with a happier vibe emanating from them).

Well, we were supposed to drive up this 25 mile long gravel road to a campsite and hike to a very, very, very pretty high mountain pass, only once we actually did drive ALL THAT WAY, and get out of the car, each of us were beset by a literal cloud of black flies so thick as to almost obscure our exposed skin.  No joke, people, these nasty buggers were ubiquitous. Whereas even though the view from the parking lot was bonkers, we made it no more than 10 minutes up the first set of switchbacks before being so covered with flies that we felt we had not choice but to beat the hastiest of retreats back to the car and drive outta there.  We were all crushed, and not least because it took so long to get up to Cascade Pass, but because we desperately wanted to see how much more beautiful it could possibly get.

Erica did manage to take a few pictures.  And, fast-forwarding a bit, we also took a bunch more pictures with our main camera later on on our replacement hike.  But it was only at that later point in the day that I realized I had FORGOTTEN TO TAKE THE CAMERA'S MEMORY CARD OUT OF MY COMPUTER FROM LAST NIGHT AND PUT IT BACK IN THE CAMERA.  So our memory card stayed all day in our hotel room in this very computer, and we had to subsist on phone pics.  So here are the only two pics we did get from the scene:

Note the glaciers, waterfalls, and extreme beauty

Ditto

Well, what to do? We decided to cut bait and drive over an hour back down the mountain to another section of the park.  We choose the Diablo Lake area.  Diablo Lake is kind of a Lake Como situation, where mountains plunge dramatically thousands of feet into water, so we made out alright, really.  We hiked the Thunder Knob trail, which is weenier than our original plans called for, but ended up getting us up to some mighty scenic country.  Enjoy some snappers, won't you?

A majestic, fly-less old growth forest, without any biting black flies

Diablo Lake

Thunder Knob trail

To of the Thunder Knob trail, with a fly-free Diablo Lake in the background

When we finally made it back to town, James was fit to burst about swimming in the motel pool.  Erica took him, and I got some delicious taco takeout from the Mexican grocery store with which the Best Western shares a parking lot.  We scarfed the tacos poolside, then crashed for the evening.

All in all, great day, the snafus notwithstanding.  Tomorrow we leave our beloved Best Western, camera-ready this time, for the Great White North.  Erica has never been to Canada (nor James), and I've never been to Vancouver, so it's going to be a true adventure tomorrow, and I can't wait.  Until then...Buen Camino!

Grant

Big Pig 4: West Coast Boog-A-Loo 3

Ok, ok, so it's been a loooooong time since I rapped at ya.  I know.  Anywho, long one short, we're at it again on the West Coast, this time in the Pacific Northwest to see friends, sample brews, scale mountains, and ward off all manner of whining and toy-begging coming from the backseat.  It's Monday night and we're in a Best Western in Mt. Vernon, WA.  To the action!

We landed very late Friday night in Seattle and headed straight for Lynette and Tom Baisch's home on the north side of the city.  They had graciously offered us space in their lovely home back when Molly was supposed to join us for a portion of our trip, but she and Mark high-tailed it to Paris for her 40th birthday.  Lynette stepped up and kept her end of the bargain (not really a bargain for her, I guess).

Seattle on Saturday and Sunday were a blast.  Sunday night we went out with Lynette and Tom to a decidedly fancy-pants small plates place.  Highlights from Saturday include:

Pike Place Market (sleepy James), before the VAST HOARDS descended on it 

The famous and disgusting "gum wall"

On the ferry to Bainbridge Island, where we ate ice cream and visited the kiddie museum (the ferry was the best part)

The stupid first Starbucks

I gotta hand it to Pike Place market in particular.  I was convinced it was going to be a Bubba Gump Shirmp Co. type place, with lots of little crappy boutiques selling shot glasses that say "Seattle" on them or Space Needle tshirts.  But it was actually very awesome!  As in, legit old school food stalls, craft vendors, and weirdo novelty junk shops.

Sunday was mostly focused around the MoPop museum (formerly the Experience Music Project).  They had a Jim Henson exhibit which James got pretty into, in additon to their regular collections of rock and roll memorabilia, sound labs (where you can jam on instruments), and movie and television props.

It is actually kind of spooky even though you know they don't have legs 

Luke Skywalker's actual light saber and severed hand props

Indiana Jones' hat and jacket, and the Staff of Ra from Raiders of the Last Arc

All the Star Trek costumers were there, but these dudes are my favs

Today we got up very early and made the long drive up to Paradise, on the slopes of Mt. Rainier.  The mountain had been hiding in the forest fire smoke all weekend, so we didn't even actually get to see it until we were within the park's boundaries.  But once up there, she did not disappoint.

I packed James in the kid carrier (he's pushing the upper weight limit now), and we walked up about 4 miles, until we were above the tree line and the snow got too slick and dangerous for us to continue.

Big ol' marmot just sitting there

MountRaineering in the snow

James is a BIG fan of g.o.r.p. (good ol' raisins and peanuts) now.  He insisted on stopping frequently to top up on gorp. 

True adventurers

The inevitable g.o.r.p. crash on the way back down.  

Tomorrow we'll be in North Cascades National Park, so we'll report back then!


Grant