Saturday, June 11 - Victoria to Squamish

The yogurt, granola and OJ made a fine breakfast.  We managed to get 2 blog posts off this morning, so we are only one day behind.  Jim is up very late most nights selecting and tweaking the pictures and adding tidbits to the “permanent” copy of our blog.  Ardith wants him to do less, but Jim has his mind set on the level of detail he wants to present.  If you think these posts are too long, blame Jim.

We made several stops along the road from Victoria to Duncan at scenic overlooks.  Ardith sometimes dislikes it when Jim says “pull off at the next overlook” because he does it so often, but she loved today’s stops (there were probably only 3 or 4).  The views were truly awe inspiring.

In Duncan, there were 2 places that looked interesting in the AAA tourbook: The Quw’utsun’ Cultural and Conference Center (exhibits about local Native American / First Nations culture) and the BC Forest Discovery Centre.  From reading the descriptions, Ardith favored the former and Jim the latter.  We got to the cultural place first.  Ardith looked at it from the outside and thought it looked like a rip-off, so we went to the forestry place instead.  We both agreed that it was a great choice.  Jim thought we might spend an hour there but it stretched to 2 and a half (Including time to eat Smokys – big hot dogs – at the snack bar).  

The first building had a lot of displays showing uses of forest products from ancient times to the present.  There were also several relatively small (e.g., pick-up truck) pieces of equipment. 

The real treasures were outdoors and in several less modern buildings.  There was a series of buildings that were identical on the outside that in their former lives had formed a portable logging camp.   Their interiors recreated a bunkhouse, paymaster’s office, post office, dining hall, tool maintenance and other functions.

There were most likely over 100 large pieces of logging equipment and several dozen pieces of railroad stock associated with the lumber business placed over 99 acres.

There was one piece of railroad equipment that intrigued Jim.  One of the staff said that it was called a scooter and was used to take men from camp to the work site and back.  She didn’t know any more details about it even after looking through the guidebook they have for staff.  She said she would try to find more and email me, but warned it may be a few weeks.

They had a train with one engine, one passenger car with a roof and one open car that passengers could choose to ride in.  Guess who was the only one in that car!  The train ride went past lots of equipment, through beautiful forest and over a waterway.  It also made a 10 minute stop at a place where both kids and adults could play.

Jim also liked the climb up an old lookout tower.  

We took a long walk through a beautiful woodland filled with big trees and into a meadow that borders a marsh.  We saw a bald eagle's nest. Great walk!

Jim urged Ardith to drive into the town of Chenaimus which is attempting to boost tourism by having murals depicting things about the region painted on various buildings.  There are more than 50 in the small town.  Ardith was tired from lots of walking in the forestry place and remained in the car while Jim jumped out to “quickly take a few pictures”.  As he was exploring he passed a closed ice cream shop.  When he returned more than 15 minutes later he mollified Ardith’s ire by suggesting they look for ice cream.  It was a fruitless journey but took us past even more murals.

We had gotten so absorbed in the forestry place and the murals that we stopped paying attention to time.  We had hoped to get on the 3:10 ferry from Nanaimo to North Vancouver.  The next boat was at 5:20 and Ardith wanted to get laundry done.  We realized that we were cutting it close, then ran into some traffic slowdowns and traffic lights.  When we got to the toll booth, we asked the attendant if we would make it.  She said “if you hurry”.  We were the last car on the boat.

The ferry ride back to the mainland was just as beautiful as on the way over.  

When we were leaving our car to go into the ferry, we noticed a blond in a BMW convertible just sitting in her car in the not-too-pretty lower car deck.  When we returned, we noticed that she was still there reading a book.  A few minutes later, we saw something wiggling and realized that she had a dog with her.

The drive to Squamish passed several beautiful places, but we only stopped for a few.

The places to stay near the highway in Squamish started at $135 plus tax.  Jim searched the internet and found a place in the older part of town called the Chieftain Hotel for only $62 including tax.  The only really negative focused on noise from the pub below and not having a view.  We had other issues.  The most important is the internet connection was totally flaky, never staying up for more than 2 minutes a shot.  Jim wasted about 2 hours trying to resolve that.  We also had hammering in the cold water pipe and no refrigerator as advertised.  The place was staffed solely during the time we were there by a couple from Sri Lanka who were really quite pleasant and tried their best to resolve problems.  They had issues with the owners and were going to be headed to Winnipeg in a few days.

The wife got Ardith started on laundry, which was completed without problems, despite misgivings from Ardith.  The laundry was down a long hallway and in a very isolated backroom that was not part of the public space.

We had dinner at a Greek restaurant called Yiannis Taverna.  The food was good quality, but the only thing especially noteworthy was the puffy pita bread.  Quite yummy.

While Ardith was slaving over laundry, Jim drove to Shannon Falls, about 2 miles from our hotel.  It was only a short walk to the spectacular falls (1099 ft high) from the pull off from the highway.  The only issue was that the great lighting had been there when we passed it on our way to our hotel, but it was now in shadows.  Jim was smart enough to not press the issue of stopping for the falls when Ardith was anxious about laundry.

The highway signs in this area have things spelled in native tongues as well as in English.  The spelling for Squamish contains a 7!