Honeymoon Diaries #7 – Vancouver
April 29 (Monday)
We left Penticton with a heavy heart. Yipeng made lots of waffles for breakfast and we said many goodbyes before we set off to travel west towards Vancouver. 二叔 gave dear a trusty Nokia since her S II was bricked a few days earlier to stay connected. We chose the more indirect path (highway 3) that will bring us through EC Manning Provincial Park (vs heading back to Kelowna for highway 5), after being told that there are gophers at its visitor center.
It turned out to be a slow motion roller coaster 6 hour drive that brought us through such drastic elevation changes that made our previous drives look like neighborhood excursions. We started in spring weather, and quickly ascended to snow capped levels, and then back down tracing the rivers soon after. We saw similar ranches around Keremeos, but it was the regular pine jungle for most of the trip. At one point, we went so high to Princeton, it actually snowed. Roads were covered with snow, even the attendant at Petro Canada where we stopped for gas was surprised by the sudden change in weather. The high elevations after Princeton created a phenomenon where fog rises from the ground, which created an effect that made the entire road look like dry ice, or us driving in the clouds. Along the way, we saw families of dear-like animals but we couldn’t ascertain if they were actually moose or deer or elks, as the males usually shed their horn around this time of the year.
It was somewhere along this road, that I think this trip came to the climatic, most memorable point for me. I know people who would read the beginning of this and probably the end of this multi-post diary, but since you bother to follow through, let me share this cherished moment with you.
As radio is non-existent for most of the trip through the uninhabited wilderness, I tend to burst out singing or humming. Most people, especially my wife, knows this: I do not have a great bank of songs that I know the lyrics to, so many a times, I just hum random lyrics (while my brain habitually does ad hoc harmony exploration). When dear realize that I don’t know most of the words to Country Roads, she started singing the whole song for me.
Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains
Shenandoah River
She probably saw, but I started crying like a baby, quietly. No it wasn’t West Virginia or Blue Ridge Mountain, only better. Her lone sweet voice pierced through the car and rang along the tall mountain cliffs, Shenandoah river was on my face.
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin’ like a breeze
Oh I didn’t know why I cried. It rang and rang like the song had been heard in a previous life, like I was there when John Denver sang it in 1971. Every tree that zoomed past me in this bucolic atmosphere seems transformed into a choir in a concert hall of mother nature.
Country Roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads
I first learned the song as a 9-year old boy scout, probably during some camping trip brought by some affiliated high school senior scouts. We used to change the lyrics of every song so it was West Malaysia, Petaling Jaya, of course, no mountains. I found it strange that I remember no other campfire songs except this from my childhood, perhaps, for this very special day.
All my memories gathered ’round her
Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water
Dark and dusty, painted on the sky
Misty taste of moonshine
Teardrop in my eye
I had so much tears that I had to create a pipeline to let it flow into my shirt without dear noticing. As she sang gently, she was telling me about a place I’ve never seen, but she so convincingly described this dusty environment on a hill that’s no where close to the sea with views of starless moonshine in the sky, that I thought it was my home.
I hear her voice
In the mornin’ hour she calls me
The radio reminds me of my home far away
And drivin’ down the road I get a feelin’
That I should have been home yesterday, yesterday
There and then, I fell in love once again with my wife, winding up and down ranges and ranges of mountains that took me in like its foster child. She was that radio that morning, a radio that was so intoxicating that I found it hard to resist giving her a hug, but couldn’t. I just sat at the wheel pretending to focus on driving, when my soul has already found its way home. And I knew, once again, as long as I’m with her, I’m home.
Unfortunately the visitor centre was close, so no gophers for us. Soon after the road merged back to the grand ole highway 1. Dear finally took the wheel, driving the taller car that she always wanted, and brought us from Hope to Langley’s Tim Hortons, while I took pictures. After one more coffee, I did the last stretch to return the car at Vancouver airport.
For the record, an S.U.V. rental like this (Calgary airport -> Vancouver airport) under a favorable condition (driving a BC car from AB back to BC, avoiding drop fees) for 96 hours can be done under $900 including 1 tank of gas and hundreds of dollars of insurance in, even though every website you check will give you a $1,500 to $2,000 kind of fee (might as well buy a used car…)
三叔母 came and pick us from the airport to her lovely condo in Richmond where we were surprised by her generous gift of renting the guest suite for our 3 day stay. Cindy came home soon after and we were shown around Vancouver and had a great seafood dinner. As we didn’t plan to roam around Vancouver, they did their best to drive past all the iconic stuff, including the steam powered clock and the various Olympic buildings that recently hosted the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
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April 30 (Tuesday)
On 三叔母’s recommendation, we took a chinatown tour bus (to contrast our experience in Toronto) for our day trip out to Victoria, which Amazon says is the most romantic city in Canada (by commercial measurements). Mainly, I wanted to bring dear to see Butchart Gardens in the spring time (the last I went it was the peak in the fall of 03), especially knowing that they grow lots of tulips, her favorite flower.
The Chinese tour guide this time wasn’t as humorous as the mad Italian we had, as he speaks in stately mandarin after confirming that we can all understand him (well we tried our best… lest he try his broken English). The ferry ride from Tsawwassen ferry terminal to Swartz Bay terminal felt much more commercial than before, but it didn’t bother us as we could still climb out onto the deck to see seagulls flying alongside the iron beast. Being engineers we traded lots of opinion about how the ferry works.
Lunch was first on the agenda, but we gave it a miss, preferring our own home made sandwiches that’s getting very common in our trip. It’s not just saving 2 x $12, it’s choosing to take a break from the pseudo-oriental food and letting the body do less work in learning and digesting unfamiliar food. Unfortunately there wasn’t an easy place to sit down around the Chinese restaurant, so we end up taking a bench outside an old folks home.
We first spent the first part of the day around the historic administrative corner of Victoria, a popular spot for photos and learning about the history of Victoria, how it came into being and how it joined BC, became state capital, and joining the Dominion (i.e. Canada). Much of these was captured in the British Columbia Parliament Building, which we could walk freely. On top of the building was gold covered statue of Captain George Vancouver, which allegedly marked the tallest point of Victoria (they don’t like tall buildings?)
We then proceeded to the highlight of the day: the Butchart Gardens, spending more than 2 full hours taking in the garden’s beauty and examining species that we haven’t seen before. Now that I’m 10 years older than when I last came, I felt that I was able to recognize more flowers, and even the conditions of why the flowers are so well kept.
One issue about coming to the gardens late April: there are no Roses! The entire rose garden has been snipped to make it bloom in time for this year’s summer peak season. Perhaps this was one of the reason the place wasn’t as crowded as I last remembered it. We could really find private corners of the garden to enjoy private moments.
Most importantly, all the tulips were in full bloom – all the way from the entrance into the main Sunken Garden. It’s tulip season in everywhere else too, but the Gardens did an amazing job of mixing colors and landscaping them to give illusions of grandeur, serenity, playfulness, surprises, or occasionally melancholy. Flowers appear and vanish along the trails, lush water fountains and elegant pinwheel turbines captures pops out of no where, while animal shaped bushes in the distant tells the story of the missing participants of this man-cultivated nature masterpiece.
We met a couple who brought along their huge working dog to the Gardens. I can’t remember the name of the breed (think it starts with O) but it was as big if not bigger than me. They were on a a long holiday road trip from Colorado and this was the dog’s well deserved break. Gelato ice cream ended the visit nicely before we hoped on the bus again to make our long way back to the mainland to rest and prepare for another day of adventure.
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May 1 (Wednesday)
One of my favorites about the Pacific Northwest is the Orcas, or killer whale. It’s an animal that captured my imagination of being cunning but social, beautiful but intelligent, domestic but travels the world. Killer whales (who are more like dolphins than whales) are found everywhere on earth, second only to human beings ourselves.
I had a real spinning headache after being in the water for 4 hours in total. And the price tag wasn’t cheap as well (at $120 excluding taxes and tips at time of writing). But if whale watching is your thing, and if you’re ever in Vancouver, I’d recommend Seabreeze Adventures – they are quite professional about the whole experience.
We started our journey south of Richmond at Steveston Village (an old Japanese fishing town). All in all we manage to hunt down 1 humpback whale (which did some 10 tail-slapping), 1 family of Orcas (4 of them, 2 are mothers, 1 juvenile, and 1 really cute baby Orca!), dozens and dozens of Sea Lions (both the noisy Californian type and the local Stallion type), some harbor seals (looking rather delicious to the Orcas), several bald eagles (including 1 nest with a nursing parent on it), hundreds and hundreds of sea gulls, and still many other types of birds that I can’t name. The scenery is set in the middle of the Straits of Georgia closer to Vancouver Island than main land (more specifically around the Galiano, Mayne, Prevost and North Pender Islands), to the back drop of the Olympic National Park mountain range (especially Mount Baker) and the Rockies of course (they are always there!)
What would I give to live a care free life like this! But apart from changing careers to be a naturalist like our tour guide and spot animals every day, I will have to be extremely rich to own a piece of these remote islands, complete with my own pier, boat, and way of maintaining some decent standard of living in the harsh weather away from civilization.
Dear was happy as this was the boat trip that rewarded us with the most animals (vs. dolphin trips from Bali Indonesia and Hualian Taiwan). The place is more alive this season than it was in previous summers I was here: Californian sea lions yet to go home (Californian seas) to breed as they are not done eating the fat salmons of the north, migratory animals (including some whales) en route between Alaska and Hawaii, snacking along the way, and most coastal vegetation in full bloom in the background. The omnipresent sea gulls are never shy of flying with our boat or even playing with the bald eagles, as both look for fishes in shallow waters.
I didn’t mention living as a fisherman because that would mean going further out into treacherous waters. In this sanctuary, fishing is heavily regulated so that’s certainly not a way of life that I might want to choose, well, maybe crabbing on the beach and running a seafood restaurant if it’s economically feasible.
I have a puzzle picture that still sits at home in PJ. It’s well framed (for some reason dad decided it was nice to frame it for me). It glows in the dark. It’s drawn (not a picture) into an oval shape. The contents: a single Orcas breaching out of the water directly towards a full moon. I haven’t seen this improbable sight yet, but I believe, some day, I will be able to see it in real life. I think I’m already at the right place. Next, it’s to find the right time.
I won’t even need a camera then.
