Day 18: Vancouver, British Columbia

Today was the moment of truth. We left our campsite early in the morning and headed for Canada, with hopes we would be permitted to cross the border. We stowed our newly purchased fruit and lunch meat under the seats before we rolled through the port of entry; we didn’t want to risk another repeat of our California produce seizure. We played 20 questions with the border patrol agent about our business in British Columbia and passed her rigid set of questions. Hello Vancouver, here we come!

Immediately we were overcome by how incredible downtown Vancouver was – we had been told that it was just as amazing as Seattle but in its very own way. The architecture was like nothing we had seen before, and the modern building structures looked like they were from the future. Gardens were incorporated into the design of almost all the downtown streets and there wasn’t a single piece of trash to be found on the pavements.





We spent a good portion of the day in Stanley Park, which is located in the northwestern tip of Vancouver and is comparable to New York’s Central Park (its almost 10% larger). There were rose gardens, over 100 miles of walking and biking trails, a Native American activity village, lots of statues and sculptures, horse and buggy tours and the Vancouver Aquarium. There was so much to see and do in the park that it was little bit overwhelming. We knew we didn’t have time to see everything so after exploring for a couple hours and eating our sandwiches next to a pretty little pond, we laid down two beach blankets and took a siesta for a couple hours. It felt great to sit still for a while and regain our energy.



After some much-needed downtime, we got back on 99 (Interstate 5 in Canada) and drove north to the town of Squamish. We were surprised by how quickly the scenery changed once we passed Vancouver and got into the Strait of Georgia area. The landscape seemed like a mix between scenery you’d see in Switzerland, Ireland, and Minnesota. We both agreed this area was the absolute prettiest area we’d seen so far on the entire trip. All along the winding road, we could see swimmers jumping off rocks into the water and splashing in the shallows. The environment in this area was really truly unique; mountains covered in conifers plunged down into the salty ocean strait, creating ocean ecosystems along its shore.









We found our campground at the end of a quiet dirt road right outside of Squamish; we were very pleased to learn that there were showers at this site and we could enjoy our next two days a bit cleaner than we had during the first week of our trip. We looked forward to hot showers after our camp was set up, but unfortunately, the singing of a woman stuck in her Brownie/Girl Scout campfire song days shattered the wonderful, steamy silence. She sang the song “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea.” Those of you not familiar with this song, it’s a horribly repetitive campfire cadence that has another detail added onto each additional verse, meant to be repeated by the listeners. When we got into the showers, her song sounded like: “There's a hole in the bottom of the sea.” When we got out, she was to a line that sounded like: “There's a fleck on the speck on the tail on the frog on the bump on the branch on the log in the hole in the bottom of the sea.” We spent the rest of the night hoping and wishing for any other song to get stuck in our heads.