Our Vacation was a Sandwich of a week in Vancouver with a 3 day trip to Seattle followed by another near weak in Vancouver. To clarify we really spent almost 2 weeks in Chilliwack and 1 afternoon/evening in Vancouver but its easier to identify the trip as to Vancouver.
Our first day saw the theft of the fishfinder off the boat in the 5h we were actually asleep – so that in its own right was impressive and depressing all at the same time. It meant that every trip on the boat was now a load everything / unload everything process.
With the weather appearing to be bad in Chilliwack we decided to go camping by a lake near Kamloops (30km away) – this turned out to probably be a bad idea – as the fish did not bite, the temperatures were horrid – and even the lake dropped a full Degree while we were there (13C) – I’ve also learned that backing up a truck with a boat trailer on it is not as easy as it looks so its a good thing I didn’t even try.
After the camping we tried to get warmer weather (Wow a whole 18C – and on the water when you’re misting up its not even that warm) – and fish on the river in Mission – another failure although we did see a Charter pull in a 7-8Ft long Sturgeon similar to the one Dad, Mike and I caught last time I was in BC.
After this we headed off to Seattle which I’ll document seperately. I do want to mention though what a horrid experience Greyhound was – in Vancouver they sell out – here we are at 7am trying to get to Seattle and they are sold out – fortunately AMTRAK has a bus to seattle and we were on Standby and able to find 2 seats – this would have been the same case on the way back except we booked return tickets immediately after getting to the Hotel.
The return trip was also an adventure with a couple hour delay and a long stall at the border where our fellow bus passengers didn’t have VISA’s / Passports or didn’t have a return ticket to the US all causing delays.
The final week in Vancouver included 2 more day’s of fishing and a couple of relax days (one involved logging into work for a bit – but we were able to watch the entire first season of Dexter. Amazing and the second season is now sitting on the mantel at home to be watched. Fish did not bite and there were more and more seals present as we switched rivers that we tried to fish on. Its a shame but at that point catching one wouldn’t have made financial sense anyway as it’d been 25$ to bring a second item back on Air Canada.
The last day was actually spent in Vancouver, where we were able to walk around the downtown core finding a bank and settling on a Sushi lunch on Robson – Sorry Dan I didn’t remember to take your recomendation list with me. We also met up with Wynne and Jeff for a Japanese Fusion supper – It was interesting to watch them torch the mackerel but I have to say I really enjoyed the tuna the best – which is common as 50% of the sushi I order tends to be white tuna. We topped that off with a viewing of Tropic Thunder which was really good - the original “previews” at the start are a riot.
Final thoughts though , it was nice to spend time in the hottub during the coldest streak BC’s had there all summer – 21C i think was the high for the 2 week trip – that includes the weather in Seattle which I’ll cover next.
After Dee’s Birthday I was looking at 6 days before I would end up in Vancouver and two things were abundantly clear – one there was still alot left to pack and two I needed a break from packing.
In order to have Cartman house sit while we were gone I wanted him to get used to the cats/house so an earlier suggestion of a lan/game party was actually followed up on and on Saturday we had everyone over to play Diablo 2, Starcraft, and some Rockband (san’s drums as I had packed those already) – It was amusing although my laptop can’t seem to run Diablo 2 without being choppy – I’d like to blame Vista but Tweak’s laptop ran it fine.
After that – a few remaining softball games and packing closed out the week – not without me buying 10 more boxes to finish as much packing as I thought possible at the time.
Next Up Vancouver!
It has been an successive series of events that have caused me to avoid posting and I do appologize but at this point i’m so spent that I am just going to run down things as is.
You last caught a glimpse of what I was up to before I was off to Montreal for Kwetiio’s Birthday. This was a whirlwind trip as I left work and got on the Greyhound for Montreal – I was first concerned that I’d not get on the bus as there was a long line – but was able to get on the second one as they added a second one.
I arrived and was able to get my stuff dropped off at the hotel although there was another Richard Carpenter already booked into my room – the staff comp’d me 2 drinks while they fixed the issue and eventually had me put into the room for Richard Carpentier – I was able to down those in the time it took them to fix things – which was a good thing – as Dee’s friends were a bit late getting to the resteraunt and we only ended up having our food served by about 9pm (after being there at 7).It was nice pasta but I have to say that they all agreed service was slow (slower than normal for that place).
Our main event of the evening was to follow and that was a Coors Light Boatcruise. This was fun and an interesting way to see MTL at night, I did manage to miss the couple having sex downstairs but otherwise there was no typical oddities that you hear about at most clubs these days. I really enjoyed some of the music the DJ was spinning near the later part of the night in the downstairs section.
The following morning I managed to get breakfast with Dee & Natalie before they resumed their tour of MTL and I headed back to Ottawa to continue what I was up to there. I did sneak a quick trip into the Molson Centre to see their Hab’s Swag Shop but avoided buying another Hat as that was all that interested me while they were doing renovations.
