Sunday, October 28

Sight Seeing in Canada: Vancouver Lookout, Capilano Bridge and the Drive Home

Mom's alarm was set for 6:30.  She got up and took a quick shower.  I slept in my tiny bed until around 7.  I was so comfortable I did not want to move or do anything.  I eventually got up and did my morning routine.


We got ready for the day, packed up our stuff and purchased tickets to the Capilano Suspension Bridge in North Vancouver.  Since we had a few hours before we had to check out, we walked downtown again.

For breakfast we had to go to a Tim Hortons.  There was one down the street from the hotel.  Tim Hortons specializes in donuts and coffee but now has a spread of baked goods, bagels, breakfast sandwiches, cheesecake, soups and sandwiches.  We each got the breakfast sandwich meal which came with a hashbrown and an orange juice.  It was like eating a breakfast fast food meal at McDonald's but it was Tim Hortons so it was cooler.  Again, it was weird paying with Canadian money.  We finished up and walked down the street to find some other stuff to do.


Mom saw the Vancouver Lookout and wanted to go into it.  It's really sad I've been to other towers, lookouts and views and still have never been to the Space Needle in Seattle and I live there!  We went in to see how much it was.  It wasn't all that busy so we said, sure why not!  We paid $18 each and headed up the elevator.


When we got to the top the 360 degree view was amazing!  Mom spend about a half hour here taking several pictures.  We walked over to the gift shop and I got a few postcards and mom found a sloth keychain she just couldn't live without.  We went back down the elevator.  In the lobby we looked at the downtown map I grabbed and decided what to do from there.




I saw we were within blocks of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic torch and the seaplanes in Coal Harbour.  We walked over and it was very cool to actually see one of the Olympic torches in real life.  Mom and I actually thought about heading up here in 2010 to watch some of the events but we both didn't have passports nor a whole lot of money to spend at that point.  So we watched it on TV instead.  That was the year we cheered for Sidney Crosby because he is awesome.



We walked back to the hotel, grabbed our stuff from our room, mom checked us out and the valet brought the Escape back to us.  I tipped him another toonie and we were on our way to North Vancouver.  We got onto the main road and followed the road over the Lion's Gate Bridge.  We stayed in the lane I thought we had to be in and saw the signs for the Capilano Suspension Bridge.

Mom realized she left $40 worth of Canadian money behind underneath some magazines at the hotel.  I told her to call the hotel and let them know.  She did and they found it.  We asked if we could pick it up later and they said sure.  I made fun of mom so hard for that one.

We got off the highway and merged onto Capilano Road.  We followed that until we saw a sign for the bridge and where we were suppose to park.  The lot was on our right and the bridge was on our left.  We found a place to park and found out that it required us to pay.  Lame.  We paid our $5 and walked across the street for admission.  We showed them our tickets on our phone and they gave us a passport/map.  If you wanted to each section of the venue had these little stops where you could get a stamp and learn something about the bridge and the surrounding area.  We only did a few of them because it started raining halfway through our visit.


We walked across the iconic bridge and onto the other side.  There, we walked to the Treetops Adventure.


We had to wait a lot because there were several Asians taking pictures of themselves in every which way possible at every single landing.


When we got to the end we took the walk around the boardwalk.  By that time it was raining harder and they gave us a free bright green poncho to wear over our clothes.


We walked back over the bridge and onto the other side to walk along the Cliffwalk.  We were the only ones over there so we took our time.



We even saw an eagle chilling at the top of one of the Douglas Fir trees and tried really hard to get him to look at us.  He eventually looked over his shoulder at us.


We decided to call it a day because it was raining and we were now getting soaked.  We walked the loop around and went into the gift shop to see what all they had inside.  I found some postcards and a magnet.  Mom found a couple things to make her happy as well.  We got a certificate before we left the premises stating that we survived crossing the bridge.  Why not?  It was free.


We walked back to the Escape and wanted to hit up a Walmart just to see what a Canadian Walmart was like.  We looked up the address of the nearest one while we had some WiFi and saw that it was down the hill into the city of North Vancouver, which was near the mall.  We headed down there and missed the turn for the mall.  We had to turn around and come back to the road.  We found where the Walmart was and was a little weirded out that it was actually a part of the mall.  It took us a while to find a parking spot.  Apparently, Walmart is just as busy up in Canada just as it is in the United States.  We walked in and noticed right away how similar and how different is was compared to ours.  The snack foods and the sports aisles were very different than ours.  Since it was near Halloween they were selling candy so I grabbed a box of 100.  Inside, there were Canadian Kit Kats, Smarties (similar to M&M's), Coffee Crisp and Aero bars.


We walked over to the sporting goods aisle and they literally had an aisle just for hockey.  It was awesome.  I was so happy to see they had Pittsburgh Penguin stuff for sale.  Mom bought a $20 Sidney Crosby jersey and I got a small soft hockey stick and a ball with the Penguins logo on it.  I just couldn't help myself.


Then we went to the junk food aisle.  I told mom a list of stuff we were told to bring home.  That included Ketchup chips, the real Kinder Eggs and Kraft Dinner (which was mac n cheese) but apparently it tasted different.  We got in line and paid in self check out.  I just had mom put it on her card and I would pay her back later.


We still needed to find some lunch before we drove home so we stopped at a Mooyah.  I have never been to one and we both thought, why not?  Let's try it.  Everything was made to order and we just got burger and fries.  We decided that neither of us loved gravy that much to try poutine.  We paid with the Canadian cash I had remaining on me since mom forgot hers at the hotel.  We ate our food and decided we didn't have enough time to do the Granville Island Market.  We would have to do that the next time we came up here.


We went back through Vancouver so we could grab mom's money she left behind at the hotel.  At this point my stomach started to feel icky so I ran inside after she came back but there were no lobby bathrooms.  Hmm.  I was in a dire situation.  Plus, we had to figure out how to get back to the border and we needed some gas before we left.

We were on the main road and followed what we thought was the right way.  We probably should have checked while we had WiFi.  Oh well, it was going to be an adventure getting back to the border in more ways than one.  We saw a gas station on our right and pulled in.  We found a space and decided how much money we had, how many liters of gas that would get us and did some conversion math.  I could not stand it anymore.  I had to poop.  The gas station did not have a public bathroom so I found a place over by the dumpster and let it all out.  I was there for probably 10 minutes making sure I was done and didn't have to do this again somewhere else.

Mom sat in the Escape and waited until I came back so I could pump gas.  She said she gave him all of her plastic money so we got what we got.  It ended up putting in 30.022 liters of gas for $45 Canadian dollars.  We used all of our money except for a few loonies and toonies.

We followed the 99 and ended up on the wrong road at some point.  I found a place to stop and check out the map at the bus stop.  I found a route that would take us south.  We ended up stopping a lot down Kingsway (1A) onto Knight and them onto the 91 and then finally made it back onto the 99 to the border.  We drove through a lot of Vancouver suburbs into Richmond and then into Surrey.  We waited at the border for a good half hour to 40 minutes.  We enjoyed the view of the Peace Arch while we waited.


There was a truck in front of us that had to be completely searched.  The border patrol literally had all the doors open rummaging through the vehicle.  They even had the back of the truck canopy open to check for smuggling.  It was entertaining to watch.  We got into a line and waited our turn.  I grabbed our passports and when it was our turn I handed the border patrol our information and he asked why we were in Canada.  I told him for the hockey game, sight seeing and tourism.  He handed our passports back to us and said, welcome back.

Now we had the long daunting trip back home.  The surprising part was that traffic didn't suck which was nice.  We got home roughly around 7ish and mom grabbed her stuff out of the Escape and shoved it into her Expedition.  I went inside and dumped off my stuff and wanted to get cleaned up and go to bed.  I was tired.

It was a great trip overall.  We got to go to Canada (my first time), I got my first Canadian cache, we got to see the Penguins play hockey and Sidney Crosby in real life, got to experience some Canadian stuff and do a lot of sight seeing.  I can't wait to visit Victoria some day.

Next Adventure:  Early Morning Adventure:  Heading to Colorado

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