British Columbia by car is awesome as well

Several significant events occurred in 1889:  Van Gogh painted The Starry Night, France completed the Eiffel Tower, the WSJ published its first issue, Confederate President Jeff Davis died, and Adolph Hitler emerged from the loins of hell.  Also, the Union Steamship Company started hauling goods and passengers up and down British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast between Vancouver and Pender Island.  The nine hour round trip cost $1.50.  Canadian.

The point is, we spent two nights at Union Steamship Company Marina in Snug Cove on Bowen Island.  As far as we can tell the marina has zero connection to the Union Steamship Company—which went out of business in 1959—or any of the other events referenced above, but still.

Before arriving in Snug Cove, of course, we had to get past the dangerous logs and the awesome scenery, all of which we succeeded in doing.

Very cool little town, and very cool little marina, except for the ferry wake at 10:30 pm that kept Sammy from sleeping which in turn kept us from sleeping.

Remember the cool stuff we’d intended to do with Liz and Eddie?  Turns out we were right.  Very cool stuff.  Like the hike up past Tumbleweed to the lookout spot.

Right now, this lagoon looks sleepy and calm.  Come October, however, it teems with salmon heading up the creek with a little help from the fish ladders we didn’t walk up to see.

The Bowen Island Whale Trail supposedly offers opportunities to see dolphins and otters and seals and sea lions AND THREE KINDS OF WHALES.  We rented a golf cart to take us out there, schlepping the camera and big lens so we could get photos of amazing ocean wildlife.  Meh.  Here’s a photo of the place where we got no photos of amazing ocean wildlife because there wasn’t any.

We did score some Riley’s cider from the family cidery, however, which boasts of “almost 1000 different apple varieties making it one of the largest apple collections in a North America.”

We were dubious, so looked it up.  Depending on what source you use, there are either around 30,000 or 7,500 apple varieties worldwide.  To us, at least, this made Riley’s claim plausible.  All we know for sure is that the cider is delicious.

Then back to Vancouver to await Trevor and Brenda.  This time we found a spot at Quayside Marina, which is farther from the Granville Island Market but closer to BC Place.

Turns out we pulled in on game day.  We could tell it was a big CFL game because an hour before kickoff tens of fans in BC Lions hats or shirts were walking around in a completely flaccid state of excitement.  As we can’t stress enough, we love Canada and Canadians.  In many ways, Canada and Canadians are better than America and Americans.  Football, however, is not a summer sport.  Playing football in July is like making your national dish out of mushy french fries and gravy; both are unacceptable and together make it difficult to take Canada seriously.  But BC beat the Roughriders from Saskatchewan so all those handfuls of fans left happy.

A few more Vancouver tidbits we failed to mention last post.  We might not have heard of The Beachcombers before, but we’re well aware that the Second Narrows Bridge collapsed on the eighteenth day of June back in nineteen fifty plus eight, killing eighteen workers who were shaken off like a hound dog shakes off flies.  Even our daughters know this, the same way we all know that Big Bad John just drifted into town and stayed all alone.  RIP Jimmy Dean.  Here’s the best photo we could get of the bridge—now called the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge at Second Narrows—as it exists today.

Lots of famous people are from Vancouver.   Ryan Reynolds, whose VanCity twitter moniker now makes sense.  Michael J. Fox.  Steve Nash.  Pamela Anderson.  Scotty from Star Trek.  And of course Robert Pickton—the notorious serial-killing farmer who used his victims as pig feed and died in prison just a few weeks ago—called Vancouver home, although the city probably wishes he hadn’t.

Anyway, although Vancouver is nice enough, we figured we should rent a car and drive around more of British Columbia while waiting for our next set of guests.  So off we went to Whistler.  We could’ve stopped for photos a zillion times along the Sea to Sky Highway, but managed to limit ourselves.

Whistler’s Olympic ski mountain reminds us of Mont Ripley on the Keweenaw Peninsula.*

Last summer, our friend Mike Gordon was one of about 300 crazies to do the 29029 Everest Challenge in Whistler.  You hike up 4,000 feet to the top, take the gondola down, then hike back up, and do all that over and over until you’ve gained 29,029 feet of elevation.  In thirty-six hours.  Mike either will live to be a hundred or will die young.  We probably would’ve gone up once or twice ourselves, but Sammy gets tired after thirty minutes on level ground, so instead we walked around town and ate Thai noodles and then went back to the hotel at night like normal people.**

We’ll definitely get back to Whistler, but we needed to keep moving.  More great scenery on the way around through Kamloops and down to Kelowna.  Lots of lakes and mountains.

Most of the trip we spent whizzing along at the American equivalent of 110 kilometers per hour, so we had only a short time in Kelowna.  The highlight was seeing our snowbird pickleball friend Sharon, who snuck us into a fabulous dinner at the Kelowna Yacht Club.

Trevor and Brenda arrive from Winnipeg tomorrow.  There’s a possibility not all of us will survive.

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* Just kidding.

** Disappointingly, we did not get to see Whistler’s Mother.