Search for 'The Stick'

The seemingly endless search for 'The Perfect Stick' continues.......... all possibilities must be tried for size, shape, weight, taste and smell.

Biking Trails

It's amazing what you find half an hours hiking into forest - a mountain bike trail built into the slopes and trees.

A bit more snow

Our second lot of snow for the season arrived overnight. Not nearly as much as we had at the end of November, this was probably only a couple of centimetres and didn't actually cause any disruption. Infact, looking on the www.vancouver.com/webcam it doesn't look like downtown or the North Shore's lower slopes got any snow at all.

However, since we had snow Charlie and I had to go out and have a play in it.

A small house tucked up in the snowy trees

Charlie at Lynn Canyon Dec 15th

A few pictures of Charlie enjoying his walk today at Lynn Canyon.

Another winter storm

Since the beginning of November we have had storm after storm roll in from the pacific. The biggest storm was on the 15th November which knocked out power across most of the Lower Mainland, brought down hundreds upon hundreds of trees and stirred up the lakes so much they put a boil water advisory on the drinking water for 12 days.

Last night we experienced another winter storm. Not as serious as the one a month ago it nonetheless brought a good amount of wind & rain. The wind is a pain because it invariably knocks out the power (all over head power cables + lots of trees + wind = regular power cuts). However, the rain is more fun as it fills up the rivers & lakes.

This post shows some photographs of Lynn Canyon taken today (15th Dec). They show how much the rivers have increased in quantity and velocity since we visited the park with my parents in October (http://vancouverstuff.blogspot.com/2006/10/lynn-canyon.html).

Below is one of many newly fallen trees across a path in the park. It probably came down in last nights storm as the parks authority are usually pretty good at clearing the paths within a couple of days of them getting blocked.

Hockey Night

One of Sues requests while she was here was to go to an Ice Hockey match, since it is kind of the national sport. We had not been to one ourselves so were definitely up for it.

The big local team are the Vancouver Canucks. They are in the NHL (National Hockey League) which is across North America. A little bit like England and cricket (we invented it but aren't any good at it anymore) Canada has a similar problem with hockey. The Canucks nonetheless are in the top league and so their tickets are a fairly steep $65-$75 a game.

We then discovered the Vancouver Giants (www.vancouvergiants.com). They are in the WHL (Western Hockey League) which is the next one down from the NHL. They were playing while Sue was here and since none of us were hockey connoisseurs and the tickets were only $18 a head we settled for a WHL game in the Pacific Coliseum at the Pacific National Exhibition (www.pne.ca).

It was Friday Dec 1st and we saw them play the Prince George Cougars. The speed with which the game is played and at which they crash into the sides of the arena is certainly entertaining and I don't doubt we'll be back to watch another game with more of our visitors.

Incidently, the Giants won 5-2. :-)

A & D

Deep Cove

Today we visited Deep Cove, which is a 'village' on the easternmost edge of the Northshore, and sides onto the deep water inlet of Indian Arm. It enjoys stunning scenery and a lovely community small town atmosphere yet is still within half an hours drive of Vancouvers downtown. It is definately a location that we would have considered living in but unfortunately due to the steep geography of the village there are not many 'dog-friendly' houses with reasonable size flat gardens - it's great to visit though.

We got talking to a guy walking two australian shepherd dogs in the park. He recommended a cafe nearby for dinner which we will have to check out soon and for morning coffee and a snack he suggested Honey's. Let's just say we went, we ate and we'll be back.

The hills on the opposite side of the water are the village of Belcarra and the slopes behind Port Moody. Whilst these look near they are a good 30-45 minutes drive to reach due to the georgraphy and limited opportunities to cross the water.

Dog friendly city gone mad.....