Wednesday, July 21, 2010










Sun Wolf was great – loitered a little bit this am – enjoyed having a real bed and a real shower. So – on the way to Vancouver and the US. Vancouver sneaks up on you really fast from Squamish. By the way - take a look at the picture of the road sign. Most of the road signs for places - villages, stream crossings, etc are in English and Squamish.

Basically, it turns in to the northern suburbs – very pretty by the way and this is definitely not the poor end of town. I thing all the rich Vancouverites live on this end of town so they can go play at Whistler skiing in the winter.

Getting in to Vancouver from this approach is has some great views of the Straits of Georgia . Saw the Ferry going over to Vancouver Island – but on the Highway and no place to pull off and get a shot. Caught a quick shot of some freighters coming in.

By the way, All of the road atlases warn of highway 99 from Whistler to Vancouver in the winter. Guess what – this is not the one lane road section that I was on yesterday. This is four lanes- beautiful new asphalt and maintained to a tee. I suspect in preparation for the Winter Olympics.

So anyway, Vancouver is a nice big clean city with a population of almost 3 million – from my friend Darren at Sunwolf last night. The south part of the city is more industrial / commercial and loaded with Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, etc. Still very neat & clean from what I saw.

The south side of Vancouver ,Langley & White Rock are basically farming areas in tidal flats. At one point the altimeter on my GPS read -2 feet above sea level. Quite a change from 6300 ft two days ago.

Then waited in lin over an hour to cross into US. The checked me out good – took my passport card inside and ran a check on me since I was carrying a shotgun. I did not make any wisecracks about my strong Arabic accent. Anyway, the let me in.

Well, my intent was to go to Seattle. Well, I got down to the I-5, I -405 split and everything turned into 8 lane gridlock. So, I got off at the Lynwood exit to figure out where I wanted to go – well the answer was I did not want to see miles of traffic that badly – so I meandered back to Route 2 and headed east into the hinterlands. Much happier. Found a great little campsite at Alpine Falls in the Mt. Baker – Snoqualmie National Forest. Leo actually got to run off the leash tonite. Got lazy and heated up a can of Chef Boyardi ravioli on the hot car engine while I set up camp. Tomorrow, Grand Coulee Dam. Only 255.6 miles today, 47.44 N, 121.25 W

1 comment:

  1. Ho boy, living the life of Riley, ravioli in a can heated on the engine. What a splurge??? Karla

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