Traveling Johns

After such a late and spectacular evening in Vancouver, we probably would have been slept late and had a leisurely morning. But we had to pack up quickly and be out of the apartment by nine o’clock at the latest. We had made arrangements with the Dog Ranch for them to meet us with the dogs at the ferry dock. We planned to park the car at Horseshoe Bay and come over on the ferry as foot passengers. This would not save us all that much money, but it would save us a lot of time because we could return immediately and now wait an hour or more for the next crossing.

The plan worked perfectly. The morning was warm and clear, and watching the sea and the mountain seemed like being in an IMAX movie. At the dock, I spotted the dogs before they saw me. Their tails were wagging and I could immediately tell that they must have had a great time over the last two days.

Still, Edie was happy to see us, as was Eli.

On the way back, since we had the dogs, we had to stay down on the car deck. Since there weren’t all that many cars on this trip, that wasn’t a big deal because we were able to walk around easily. We talked to some other people with dogs and the time passed pleasantly.

The drive from Vancouver to Whistler along BC 99 is known as the Sea-to-Sky Highway. It is a spectacular drive along the edge of a fjord. You see the see below, tree-covered mountains above, and glaciers in the far distance. But it isn’t easy to photograph from a moving car, and most of the good vista points are on the other side of the highway, heading south. But we did find one place on our side of the road which gives you an idea of just how beautiful this area is.

Like the Columbia River Road, there are a number of waterfalls on this route. They’re also not easy to photograph. We stopped first at Shannon Falls. This waterfall is 1,099 feet high according to the official park information.

We also stopped at Brandywine Falls. It’s not nearly as high, but you can view the falls from a platform above. The dogs were bored by it, and I was not all that impressed either.

Not long after this we came into Whistler. Our first impression of this town was not all that positive. Whistler is not really a municipality; it is a commercial development. It is designed carefully, as these sorts of things usually are, but it is extraordinarily bland. It is split into two adjacent villages, north and south. These are joined by the “Village Stroll,” a wide pedestrian promenade leading to the chair lifts. On each side of the stroll there are shops and restaurants. It is basically just an open air mall like The Grove. Surrounding this retail area are four to seven story hotels. All of them have a bland modern Alpine look. Around this faux urban core are a number of condominium developments. All of them feature bland, two story townhouses in a variety of inoffensive styles. Parking is hidden towards the back of the development, and  driving in Whistler is discouraged. There are bike paths and buses, but easiest way to get from one part of the area to another is to walk down the “Village Stroll” with its many opportunities for impulse shopping and dining.

We arrive at our hotel early, and the room was not yet ready. So we walked to Long Lake – after having a somewhat arduous time trying to find legal street parking – and walked around with the dogs. There is a bike trail which circles the lake and small pedestrian trails right on the edge of the water.

One of the reasons for choosing this lake was that we knew that there was a dog beach there. It took us a while to find it, but once we did the dogs jumped right in – up to a point. John really wanted to get Eli to swim over to the platform to join the other dogs there. He went most of the way, then decided to head back to shore leaving John.

Edie never likes to get more than her legs wet, so she watched this whole episode carefully from the a few inches deep.

We had to walk around a bit before the dogs were dry enough to bring them into the hotel. Once we arrived, I sat down on the bed, just to test it out, you know, and before long I was asleep. John snapped this as I dozed. Thankfully, it’s not video so you don’t have to hear me snore!

Once I was awake, we explored Whistler Village with the idea of finding something for dinner. Whistler is full of “dog people” and lots of folk stopped and talked to us. We were delighted to find a family who also had a Bouvier. Unfortunately, we were so busy comparing notes that after they left we realized we forgot to take a picture.

Whistler was the site of the last Winter Olympics, and there are signs of this everywhere. The Olympic Emblem was near a concert stage at one end of the Village Stroll.

Despite all the opportunities for dining on the stroll, almost all of the outdoor area are enclosed and that means no dogs. We didn’t really have the heart to tie them up outside while ate some overpriced burger or steak inside, so the only place we could find to get something to eat was at Zog’s Dogs. This is basically a hot dog stand, but it did get a 90% “Like” on Urbanspoon. John ordered the signature hotdog covered with spaghetti sauce and mozzarella cheese. I decided that since we are in Canada, I ought to try poutine, the classic Quebec heart attack snack. Poutine consists of French fries covered with pork gravy and cheddar curds. Zog’s added a hot dog because they’re a hot dog stand. It was just as awful as I expected it would be, but now I can say I’ve had poutine.

Today was only full day without Edie and Eli, and doggone it, we missed ‘em! We kept walking down the street seeing other people with their dogs and thinking about ours. But we still had a very full and productive day without them.

We decided we had to do a little shopping. The SD card on my camera, which ought to hold about a thousand high resolution photos, has started to give us a “Card Full” error message after about a couple dozen photos. That’s really annoying, so we spent about twenty dollars for a new one. John and I both decided that a couple of the shirts I packed for the trip should officially be considered shmattes, and we should do some early back-to-school shopping. We tried to find places that were unusual or local, but Robson Street is dominated by big American chains, all the usual stores like Banana Republic or Express that you find in malls back in the U.S. Here, though, they were in old-fashioned storefronts on a busy city street. We picked up a couple shirts at the Gap.

We checked the ever-handy Urbanspoon for a good place for a Dim Sum lunch. It sent us to the Shanghai Chinese Bistro where we had an astonishingly good meal for only 20 dollars. Perhaps the best of all was the deep-fried tofu. Here they breaded the tofu in panko and immersed it in the hot oil only long enough for the crust to brown and the bean curd to warm. They sprinkled it with toasted sesame seeds. It was delicious!

Our big adventure for the day was going to the Museum of Anthropology on the campus of the University of British Columbia, about six miles from downtown. This is not a big museum, but it houses an incredible collection of the art of the native peoples of this area. The Coast Salish, Kwakwaka‘wakw, and Haida people are particularly well-represented. The building is one of the best examples of the concrete and glass architecture of the 1970’s.

We were lucky enough to arrive a few minutes before a scheduled guided tour. Our tour guide was quite knowledgeable, and she managed the group quite well, including keeping some young children interested and focused for most of the hour she spent with us. I can tell you from experience that this is not an easy thing to do! She explained the differences in artistic style among the different groups. The Haida tend to be the most abstract. The Kwakwaka‘wakw are the most colorful.

In addition to our guide’s excellent commentary, there were lots of interpretive materials in the museum which helped to place the pieces in their authentic setting. For example, the eagle above would have been placed at the entrance to a village.

There were a few modern pieces. This one was done by the famous Haida sculptor Bill Reid and it was commissioned by the museum. It shows how Raven helped create the Haida people. Our guide also drew our attention to the base of the sculpture. The museum was built on the site of World War II defense installation, and the sculpture sits where an anti-aircraft gun was once mounted.

It was a warm, sunny day so we decided to go to the beach after leaving the museum. Wreck Beach is located right by the museum. It is one of Vancouver’s longest stretches of sand, but it is mostly famous for being “clothing optional.” You have to walk down about 200 steps to get to the beach, but when you do you find yourself in another time.

Wreck Beach should be famous for being where the 1960’s are still alive. I had not seen so much tie dye in decades. Despite the “clothing optional” rule, there were not all that many naked people. Unfortunately most of those who were without their clothes were old enough to have grandchildren and they really should have kept them on.

The evening brought us our final night in Vancouver. We went down to Davie Street for dinner at a popular sushi place. I think it is popular mostly because it was pretty cheap; both of us were disappointed in our dinner. But sitting at the sushi bar we struck up a conversation with an American who worked up here for the Vancouver Opera. Leaving the restaurant, we headed to English Bay for another night in the fireworks competition. This time we did not try to get in the middle of the action right on First Beach. Instead, we sat on the seawall right at the foot of Nicola Street. This bit of public art always helps us to locate our street.

Tonight’s show was presented by Spain. It was pretty impressive, and the crowd around us cheered wildly at points. We could not hear the music very well from our perch on the seawall, but the views of the ships in the harbor illuminated by the light of the exploding skyrockets compensated for this.

Tomorrow, we’ll be picking up the dogs and heading to Whistler.

In doing some of the research for this trip, we had read about Bowen Island as a possible day trip from Vancouver. The guidebooks suggested that if you did not have time to see one of the Gulf Islands like Salt Spring or Galliano, you might want to go to Bowen Island instead. As we were reading up on Bowen Island, came across the Bowen Island Dog Ranch, a kind of camp for canines. We really had a day or so of things we wanted to do without the dogs, and it sounded like it might be fun for them to romp in the woods with other dogs for a couple days, so we made arrangements for them to stay at the Ranch. We had to get up reasonably early and drive to West Vancouver to catch the Ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Snug Cove.

The ferry ride was short, but not cheap. BC Ferries is never much of a bargain, but we were pretty appalled at paying over 50 dollars for a 15 minute minute trip, even if that included the return. We drove a few miles, er, kilometers, from the ferry dock to the ranch where we were met at the gate by the charming staff. They gave us back our leashes, since the dogs will not be on leash at any time during their stay, and gave us a tour of the facilities. They have a number of places where the dogs spend the night, but the most interesting were trailers that had been used by journalists during the recent Olympics. “They’re just the right size for dog kennels,” the owner told us, “and they were so cheap!” The dogs looked a little mournfully at us as we left them behind the gates, but I know they’re going to have a fantastic time.

There is some discussion of creating a national park on Bowen Island, as there is already a large regional park there and an environmental reserve. We walked around part of the Killarney Lake, though we did not do the entire circuit. The vegetation was incredibly lush, and you can tell that this is part of a temperate rain forest. Mosses grow on almost every surface, and ferns of all kinds grow on the forest floor under a dense cover of hemlock and cedar.

We drove back to Snug Harbor and parked our car in the ferry line. We looked in a few shops there, but there was not much of interest to us. Instead we walked over to the nearby stream. We learned from some of the provincial signage that this is a significant salmon spawning area. You can see the salmon ladder below.

It was great to just sit there an look over at the mainland where the snow still caps the mountain in August.

Our drive back to Vancouver was uneventful. Both of us were sleepy, and we took a nap. We returned to Denman Fitness where we again had Hector lead us through a really rigorous Pilates workout. The day had grown warm by this time, and the group exercise room was hotter still, so I began to wonder if this was sort of like that hot room yoga. But I definitely felt like I had worked all the muscles between my neck and my knees.

In the evening, we had tickets to Bard on the Beach. This is the summer Shakespeare festival in Vancouver. It is performed in circus-style tents on the shore of English Bay, right by the Vancouver Aquarium.

The tents are open in the back to reveal stunning views of the city and north Vancouver. Photography is prohibited inside the tent, so we had to take this picture surreptitiously while the ushers were looking the other way. It’s not a perfect shot, but it give you the idea of what it’s like inside one of the tents.

Our play was The Merchant of Venice. It’s one of Shakespeare’s most interesting plays, though the issue of anti-Semitism makes it one of the hardest for modern audiences. As the education director for the festival noted in her introductory remarks, “you can’t but be troubled that this was the Shakespeare play most produced in Nazi Germany.” This production seemed to try to deal with the issue by making almost all the characters both sympathetic and unsympathetic at the same time. Shylock was depicted as both a villain and a victim, and neither Portia nor Bassanio, shown in the publicity still below, were totally likeable.

Like a few modern productions, this one suggested that Antonio lent the money to Bassanio because he was in love with him, a modern gloss that I think adds nothing in particular to the play. The princes of Morocco and Aragon, the failed suitors for Portia, were played for maximum comic effect, and those scenes were perhaps the most memorable for me of this production.

Tomorrow will be our day for museums and other places where dogs would be unwelcome. I am sure my boy and my girl are having a great time. But will they send a postcard from camp?

Throughout most parts of Canada, the first Monday in August is a civic holiday. The different provinces and territories  have different names for it. Manitoba, Nunavut, and the Northwest Territories simply call it “Civic Holiday”; Alberta refers to it as “Alberta Heritage Day”; Ontario names it “Simcoe Day” after an an early governor of the province; while Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, like British Columbia, add the word “Day” to the name of the province to create the name of the holiday. Since summer is all too short in this northern country, I think that the August holiday really celebrates the sunny days which will soon fade as winter approaches. Canadians seem to understand this and they spend the day on beach or the backyard enjoying the warmth while they have it.

“When in Rome, do as the Romans” and when in Canada, do as the Canadians. We too spent the day outside, doing not that much, but enjoying a warm, lazy summer day. We figured that Granville Island would be a good place to do that. Earlier on this trip when we went to Granville Island to go to the market there, we drove over and spent a good deal of time trying to find a parking space. We figured it would be even harder today to find a parking space on the island so we decided to take one of ferry boats instead. We caught the ferry right at the foot of the Burrard Bridge.

One of the great features of these ferries is that they take dogs, even large ones like ours, for free. And, as usual, the dogs sparked conversations with our fellow passengers, people who otherwise probably might not have spoken to us. There are some difficult moments when traveling with animals, but they help you meet other travelers and the residents.

John had seen an advertisement for a free, outside youth production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. We picked some seats far to the side so the dogs would not annoy anyone in the audience. That made it a little hard to hear at times. The director had made some interesting choices. This production was the culminating project of a summer Shakespeare program, and not surprisingly there were probably more girls than boys in the class. Julius Caesar, however, has few roles for women, and even those that are in the play, like Calpurnia or Brutus’s wife, have relatively few lines. So the director chose to change some of the characters like Cassius and Mark Antony into women. That is Cassius in the red dress below.

This worked better than you might have expected, and was the most interesting part of this student production. More predictable, and less interesting, was the decision to set it in the 1930’s. Snippets from the Godfather soundtrack played in the background, though some of the costume choices suggested fascist Italy more than gangland New York.

The dogs were a little restless, so we did not stay for the second act. Instead, we walked over to the market area where one of the local opera companies was doing a concert. Two singers, one soprano and the baritone below, did some of the more famous arias from various operas with a keyboard accompaniment. They were quite good, and we had some lunch listening to them sing.

We took the ferry back to town. The ferry stop in West End is right next to one of Vancouver’s dog beaches. So we rewarded the dogs for their patience during Shakespeare with some off-leash time in the water.

Back at the apartment, the canines had kibble and the humans had sandwiches. In the evening, we went to a local theater to see Stupid, Crazy Love. We were entertained, but neither of us thought it a particularly memorable movie.

Tomorrow, the dogs leave for camp.

Our day again started a little late since we had been up late for the fireworks. John surprised me by wanting to go the the service at Christ Church Cathedral. They have a fine choir here, but they were off for the summer and this week’s musicians were a country-folk group. So the introit was a blues-tinted version of “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” not the usual fare for the spiritual offspring of the Church of England.

Today is Pride Day in Vancouver. The first lesbian and gay pride celebrations were not about pride or celebration. These commemorations of the Stonewall Riots were called “Liberation Day” or “Freedom Day” and were strongly political protests against legal discrimination. The first Freedom Day I remember in San Francisco came just after Governor George Deukmejian had vetoed AB 1, a measure which only sought to end legal discrimination in employment. The pink triangle, the emblem that the Nazis made gay prisoners wear in the death camps, was the most common symbol to be seen. Today the political environment is different – though not quite as different as most of us in places like California or the northeast think it is. The strident political rhetoric has faded somewhat, and the pink triangle has been replaced by the rainbow flag.

Here in Vancouver, the date has no connection with the Stonewall Riots. Instead, it comes right before the BC Day celebration, a provincial holiday which also lacks connection to any historical event. The themes of struggling for rights and solidarity with other struggling for freedom which dominated the first parades in New York and San Francisco are almost completely absent. Instead, Pride here is a community celebration of tolerance and inclusion. Now I am completely in favor of tolerance and inclusion. I am glad that the movement has made so much progress in places like Vancouver. But there is a smugness, a sense of superiority and self-congratulation which is also a little annoying. It is the most irritating characteristic of Canadians.

Pride Day gives many community groups who have no particular connection with the LGBT community a chance to march. These colorfully-clad marchers are Filipinos who celebrate the Ati-Atihan festival. In the Philippines, this is held in January. I am not sure if they march around in this regalia in the cold wet weather of January here. But I somehow doubt it.

The parade also gives banks and other companies an opportunity for some inexpensive advertising. There was nothing worth photographing about people in yellow tee-shirts holding signs declaring that “Bank of Montreal supports diversity.” On the other hand, the Trojan people – and not the ones from USC – did made for some good photographs.

The closest to political rhetoric came from a few anti-circumcision and animal rights groups. I am sure that Ellen’s chickens would have supported this group.

The provincial government had the most elaborate float, one I suspect that they recycle for many events. I suppose I am harping on this theme of a nanny state, but I found the exhortation to “Work Safe” a little irritating. Most industrial accidents are the result of bad management practices, not workers deciding that it would be amusing to risk life-long disability. Still, had it been made of flowers, I suppose thing one might have won a lesser prize at the Tournament of Roses.

Amid all this high-mindedness, it was refreshing to see something vaguely suggestive.

The parade ended at Sunset Beach on English Bay. Here there were lots of booths from various companies and community groups. There was also a stage where different musical acts performed. Unlike Los Angeles, where tickets are required to enter the festival area, this was free. Consumption of alcohol, however, was strictly controlled in a separate beer garden area.

Although the morning had been overcast, the afternoon was sunny and warm. So warm that John decided that it was time for the dogs to get cool.

The dogs found lots of fans as they walked through the festival grounds. Edie, in particular, had lots of guys willing to pose with her.

Even the Trojans could not resist her charms.

In the evening, we left the dogs at the apartment while we went to see a movie. John had never seen the Jean Cocteau Orpheus in a theater. He had tried to watch it on television, but it never made much sense to him. So when we discovered it was playing at the new home of the Vancouver International Film Festival, we decided to go see it.

It didn’t make anymore sense on a big screen with a good sound system. Bosley Crowther, the crotchety film critic for the New York Times in the post-war years, observed that the movie was more “Morpheus than Orpheus.” John and I both nodded off at points during the film so I guess we would have to agree.

We all slept in late this morning, including the dogs. I am usually up by five in the morning, but this morning when I turned over and looked at the clock it read 8:45. I tossed some clothes on and took the animals out to do what they needed to do. John slept for about 45 minutes more.

We had read about a community pancake breakfast, a fundraiser for Vancouver Pride. It sounded like fun, so we went down to Davie Street to have something to eat. The pancakes and sausage were great, and since the recommended donation was only 2 dollars, it was just as easy on the budget as it was delicious to the taste. We sat at long tables, and we chatted with some of the people seated with us as well as a couple of women from from Calgary who stopped by to ask us about the dogs.

After breakfast, John surprised me when he said that he wanted to do the walk around Stanley Park that the dogs and I had made yesterday. So we walked back to the hotel to pick up our doggie canteen and to pick up a couple other things, and then we strolled down Barclay Street and Denman Street to the entrance of the park. Unlike the cloudy morning we had yesterday, today was warm and brilliantly sunny.

Unlike yesterday, when my goal was to complete my circuit around the park as fast as possible, we took the walk at a leisurely pace and stopped to look at everything interesting. We also stopped while Miss Edie smelled everything interesting! Of little interest to the dogs were of couple of cricket matches being played. My first thought was, “Oh, so British!” but when we looked closer we discovered that almost all the players were Indian or Pakistani.

So were most of the fans who were watching from the shade of nearby trees.

Near the Indians playing cricket, were the Totem Poles, reminders that the other Indians, the people Canadians now call “First Nations” once made this place their home. Most of the native peoples were driven from their villages when various lumber companies cut down the trees in the area and when the Royal Navy decided to make this area its headquarters. A few Squamish people remained here after the establishment of the park, but they were finally convinced to sell their homes. The government burned the last authentic remains of native culture, and then erected these totem poles to honor the people whose lives they had destroyed.

On the seawall there is also a replica of the masthead of the RMS Empress of Japan. Despite the name and the dragon motif, there is nothing authentically Asian about this. The Empress of Japan was a ship built in England in 1890 for the Canadian Pacific Railroad designed to carry passengers and mail between western Canada and Hong Kong. Since this way the era in which the English had just given Victoria the title of “Empress of India,” I wonder if the British in their imperial lunacy had decided it was only time before they made Japan part of their empire, too? The dogs did not seem to find the fiberglass replica either historic or interesting.

A little further down the path is a statue called simply Girl in a Wetsuit. It’s a completely unremarkable piece of public art from the 1970’s. The best part of it was that it seemed to make tourists who passed by pose for pictures.

Around this time, the dogs were getting pretty hot and John decided to cool them off. There were signs everywhere warning that dogs were not allowed on the beach subject to a 2.000 dollar fine. But we have both noticed that while there are lots of laws and regulations in Vancouver, there seems to be little effort to enforce them. So we found a rocky spot where nobody was around and he doused them with some cool sea water. They seemed to like that.

We soon came upon Siwash Rock, another Stanley Park landmark. There is a plaque here commemorating some young man who dove from the top of the rock to his death below because he did not notice it was low tide. I suspect the problem was more likely inebriation than a failure to consult the tide tables.

After the rock, we came to Third Beach. This is the largest and sandiest of the the three beaches in the park and it was packed with people on this warm day. The beach was also loaded with signs telling you what you should and should not do. You should wear a hat. You should wear sunscreen with a high SPF. You may not drink alcohol. You may not have inflatables. You may not smoke. Looking at the crowd assembled, the most whites I had ever seen in any spot in Vancouver, I observed few hats. I smelled a lot of sunscreen, though I could not tell if it was high SPF or not. I saw a number of people drinking beer. I saw several inflatables. And there were, pretty typical for Vancouver, lots of people smoking. I am not exactly sure of what value there is in passing regulations that you have no intention of enforcing.

After Third Beach, which directly faces the Strait of George, the path veers east and now you face English Bay.  After a short walk, we came to Second Beach. There is a huge pool here, and it seems to be the most popular spot for families. It was also much more multicultural than Third Beach, and I observed lots of Asians and Eastern Europeans here. The Poles and Russians have an interesting beach look as you can see in the picture below.

On our way back, we found a young man who was selling lemonade to help raise money for tsunami relief.

Back at the apartment, John made a nice supper of us from our Granville Public Market purchases. The salami was particularly delicious.

Every year since 1990 there has been an international fireworks competition in Vancouver.  Now called the Celebration of Light, three countries stage elaborate fireworks shows set to music which is broadcast by a local radio station. John and I had seen one of the first of these the first time we came to Vancouver for a brief visit in the early 1990’s. One of the reasons for picking this week to come to British Columbia was so we could see this again.

Vancouver is still recovering from the riots that followed the Stanley Cup game earlier this year. Now by Los Angeles standards, this was hardly a riot. One person died, a few cars were burned, and a bunch of shop windows were smashed. Seems like a pretty ordinary day in South LA. But the locals here were horrified by what they saw as a descent into Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, so the police presence was pretty strong even if they did not seem to be really doing anything. John snapped this artsy shot as we watched people stroll down Davie Street.

Tonight’s show was presented by China, and with such a large Chinese population here, it seemed like they had almost a hometown advantage in the competition. The music was pretty uninteresting – it sounded for the most part like a bad film score – but the pyrotechnics are amazing.

As we came home, it began to rain. How perfect that they rain waited until the fireworks were over.

After three days when we had to get up, had to get packed, had to get out, and had to get some place by some time we found the freedom of our first day in Canada a little bewildering. John and I found it hard to focus on what we wanted to do first. The dogs and I seemed a little restless, so I suggested doing to complete circuit around Stanley Park on the seawall. John liked the idea, but was not sure his knee – he is still recovering from knee surgery – would like it. So I left him to explore West End and the dogs and I walked around the park.

For those who have not yet been to Vancouver, Stanley Park is the jewel of this beautiful city. Central Vancouver is a peninsula, and Stanley Park is the tip of that peninsula as it juts into the Straight of Georgia. Imagine Central Park moved from the middle of Manhattan to occupy the area from the Battery all the way to Midtown. A road goes around the edge of the park, and a low seawall protects the road. I think the road may once have been meant for cars, but today it is separated into two sections, one for pedestrians and another for cyclists. There are no cars in sight, only rocky beaches on one side and granite cliffs covered with cedar trees on the other. Talking pictures with two dogs is not easy, so I left the camera at home. Here are some stock photos I found on Google Images which give some idea of where the dogs and I were.

The seawall walk is a bit over 6 miles long, and our apartment is probably about a mile from the park. So altogether the dogs and I put in about 8 miles on this trip. I was a cool, overcast morning, so Edie did not complain about the heat like she sometimes does. We kept up a pretty brisk pace, and John was surprised when we were back in a little over two hours. I was still feeling pretty strong, but the animals, who are younger than me even in their dog years, seemed exhausted when we came back to the apartment.

In the afternoon, John and I went to Granville Island to go to the market there. This is a pricy place to get food, but the stuff they have there is just terrific and it’s a fun place to shop.

By this time it was after three o’clock, and unbelievably enough, we hadn’t had a thing to eat all day. So we found an outside restaurant there. I had fish and chip (the fish was great, the chips mediocre) and John had something which looked like a can of cat food mixed with weeds, but he assured me it was quite good.

Returning to the West End, we took a walk with the dogs to let them stretch their aching legs and answer Nature’s call. This neighborhood is a mixture of high-rise apartment buildings, smaller, older apartments, and a few single family houses. Once there had only been houses here, and a small park near us has some of these preserved to show what Vancouver was like around 1900.

I though this shot John did nicely juxtaposed the old and the new. I vote for the old!

The dogs were thoroughly and quite sensibly exhausted by this time, but the human were eager for more. One of the amenities offered by our landlord is free access to a  local gym. John went there last year, but I did not. This time he checked out their group classes and discovered that they were offering mat Pilates. So I figured I’d go.

The facilities were pretty tired. It looked like it had been built around 1985 right at the height of the racquetball craze. There were several courts there, and not a soul playing on any of them. In fact, it didn’t look like anybody had played on them for some time. The weights equipment looked similarly clunky and dated. It’s funny. I don’t normally think of styles in exercise equipment, but I guess they exist. The Pilates class itself was great. Our instructor was named Hector. Coming from LA I just assumed that he was Hispanic, but he proved to be a small Chinese man. His accent made him occasionally hard to follow, but he was a superb instructor who really pushed all of us to do some of the hardest positions correctly. I really felt every muscle in my core when I left.

Before we left home, John had done some reading about the theater offering this summer in Vancouver. One of the plays that had received good reviews was A Closer Walk with Patsy Cline. John bought us tickets. It was the only disappointment of the day.

Patsy Cline is not somebody I grew up listening to, though I did know a couple of her hit songs. John was a lot more familiar with her than I was. All I can say is that she had to be a more interesting person than this revue – I really can’t call it a play – depicted her. Closer Walk is more hagiography than biography. In fact, after her death in the plane crash Patsy walks back on stage where she rises up on a hydraulic lift as the voice of a radio announcer says “God needed another star” or some similarly stupid line. Despite the wretched writing, the woman who played Patsy had a great contralto voice and the band was also quite good.

We finished the evening by going down to Davie Street where there was a street party, one of the events in the Pride weekend. I had no great expectations for this, and I was not disappointed. It had the usual number of marginally talented people singing covers of disco hits from the seventies and pop hits from the eighties and nineties. If you ever doubt the talent of Donna Summer all you have to do is listen to somebody pretending to be Donna Summer and she seems positively brilliant. After about a half hour of this, we stopped in a cheap Vietnamese restaurant and had some Pho. Unlike the faux disco on the street behind us, the noodle soup was truly “fabulous!”

This was the worst day of traveling, but we are grateful that it will be our last day in the car for a week.

The day began pleasantly enough at Ellen’s house.

Ellen is not only a wonderful organic gardener, but she has her own chickens in the back yard.

So breakfast on Sherman Street always includes the freshest and most delicious eggs you can imagine. Today,  I decided that poached eggs on top of fresh avocado on top of toast made from Dave’s Killer Bread would be perfect. And it was!

Ellen is teaching summer session this year, so she took off before we did. I gave her dog a walk along with the two of mine. I’m sure somebody supposed that somebody riding a bike past me would have assumed that I was just a professional dog walker with three dogs and a couple bags of poop. Of course, the way things are going, pretty soon dog walking may pay better than the Board of Education does.

We locked up the house, put our two dogs in the car, and started out of town. As we crossed the Columbia River into Washington, John joked, “I just felt the sales tax go up and the IQs go down.” I was going to protest that Washington is the home of Microsoft, but then remembering Windows Vista I decided that he was probably right.

Daniel, our trusty GPS, was not at his most helpful today. He had us leave the freeway about 60 miles before Tacoma and drive down state route this and county route that. It was probably slightly shorter for total miles, but it had to have added at least 30 minutes to the trip. And Danny is usually so dependable.

We thought we were free and clear when we passed Seattle, but our traffic woes were only beginning. You know the old joke that in Chicago there are two seasons, winter and road repair? Evidently the same is true in Washington. They decided that highway 5 near Bellingham needed to be repaved and we crawled along as the dogs whimpered and whined. I suppose listening to them complain was karmic revenge for all the times I whined “Are we there yet?” when I was traveling with my parents.

Once at the border, we again thought we were lucky because there was virtually no wait. We called our landlord in Vancouver – while we still had an AT&T signal – to say we’d be there soon. We were so wrong.

The Fraser River is the largest river in British Columbia. Its estuary forms a good natural harbor, so it is an important port. As such, somebody thought in the 1950’s that a tunnel would be better than a bridge to allow river traffic. Well, the tunnel they build in 1959 may have been sufficient for the traffic of that era, but today it is woefully inadequate – to put it mildly. John and I spent close to an hour stuck there as 5 lanes to traffic had to merge into 1 lane crossing northbound under the river. We were there for so long that people left their cars and walked around. John did too, snapping this photo.

We did finally make it into town, though our landlord had give up on us and put the key under a flower pot. We are staying at the same apartment in West End where we stayed last time.

And why not? The apartment is reasonably priced, has a kitchen and a separate bedroom, takes dogs, and it in just about the most interesting neighborhood in Vancouver.

We unpacked the car and went for a walk. After a long day in the moving crate, we figured that the dogs needed to run free a bit. There’s an off-leash park nearby, and we took them there for some canine socializing. For the humans, it made for some fascinating people watching, too.

From there, we continued down toward Davies Street where we found a place where we could have dinner with the dogs on the sidewalk.

And from there we walked down to English Bay. All these references to England and the British names seem so ironic because almost everybody you see in Vancouver seems to hail from China or south Asia. The people you see who look European are almost invariably speaking some kind of Slavic language.

We found an empty beach and watched people walk by and the sun set.

One of our real reasons for coming this week to Vancouver is to see the “Festival of Light,” an international fireworks competition.  The barge in the bay is already in place for it.

Tomorrow, only pedestrian adventures!

The first day of traveling seems like an adventure. The second day begins to seem like work. Neither the children of Israel nor Odysseus’s crew complained on the first day, much less rebelled. After a few days on the road, however, things started to change…. Fortunately, though our second day of traveling was just about as long as the first, we had no grumbling from humans or canines. In fact, the dogs had a much better time on the second day.

Our day began at the Mount Shasta Ranch Bed and Breakfast with a hearty ranch breakfast. By about nine thirty, we were on the road. Highway 5, heading north from Mt Shasta towards the Siskiyou Pass, cuts through a classic western landscape where cattle roam through grasslands separated into enormous pastures by split rail fences. But the pastoral scene barely disguises the violent volcanic past. Black, basalt lava flows cut through the plains like enormous scars and cows wander past the jagged remnants of ancient volcanoes.

Nearly at the top of the pass, around 4300 feet, you see the sign that says “Welcome to Oregon.” From this point, the highway drops rapidly towards the Rogue River Valley, and all the signs telling truckers about what to do if their brakes fail makes this a particularly nervous stretch of road. But before long the small city of Ashland appears, home of one of the Northwest’s best dog parks. We have done this drive enough times that the moment we pull off the highway onto Siskiyou Boulevard the dogs know where they are going and the tails start wagging wildly.

In most respects, the Ashland Dog Park is not particularly exceptional. There are a couple acres or so of well-worn grass surrounded by the usual cyclone fencing. There are nice views of the city and Mount Ashland, still frosted at the top with a bit of snow, but similar vistas can be had from any lot in the town. No, what makes the Ashland Dog Park so wonderful is Bear Creek.  The dogs rushed right away to the gate on the far side of the park which leads to this rivulet. Bear Creek is no more than about 18 inches deep, and for dogs, that’s just about perfect. The water is cool, but not too cold, and it is crystal clear. Canine paradise!

Like any dog park, there other bowls filled with water for drinking and a few old tubs for dogs to wash off the dirt. John snapped this picture, one of my favorites of the trip so far.

The dogs would have stayed here for the rest of the day. But we knew we still had about five hours of driving before we made it to Portland, so once they were reasonably dry, we piled them back into the car and found our way back to the highway.

Southern Oregon is monotonously beautiful. Leaving the dry savannah of the Rogue Valley, the road climbs again into the Cascades. The granite mountains are covered with Douglas Fir and other conifers. Almost any scene of this montane forest is lovely, but as the road winds among the peaks you find yourself thinking, “Aren’t we almost to Eugene?” And then you see a sign which reminds you that there are at least a couple more hours before you arrive in the Willamette Valley.

We stopped in Roseburg for lunch. Roseburg is an old settlement and was for a while a prosperous timber city. Its downtown was famously destroyed in 1959 when a truck loaded with dynamite caught fire. The center of the city was rebuilt, but it lacks much charm and the recession has taken a toll. Many of storefronts were empty, though the Republican Party had taken charge of vacant shop, a reminder that places like Douglas County are bastions of right-wing politics in a distinctly liberal state.

We didn’t stop after that until we came to Portland. Traffic was pretty terrible on the 5 as we approached Washington County. Not everybody in Portland takes the Trimet or rides a bike. Ellen called to ask where we were, and when she discovered we were just about to come into the city, she suggested we stop by her office and pick her up. We cheerfully agreed.

We had a lovely evening with Ellen. Mike is in California working with irrigation districts to help control zebra mussels. We walked the dogs, cooked dinner, drank wine and talked. Rafiki, Ellen’s dog, seemed quite happy to see her California cousins again.

Tomorrow will be our last big driving day for a while as we leave for Vancouver.

The great travel narratives do not discuss traffic. We will never know if the road out of Ur was congested when Abraham left his hometown, not did Chaucer’s pilgrims seem to complain about too many people or donkeys on the road to Canterbury. But we live in Los Angeles, and the apprehension of being stuck pointlessly on a highway is as deeply ingrained in us as ancient sailors feared falling off the edge of a flat world. So, we packed our bags yesterday, packed the car last night, and we were traveling west on the Santa Monica Freeway not long after the sun had risen.

Our strategy worked, and we sailed north on the San Diego Freeway passing the remnants of the Mulholland Bridge, scene of last week’s not-so-apocalyptic “Carmageddon.”  Both dogs were attentive but calm. Edie is always that way in the car, but I had the foresight to give Eli one of his “doggie downers” before we left this morning. Without canine sedation, Eli becomes so excited when we start a big trip that he pants, whimpers, and tries to get in the driver’s seat. With the help of the medication, he was pretty docile. But, after driving for 90 minutes or so up through the Grapevine, we figured that even sedated dogs might like a break. So we stopped at Fort Tejon State Historic Park.

Fort Tejon was established shortly after the Gold Rush, ostensibly to protect the native peoples of the San Joaquin valley from land-hungry whites. The Fort was famous for a couple things. First, the great earthquake of 1857 was named for the fort, although the epicenter was probably much farther north. Secondly, in the 1850’s, Jefferson Davis, then Secretary of War in the Pierce administration, decided that camels might work well in the arid territories newly acquired from Mexico. A number of those camels were sent to Fort Tejon, though the poor beasts were in fact ill-suited to the terrain. Today, two other beasts found the grassy field around the reconstructed buildings a delightful place to get a little exercise, and to do what dogs usually do after they’ve been stuck in a car for a while.

From Fort Tejon the highways descends rapidly into the San Joaquin Valley. This is surely one of the least interesting stretches of highway in the United States. John and I took turns driving. To relieve the tedium, we plugged the iPhone into the car’s sound system and started listening to The Help. It’s a good car book so far. It’s interesting enough, but does not require really intense concentration to follow the story. So, listening to the story of black maids and a white journalist in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963 the hours on Highway 5 passed pleasantly enough.

We arrived Sacramento a little after noon. We made plans with our friend Dan to meet for lunch. Dan has a sweet little townhouse on Q Street. He has done an amazing job creating a lovely garden on the patio. I wish this picture did it justice. Sometimes it’s just impossible to get the lighting right.

On the way to lunch, we passed by Sacramento’s most famous sight. The dogs were interested more in finding possible messes on the lawn than in contemplating that mess that is our state’s budget process.

We had  a pleasant meal with Dan on the patio of the Esquire Grill. Dan works as a bartender in Sacramento, and he has lots of a great stories about the governors, assemblymen, and lobbyists.

From Sacramento, we headed north on Highway 5 towards Mt Shasta. The Sacramento Valley is smaller and somewhat more attractive than the San Joaquin. Still, it would be a stretch to call this an interesting drive either, so we settled down to listening again to The Help. Around six in the evening, we pulled into the town of Mt Shasta, named for California’s largest volcano.

This is an odd part of the state. Not that long ago, it was the center of an active lumber industry, and many of those lumbermen are still around trying to make ends meet the best they can. There is also no shortage of young environmentalists, freshly minted from Davis or Berkeley, clad in Columbia sportswear with kayaks strapped to the roof of their hybrid cars. You see signs around here still demanding the Obama “Produce the Birth Certificate!” Meanwhile, another group here earnestly believes that Mount Shasta is the home of the Lemurian people who fled here to create the subterranean city of Telos.

We’ve stayed in Mt Shasta before at one of the chain motels near the center of town. This time we decided to try something different and we chose the Mount Shasta Ranch Bed and Breakfast. I had my doubts when John made this choice, but it is a really sweet place. It’s located a couple miles out of town in an old farm house with a very large lawn.

It has a wonderful front porch we looks out at the great snow-covered volcanic peak.

After we settled into our new accommodations and had a little snack, we decided to take the dogs to nearby Lake Siskiyou. They ran through the woods and fields and splashed happily in the water.

The Sacramento River flows out of the lake, and we stopped by the edge of the river on a whim. We found that on the rocky shores of the river people had arranged the stones into the most astonishing rock piles. Who knows? Maybe it was the Lemurians who did it.

Tomorrow, on to Portland.