Vancouver

On Thursday, I took Genny, Jason, and Michael into Vancouver to visit the science museum there. It was a fabulous place, full of hands on activities. We got there around 1:30 to find out that they closed at 4. They enjoyed every minute, and I was threatening to leave them overnight, because I couldn't get them to go! Mario and Ryan were running around the city visiting hotels, so we took the "Skytrain" - the local rapid transit that was an easy way to get from where we were staying to where we wanted to go.

They had so much fun at the museum, that when we went back into Vancouver for the day on Saturday, it was our first stop. We spent another 2 hours there, and I think we probably could have stayed a few more, but we wanted to see more of the city and get some lunch.

We took the "Seabus" - the continuation of the train across the harbor, to Lonsdale Quay, in North Vancouver. They had a nice market there, with a food court for lunch. After the trip back across the bay, we made a stop at the Spy Store (nope, didn't find any spies there!), we headed back to the RV.

 

Today is Sunday, and we are now back in the US for the remainder of our trip. It seems a bit bizarre; we've logged over 8,000 miles out of the expected 14,000, in only three of our ten months! So I guess now we get to slow down the pace.

Sea to Sky Highway to Vancouver

So we made it to our last long trek, the Sea to Sky Highway to Vancouver.  We had a choice of taking the regular highway, or this very scenic route, which of course we chose.  The difference in mileage actually said about 15 miles shorter on the Sea to Sky, and showed about the same time to drive.  I had heard that there were a lot of twists and turns, but again, Google maps said they were basically the same, time and mileage wise....heh heh heh!

We started off quite well, and it was a beautiful drive, but about 50 miles in we did hit some "twists and turns", make that hairpin twists and turns!  Oh, and did I mention the 14% grades???  Yeah, that's pretty steep in a 33 foot motorhome.  Up AND down, again and again, this time 11%, the next 13%...for about 50 miles.  Those 50 miles to us 3 hours by themselves!  Well, again, at least the scenery was spectacular!  Here's a sampling:

It was well worth it, and I would do it again, but probably not all in one day.  It took us about 9 hours to drive.  We were quite tired (Mario especially) when we got into Vancouver that night.  So now we've completed about 8,000 of the 14,000 total miles we expect to log on this trip.  In less than three months!  So I guess we're going to be taking it much more slowly for then next 7 months!  The park in Vancouver has an indoor pool, so we've taken advantage of it.  Here are some photos of Mario playing around with the kids:

Tomorrow I'm taking Genny, Jason, and Michael to the Science museum here, should be a lot of fun.  Mario and Ryan will be going out to hotels.  On Saturday we're all going downtown to explore, so I should have some more photos by then.  Sunday we leave for Portland, Oregon, our first stop back in the US!