Days 39 - 43 Sunshine Coast!

Day 39: Time for my favourite ferry ride!

Across Howe Sound from Horseshoe Bay (Vancouver) to the Sunshine Coast - on a beautiful sunny day!

After my favourite ferry ride, what better to do than stop for dinner at my favourite Sunshine Coast restaurant, the Gumboot Café in Roberts Creek.

And then on up the coast to Sechelt where we will be spending the next few days: three generations reunited!

The Sechelt waterfront

Sara in front of the hospital where she was born, amidst the new poles.
I saw them being carved on my previous visits in 2013 - 2014

Pole being carved in 2013

James Hunt working on pole in 2013

Newly painted pole in 2014

There are plenty more totem poles in Sechelt (Shíshálh), in a row along on the waterfront the way they traditionally used to be when they welcomed people arriving on the beach in canoes.

We also spent some time in Gibsons, visiting friends and taking a walk around the marina, where we watched a seal snacking at an all-you-can-eat herring buffet!

Seal (white shape underwater) snacking on "herring ball"
(visible in the foreground between the rocks and the float)

Houseboat with lots of plants in Gibsons marina

Sara in Gibsons

The Sunshine Coast is where I usually come to relax and recover from jet lag upon arriving in Canada, before going on to the big city, Vancouver. And this time it was that way for Sara, who had just flown over from Italy.

After a few days in the Sunshine Coast we headed back to Horseshoe Bay on the ferry to meet Claire and Maya and take another ferry, over to Vancouver Island. The Canada Day long weekend was about to start and there was a long line-up to get on the ferry. We were warned of a one to two sailing wait, but it was only one because we ended up being the second-to-last car to get on the next ferry!

Last car on the ferry!

At the back of the ferry, coming into Departure Bay (Nanaimo, Vancouver Island) 

Day 38: North Van

Stayed on the North Shore today but there has been plenty going on! In the morning we all took the new puppy Sakura for a walk in the woods - just up the road. That's the good thing about North Vancouver: you don't have to go far to be in the woods!

After lunch and ice cream at Brazza's Sara and I went to hear a free concert featuring African-Canadian musicians in the plaza, part of the North Shore Jazz series. 

Festival d'Eté Afro-Canadian Collaboration - with audience participation

When we got back from the concert and wandering around Lonsdale, the annual block party was just beginning on the block where we were staying! A whole block of the street was blocked off to traffic, with a big shelter set up to provide shade over the food and drinks, a band playing, and an inflatable bouncy castle for the kids. The block party is a great idea, allowing everyone to get to know their neighbours better and have some fun together. This year's party had a Hawaiian theme, and luckily, unlike last year when it rained and everyone had to huddle inside the refreshments tent, the sun was shining. And so a good time was had by all!

Street closed off for the annual block party

Sara entertains the crowd at the block party

Day 37: Back in Canada!

Took a morning stroll around Seattle's International District - Chinatown and Japantown - then waited and did some work on the computer in the elegant hall of King Street Station. I had switched my train ticket forward from the evening train up the coast to the morning "thru bus" service - not as much fun, because instead of the train winding its way along the waterfront, you drive up Interstate number five, and all you see is trees, and the other cars on Interstate number five. Crossing the border on the bus is also a drag because all the passengers have to get off, claim their luggage, and line up to come through customs and immigration, then get back on the bus and wait for all the other passengers. Three people on my bus got taken into immigration for further questioning, and one - the guy who had been sitting next to me - didn't get back on the bus! Wonder what happened to him. We left him to his fate and proceeded on to stop in Richmond and Vancouver. Again, a less glamorous route than the train would have taken, through the flat suburban wasteland between Blaine on the US border and the city of Vancouver.
So why did I switch my ticket?
To be in Vancouver in time to hear Kutapira play at the opening of the Dragon Boat Festival in False Creek!

Back in Canada! The Vancouver skyline from False Creek

Kutapira in concert in False Creek

Kutapira in concert in False Creek

The guys from Kutapira taught my kids to play marimbas at the Lively Up Yourself music camp at the Roundhouse Community Centre .... ten years ago! Since then we have been keeping up with their music and one of the things I wanted to do while in Vancouver was to catch one of their shows. Well this one could not have been more convenient - only a couple of blocks away from the train station, on the very day of my arrival! So I got one thing on my to-do list checked off right away!

After the show I got myself a Compass card - every city I've been in on this trip has been using these pay-as-you-go, top-up cards to pay for urban transportation, and it's very convenient. I took the Skytrain down to Waterfront station and the Seabus from there to Lonsdale Quay, where I met my sister for dinner at a pub - the same pub where we had dinner on the last evening before I left Vancouver on my last trip! So we can just pick up right where we left off!

Lonsdale Quay, North Vancouver 

View across Burrard Inlet to downtown Vancouver from Lonsdale Quay

Days 35 & 36: Seattle

Finally reached the Pacific Ocean! After travelling a total of 4800 km on trains, the entire length of the Capitol Limited line from Washington, DC to Chicago and then the Empire Builder from Chicago to Seattle!

Caught my first glimpse of the Pacific at the port city of Everett, Washington. Though Puget Sound looks more like a lake than an ocean! From the train I spotted several bald eagles on the beach, as well as blue herons.

Puget Sound

The train rolled into Seattle almost half an hour early! I left my bag at the baggage check in King Street Station and then followed the Trails and Rails guys' advice and headed for Klondike National Park, actually a small museum only two blocks from the railway station in Seattle's historic Pioneer Square district, to learn all about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-1898.  In only two years 100,000 people headed for the Klondike, from all over the US, Canada and the world; of these, only 40,000 actually made it as far as Dawson, and only 300 actually made their fortune! The rest either died, gave up and turned back before reaching their destination, or arrived only to find that all the claims had already been staked and the gold was all gone. But some of them said though they struggled through the harsh Yukon winter and walked thousands of miles only to leave penniless, they would have done it all again for even less! Now that's the true spirit of adventure! And the gold rush left behind it many ghost towns, but also two towns that now thrive: Seattle, Washington, the point of departure or transit for the trip northwards, and Skagway, Alaska.

The museum was fascinating (and free). After leaving I headed for downtown, stopping at Pike Place Market to get a bite to eat. I ended up staying in this fascinating place for a lot longer than it took to get a bite to eat, and then whiling away the afternoon in the shops nearby, so once again my intention of seeing the Museum of Pop Culture - formerly the Music Experience Project, in a building by Frank Gehry - was foiled!

The Pike Place Fish Guys are still at it!
Tossing those salmon about

The Seattle waterfront

Downtown Seattle

In downtown Seattle

In the afternoon I went back to the station to retrieve my pack and meet up with Tom, who drove me back to Tom and Bruce's house, where I nested in the cosy basement bedroom.

The next day I stayed home putting my clothes through an actual washing machine for the first time since Toronto and getting caught up on a few things while Tom and Bruce were at work, then Bruce took the afternoon off to have a picnic and go for a walk in Discovery Park with their new dog, Luna. On the path around the headland we had an amazing view of Mt. Rainier. 

Mt. Rainier

Bruce, the new dog Luna and the old Land Rover

I had been to Seattle a few times before, in the '80s, and then Amy Childs took me and the kids on her personal whirlwind tour of Seattle last time I was here, in 2014, and you can see pictures of all the places we went to here. But this time around Bruce took me somewhere I had never been before: to the locks and the fish ladder. The locks divide the salt water of Puget Sound from the fresh water of Lake Washington, and the fish ladder allows the salmon to get past this barrier. When we visited the Sockeye salmon were on their way through. 

Sockeye salmon on their way up the fish ladder

The fish ladder consists of 21 pools through which the salmon leap, travelling upstream against the current, taking their time as they gradually learn to adapt from life in salt water to life in fresh water. Though made of concrete, these pools mimic the currents of the 21 natural pools that were originally on the site, separated by waterfalls, which were replaced by locks to make Lake Washington navigable. Add to that a a railway bridge that opens up from time to time to let tall-masted sailboats through, and throw in a few seals and plenty of blue herons feasting on salmon on either side of the locks, and you have a lot of interesting things to watch, all in one place! 

Railway bridge opening up to let a sailboat through downstream of the locks

The locks in action

In the evening we met Bruce's son Ryan and his family for dinner at a beautiful spot on the lake in Kirkland. A perfect west coast ending to a perfect west coast day!

Dinner party!