VanAussie Daily

Dog friendly

Friday, February 18th, 2011

One thing I’m certainly going to miss is just how dog friendly everybody and everywhere is over her in Vancouver and BC in general. Around town folks take their dogs with them everywhere, like for instance I saw someone last night taking their rather large dog into the bottle shop opposite our apartment.

The other cool thing is how comfortable folks are sharing their apartments with pooches. To an Aussie, if your going to have a dog then you HAVE to have a back yard with tall fences and a discreet corner you can try to train them to poop in. In Vancouver it’s the done thing to have dogs in apartments, many as small as 400 or 500 square feet with one bedroom or less.

In our previous building there was a Great Dane that lived there too. You know, the giant dog that you can almost walk under? Yep, one of them. Actually, there’s another one in the building just up from our current pad. There’s just something funny/weird about seeing a dog in an elevator. Sure, they’re acting all casual as if no dog anywhere else would ever get freaked out about it and it’s just the “done thing”, right?

When we first got here we were shocked, as we applied our Australian ideals to the Vancouver setting. That’s not right though, and if folks over here thought that they had to have a yard to have a dog then only a fraction of folks would be able to experience the company of a canine.

It would be an interesting life though, having a dog in an apartment, and quite possibly more social as you would be taking them out to water and run at the local park multiple times a day, running into other folks, talking dog, talking community, talking politics, talking whatever.

This is something that we wanted to try, having a dog in an apartment that is, but maybe it’s something we’ll have to try next time…

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Posted in Different things in Canada, Downtown Vancouver, Going to miss, In and around BC, Musings | No Comments »

Squamish Bald Eagles

Saturday, January 1st, 2011

Every year starting in late November and finishing up in early February, hordes of Bald Eagles flock to Sqaumish & Brackendale, which are about an hour north of Vancouver. Flocks. As in sometimes 100′s, sometimes 1000′s with almost 4000 eagles counted in the area in 1994.

So being that I had the week off and it was a glorious blue sky day, we decided to pack the twins into the car and head up there to see what we could see. There was an accident somewhere in the system, so we got stuck in traffic for an hour trying to get into Stanley Park and onto Lions Gate Bridge, but from there it was clear sailing all the way through, apart from a cranky baby stop partway there.

Hey, I even made a timelapse of the trip up for you! I sped up the traffic bit so you don’t have to sit through it…

The place to go is apparently the flood levy in Brackendale, so we loaded up the stroller and cruised along there – Quite a few birds in the trees! Not as many as I had anticipated of course, but here’s a likely character:

Nat saw one much closer than that as we were driving around afterwards, and there was a few wheeling around, but most seemed pretty content hanging out in the trees in a special park that is there just for them. During eagle season there’s always some folks there from the local birdwatching brigade with telescopes set up if you want to get a closer look at the birds. Well worth a look for the small donation they request.

The flood levy:

Of course, being winter and a clear day, it was bloody cold up there. We were rugged up of course, but the boys seemed to object to having been cooped up in the car all morning and decided to get cranky when we’d walked only a little way along the path. Still, we managed to get a couple of nice family shots

Then the sun started to go down, so we headed back to the car

From here the day turned into a bit of a average one, including changing a nappy on a gravel roadside where *someone* had managed to get poop all the way up to their socks, necessitating a COMPLETE disrobing and wardrobe change on the side of the road, during which that certain *someone* also decided to evacuate their bladder. They shot most of it out the side of the truck, but also managed to give parts of our truck interior a bit of a golden shower… Then of course we got stuck in traffic for another 2 hours coming back over the bridge due to another accident. Great!

Still, it was really nice to be out in the sun and doing something different, and I’d suggest getting out to see the eagles if you’re on your way through the area to Whistler or wherever, or you don’t have baby twins in tow…

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Posted in In and around BC, scenery, Timelapse, Twins, Weather | No Comments »

We’re going home + Powell River & Vancouver Island Circle Trip

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

With the boys now at home and occupying most of my spare time and pretty much 100% of Nat’s time, we’ve realised a couple of things:

1. Having twins with no family support around is rather tough
2. With kids, you can kiss any sort of reliable spare time good by
3. With young babies, getting out of the house takes lots of planning, and longer trips are pretty much out of the question for the time being
4. Those folks who reminisce about the “new baby smell” have glossed over the more pungent memories of sour milk and poop.

SO with the above and a few other things in mind, we’ve decided to head back to Tassie next April (2011). It wasn’t a decision that we took lightly, but in the end it wasn’t that hard – the support and having the kids grow up around their grandparents (free babysitting!) pretty much made up our minds plus the cheaper cost of living available in Tassie. I’ll also be taking my job home with me, so that’s another plus, as there won’t be that horrible job searching part.

In light of all this, there won’t be many exciting trip stories to tell, just burping and pooping stories which you’ll find on the boys blog, plus tidbits from my life around Vancouver. So I’ve decided that to make this blog a more complete memory of our time here in Vancouver, I’m going to go back through all the trips that we’ve done previously and stick them in here for posterity. I hope you enjoy the ride and they inspire some of you to get out and about. My particular favourites are the trips to Oregon, Tofino on Vancouver Island and Nahatlatch, which is in the Fraser Canyon (kinda), about 5 hours east of Vancouver, but we’ve actually been to a surprising amount of places in our time here… enjoy!

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Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Powell River – Courtenay/Comox – Nanaimo – Vancouver round trip

Looking at that title, that seems like a hell of a lot of places to visit and a fair bit of distance to travel, but we did it all in the space of a weekend not long after we got to Vanco (more…)

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Posted in In and around BC, Previous trips (memory lane), scenery, travel, Twins | 1 Comment »

Whistler & Crankworx

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

So last Saturday I was lucky enough to get out of the house and head up to Whistler to do some downhill mountain biking (mtb) and to watch one of the biggest events (Slopestyle) at the two week long mtb festival that is Crankworx.

Crankworx is for mountain biking what the Glastonbury Festival is to the music industry – a massive celebration of the sport which can get quite messy… And Whistler is mountain biking’s equivalent of Mecca anyway, with thousands of riders making pilgrimages there every summer.

Luckily I live just down the street (1.5 to 2 hours drive, depending on traffic) in Vancouver, but unluckily I think this will have been the only day I can get up there this year! Still, I made the most of it, for sure.

We spent the morning riding the hill, getting in three full runs from top to bottom plus a few extra bits and pieces. Man, I love Whistler. The variety is huge, with trails built for every skill set, and you can even get away from the crowds on the biggest weekend for MTB up there. If you hit anything with confidence, you’ll be fine, as all the trails are well built and to a standard sort of set of rules. It’s really confidence building.

Let me just state right now that I love the trail Freight Train. A series of large flowing tabletop jumps linked together by bermed corners, where could you go wrong?

Didn’t manage to get any pictures of actual riding apart from this wall ride, and the picture really doesn’t do the feature justice…

It came to about 4 or so when we went switched out our bikes for cameras, and I’d been riding with Aidan Ward, who’s a professional photographer, so it wasn’t a simple matter of grab the camera and go, no no bucko, it was a decision based on memory cards, matching lenses with bodies and who’d be carrying all the extra gear. But if it’s all in the name of getting sweet shots, who’s complaining?

I’ll leave the shots to do the talking in a moment, but I love Crankworx Slopestyle dearly. Where else do you get guys doing insane tricks off insane stunts with 10′s of thousands of spectators yelling them on, all in the right ventricle of world mountain biking’s heart?

The guys were all throwing down massif runs, but this year it was so damn dry that lots of folks were also hitting the ground hard. Still, those who held it together were totally impressive, with winner Cam Zink’s run being awesome! I was disappointed for Darren Berrecloth, as I think he had one of the best runs of the day, but bit it hard on the last jump… Maybe next year.

Anyhoo, here’s some choice shots:

Photo were shot by Aidan Ward, Tim H and myself.

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Posted in In and around BC, Sport | No Comments »

Mt Gardener, Bowen Island

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

A couple of weeks ago my family was in town for our wedding. Now, they can handle the city as much as the next group of folks from rural Tasmania, however after a few days hanging out in downtown Vancouver they were ready for some time away.

We scoped out all the close-ish places to downtown. You know, the north shore mountains, Squamish, Whistler, or somewhere further east. Then Nat suggested we head to Bowen Island.

Ah, Bowen Island! A place that I’d heard about in whispered tones. So close to downtown you can commute by ferry, they say, feels like a world away, they say, a quaint place to get away to, they say. Fair enough then.

We headed over there on a Thursday morning, having checked out a hike on one of the islands taller mountains, Mt Gardener. It was supposed to be about 7 hours return, which we figured we could knock over in a bit less time than that… They set those times for tourists with no idea, right?

Up early in the morning, we drove to Horseshoe Bay were the ferry goes from and jump on the next ferry. Almost literally. We thought that we’d missed the one we were aiming for, but just made it.

The ferry rides in BC are always so beautiful. If you aren’t from this area, and only ever have a short time here, then I would seriously suggest catching a ferry somewhere. This one was very short, about 20 minutes or so, and just circled around the headland of the Horseshoe bay peninsula, then Bowen Island was right there. I thought we could make out Mt Gardener from the ferry, off through a couple of lower hills. When on the ferry you can also see all the expensive and some very cool houses on the waters edge – not always do the two go together, mind you. I wouldn’t mind having my own private jetty 20 minutes boat drive from downtown Vancouver, would you?

Arriving in Snug Cove you sort of get a feeling that you’re arriving in BC proper. You know, where the real Canadian types hang out. I have a theory that Vancouver isn’t really BC proper. Sure, it’s a great example of a metropolitan Canadian city, but it’s not the 100% genuine Canada that you’ll find in the mountains, out on the prairies, in the lake country, or in the maritimes, far east of here.

Snug cove is sleepy, kinda set up for the tourist trade, and just a cute little town. We wandered up the main street a little found a spot to get a coffee, and just hung out a little. Unwinding, y’know?

The actual trail to the base of Mt Gardener takes a winding path past a few interesting features, including memorial gardens, a lagoon, salmon ladder, a couple of lakes and all sorts of trees n flora you don’t get in the concrete jungle. Squirrel!

I’ll let the pictures tell the story from here… With captions of course, you didn’t think I’d shut up for too long, did you?

The map of where we were walking… how hard could it be? It makes a nice loop walk actually.

There’s a couple of decent size mountain bike stunts in the area. My bro is about 6 foot tall, for measurement.

The going got reasonably steep.

Then it got steeper. Yes, that is a cable you can pull yourself up on, should you be so inclined.

There’s Vancouver off in the distance. Stanley park is the dark mass in the middle far distance, and downtown is just beyond that. It’s much more impressive in person!

These fellas came in and interrupted our lunch, which we had all set up on the helipad. Rude!

Near the ferry port, there’s a sweet “North Shore” type play area for mountain biking.  Tempted to throw the bike on the ferry and go test it out.

And the final word from the local municipality:

If you’re downtown I’d really stress that Bowen Island is a great escape for you. You can ferry from Granville island if you don’t have a car, and it’s fairly reasonable from memory.

The walk took us about 7 hours, not rushing, but not slouching either. A better map would have been good of course, but to get out and about for a day of hiking, so close to town and only pass a couple of other groups, I would thoroughly recommend this walk to anyone

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Posted in Hiking/Bushwalking, In and around BC, scenery | 5 Comments »

Point Roberts

Tuesday, April 6th, 2010

Over the weekend we had to renew Nat’s working holiday permit as we’re coming up to having been here for two years. The line ups at the main border crossing, Peace Arch, south of Vancouver, are usually hideous on long weekends, so this being the Easter weekend we decided to visit the geographical oddity that is Point Roberts.

South of Tsawassen, which is south of Vancouver, Point Roberts is a peninsula under USA rule that is not actually attached to the US mainland. If a resident of Point Bob wanted to get to Seattle by car, they would have to drive over the Canadian border, along to the Peace Arch crossing, then south from there.

PB was created in the 1846 treaty between the then British government of the Canadian region and the Yank government when they decided to cut north America up along the 49th paralell. You can read up on it on wikipedia, but basically after the fact they realized that there was a little bit seperated from the mainland in the west coast. Oops.

Here’s some pics from our trip down there:

Actually, I lied. I didn’t take any pics as it was boring as hell. We drove around for about 20 minutes before realising it was almost a ghost town and we probably weren’t going to find somewhere interesting for dinner. Their main industries seem to be gas (petrol) and post boxes, catering for Canadians coming down for cheap gas and to avoid costly cross borders shipping prices.

It’s supposed to be quite pretty during the summer, and I can see that, but on a spring afternoon, you could see the tumbleweeds rolling across the road.

Where is the benefit for traveling Aussies on a WHP? The Canadian border post there is a full service crossing, and the very short border wait times make it a great place to renew your work permit if you have a car to get down there and don’t want to frig around with the real border.

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Posted in Greater Vancouver Area, In and around BC, travel, Working Holiday Permit (WHP) | No Comments »

Victoria, BC

Tuesday, January 19th, 2010

This is a quick flashback to January 1/2, when (due to various reasons, including cocked up flights) I arrived at the airport in Vancouver then had to quickly bolt home to Yaletown, grab some overnight stuff for Nat and myself, jump in our trusty 4Runner Rusty, and head to the ferry to pick up Nat. Nat was on a direct flight from Cancun to Victoria thanks to a cheap Westjet deal, which was way better than the flights she had originally.

I wanted to get to the 7pm ferry so I’d have plenty of time to piss fart around then pick up Nat from the airport, however that had sold out by the time I got there, and I had to hang out for the 9pm ferry… dang! Here’s my amazingly entertaining view for that period of my life:

Luckily, I arrived about 10 minutes before she disembarked at about 10.45pm or so, then we hightailed it into Victoria itself to some accommodation that I’d booked a few weeks before through www.hotwire.com, and I’d used their system where they don’t tell you what sort of hotel you got in the end, only the star rating. Lucky, as it turned out to be an amazingly nice hotel, and we got it for about $70 or so! The places name was Inn at Laurel Point, and if you’re heading over there for a weekend their normal rates seemed pretty reasonable and the rooms were really nice.

Here’s our view at night:

And the same one the next day:

Victoria itself is a pretty nice little town, and “feels” older than Vancouver with lots of really nice old stone buildings. It’s the Capital of BC, so there are parliament buildings, a cool hotel on the water there in the picture and a variety of other interesting stuff. I can see why people would rather live there than Vancouver, as it has much of what Van offers, but with more of a “small town” atmosphere. It’s only an hour and a half on the ferry between the two cities, and you can even get a sea plane between the two if you’re feeling well off

We couldn’t hang around on the Sunday morning as we wanted to get back home to clear our heads after the Mexico trip, but I would like to spend more time in Victoria next time we’re over there.

As a side note, the weather here has been abnormally warm of late, hovering around about 8 – 10 degrees C, which isn’t particularly good news for the mountains on the North Shore and the skiing they offer, and Cypress will be hosting some events for the Winter Olympics, so they’ve actually closed early to hoard snow at higher levels in case they need it for the activities they’re putting on. We’ve also been getting buckets of rain… I imagine if it had been colder, say in the negatives, all that rain would have been snow… the city would have been chaos!

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Posted in In and around BC, travel, Weather | No Comments »