Colorado Cruiser: Vancouver British Columbia Day 3

Tourist Attractions around Vancouver

Today was our real tourist attractions day. We started by fighting our way north out of the city toward Calipano Gorge Bridge. It's only about 10 miles out of town. Around 1880 a man bought the land and put a rope bridge over the gorge. People started coming to visit the spot, and soon it was a major attraction.

I can say it was a great way to spend a large part of a day and well worth the money. We took the little intro tour with all the history. I enjoyed it, but I think Mike would have walked on past.

We didn't start with the bridge because a huge tour group was just starting to cross when we got there. So instead, we took the Cliffwalk. This is a solid steel walkway that's been tacked along the cliff face (down the cliff about 30 feet) and runs for about 400 feet. At one point, the walk curves out and away from the cliff in a big 60 foot arc. It gives some great views down to the river below.

We spent about 20 minutes on the Cliffwalk, both because it's beautiful, and because a small group of Japanese men were "filming" something on the walk. They kept filming and one man kept telling me something as I walked toward him. It was causing a large jam up and I don't think he was happy with whatever I was doing. I really didn't care and just walked along and past them.

Everyone on the walk was trying to get pictures of everything and it quickly became common for someone to stop and block the walkway, their friend would keep going for a few seconds, then turn and pose for a picture. Getting that gap to open up for a picture was a very tricky thing with so many people. Mike and I did the same, except that Mike did NOT want me blocking traffic so I could take a picture of him. I think he must be some kind of professional killer that doesn't want his picture ever to be taken or he'd have to kill someone. That, or he's just a stuffy grump-head.

Anyway, after the Cliffwalk, we wound our way back to the bridge and began the crossing. The bridge really does tilt and sway allot while people are moving around. About 80% of the people on the bridge were going the same direction we were, so they were all standing on the right side, which meant the whole bridge was canted about 5 degrees to the right and freaking allot of people out. It was un-nerving but not really scary, unless that sort of thing really freaks you out.

We moved along slowly because of constant stops to get pictures and the occasional squeal of fright from some of the people. Mike and I did our own share of picture taking and traffic congestion as we went.

It was very pretty and kind of fun to walk over on the bridge despite the bridge galloping under us.

Once on the far side we looked around for more things to see and do. We heard something about falcons and birds of prey, so we wandered over to see those. There were a few people in an area holding birds. The falcon was the biggest and prettiest, so we spent a while talking to her. She asked us to guess how heavy the bird was. Mike said "8 pounds" and the woman coughed and said "what if I asked you how many grams the bird weighted?". We're in Canada, they're metric, DUH.

After the birds, we took a long rambling walk through the forest on raised wooden paths with railings. We descended a bit into the gorge, but not far. We saw great views of the bridge and the river and had a good workout descending and climbing steps.

At the end we climbed up into the trees and took another set of raised paths, but this time from tree to tree. It was beautiful.

The whole park is setup to a very high quality. Much better than even Yellowstone or suck. It's very child safe. You could let little kids walk on any of this stuff without any worries other than what you'd normally worry about stairs. There's no way to fall off the bridge or walkways because they're all fully screened to about 4 foot high (over a meter). Nothing is wobbly or loose, except of course the bridge and tree paths that are intentionally bouncy and sway. This is one of the best nature excursions I've ever been to. More than enough to occupy kids for hours.

I was huffing and puffing by the time we'd finished the forest walk and the elevated tree walk. We decided it was time for lunch, so we headed back to the bridge to cross back over to restaurants on the far side. This time I decided to carry my iPhone across and video the experience. It started as a great video until a woman lost her balance and bumped me hard. I had to grab her which meant I switched the grip on the camera and wound up with my thumb partially covering the lens. Oh well, it's still better than nothing.

Mike was all for leaving and finding a good restaurant for lunch, but I preferred to stay and eat here. The food was much better than I'd thought. Mike got a smokey and I got a coconut shrimp sandwich. I got fries and Mike got poutine.

Let me explain about poutine. It's a Canadian dish that's allot like chili cheese fries, except they use gravy rather than chili, and good cheese rather than kraft cheese like substance. So fries, cheese, and gravy. It was pretty good.

The guy who took our order neglected to tell us that my sandwich and Mike's hotdog already came with fries (and we neglected to bother reading the menu), so we had massive amounts of fries.

After lunch we did the Cliffwalk again, but this time without the Japanese men trying to video us. As we neared the end, we spotted a huge eagle in a tree on the far side of the canyon. We stood watching for several minutes until it launched itself into the air and flew off. None of us got pictures of it's flight, how dumb is that.

Grouse Mountain

It was time to leave Capilano and head farther up to Grouse Mountain. It's a ski resort in the winter with one of the tallest gondolas in the world. It took us from near sea level to over 4,000 feet in about 6 minutes. It was fast and very cool.

At the top of the mountain we walked over to see a rather corny lumberjack competition. The lumberjack skills were ok, but the show was a very typical hokey series of canned jokes and staged one liners. It was fun for 30 minutes and they really did chop logs through in 20 seconds, climb 60 foot trees and then virtually fall coming back down. It all culminated with a "member of the audience" accidentally climbing a tree and falling off, only to be attached to a zip line and go sailing off into the distance. Like I said, hoakey but fun.

Next we took another chair lift even further up the mountain to better views. As we ascended, we saw a woman climbing up the hill. Our lift was going so slow that she was nearly going up as fast as us. I think I'd take the entire day to climb this hill with as many stops for a breather as I'd need.

We did hike a bit further up the hill to a huge windmill that is also an observation deck. It's called the "Eye of the Wind". We took the elevator up the center of the windmill to a big bubble where we could walk around and take pictures. I couldn't get very good pictures shooting through the glass but it was a great view. There was no wind, so the blades weren't swinging. The girl at the top said that it we could move as much as a meter back and forth when the blades are in action. I was so sorry to miss that part of it.

From the Eye of the Wind we descended and walked back to the chairlift and took that back to the original mountain. There was a grizzly bear habitat and as we got near the bottom of the chairlift, we could see the bears were out, so we walked over to take a look at them along with every other person on the mountain. It felt much like Yellowstone..... HEY LOOK!! A BEAR!! LETS GO POKE IT!!!

Really, there was a guy reaching over the barrier, across the gap, and through the electrified fence trying to poke something to the bear. What an absolute moron and firm proof of Darwin's theories.

We bear watched and oohed and aahhhed with everyone else as the bears did nothing much more than scratch themselves.

Finally it was time to go.

We crammed onto the gondola with 35 of our closest friends and rode back down the hill.

We hit a huge amount of traffic trying to get back into Vancouver. Just before we got on the bridge back, they had 5 lanes merge all the way down to 1 lane. It took us 20 minutes to get merged, then about 3 minutes to cross the bridge. Just as we entered Vancouver we left the highway and turned into Stanley Park. It's a huge natural preserve that was set aside a hundred years ago to prevent it being destroyed.

We took the one way drive through the park and stopped a few times for pictures. We might have to drive it again tomorrow as we head to Whistler.

Lions Gate Bridge leading North out of Vancouver