Vancouver - our winter home

After arriving in Vancouver, we hit the ground running to find an apartment for our winter stay. It's the first time in over five years that we'll be living on land instead of water (or ice! as we did during last winter's Arctic sojourn) and we wanted to get settled quickly. A quick overview tour of Vancouver and its neighborhoods, along with a focused list of 'must-haves' enabled us to quickly narrow down the list of candidates and we found a suitable place in two days flat.

Vancouver, taken from Lonsdale Quay on the North Shore.

As befits two sailors, our must-have list included being as close to the water as possible and an unobstructed, south-facing view of ship movements in Vancouver Harbour. Our search landed us in West Vancouver, to a seaside village known as Dundarave. Dundarave looks south over Howe Sound to Stanley Park and east to the Lion's Gate bridge. The shoreline is fronted by the West Vancouver sea wall, a great place for strolling along to the adjacent village of Ambleside. It's a ridiculously expensive place to live with the average house price over $2 million. I don't think we could afford to live here permanently, but, with a slight increase in our rent budget, it will be affordable for the short term and it will be fun to live like the '1%', for a little while at least.

We are on the ninth floor of a building which is about 200 ft. from the water's edge. We can hear the waves crashing over the seawall, all while being snug, warm and not having to worry about the anchor dragging, or, the ice shifting.

View of the seawall, Lion's Gate Bridge and Stanley Park from our ninth floor solarium.

Our south-facing view across Howe Sound, there are always ships here waiting to get unloaded in the Port.

The north view behind us to the Mountains and three ski areas within an hour!

Dundarave is so convenient, One bus and $1.75 takes us across the Lion's Gate bridge to a very walkable downtown Vancouver, or, to Stanley Park, in just a few minutes. The seawall and Dundarave beach are steps from our front door. The village high street with coffee shops and a great supermarket are a block away. Two blocks away is a community centre with a very large pool, fitness classes and an ice rink. At the end of the seawall is the Park Royal shopping centre with a Whole Foods market, a giant Asian supermarket (Osaka) and many other fine shops and restaurants. We couldn't have found a better place and are very much looking forward to our time here. We'll be here until April.

CONTINUE READING

Homer to Vancouver

The road trip from Homer, Alaska to Vancouver, BC took longer than anticipated. The daylight hours were short and road conditions were not great. We managed to stay ahead of the worst of the snow through Alaska, but, our luck ran out in Yukon and we had snow covered roads through the Territory and well into northern BC. We'd been wondering whether the winter tires we'd installed earlier, in Whitehorse, would be a waste of money, but, we were very grateful to have them...

These were typical highway conditions southbound through Yukon. Luckily, we didn't see much traffic.

Reports of more impending snow coming behind us spurred us on and we drove continuously through the daylight hours. Temperatures were also dropping. We awoke to -18C and heavy snow cover in Watson Lake, Yukon. It was crisp! We weren't sure how comfortable the van would be as it isn't insulated, but, surprisingly it was fine. Its little propane furnace, along with winter weight goose down duvets, kept us reasonably comfortable.

The weather improved the further south we went. Once we were well into BC, conditions reverted to autumn with colourful leaves and no snow.

Stunning water colour near Lillooet BC, hard to believe it' really looks like this!

Mountain lake near Lillooet BC

Looking at this picture reminds me of the beautiful pine fragrance that was along this footpath, near Lillooet BC

From autumn-like conditions in the middle of BC we then entered the rain forest area near Vancouver with its brilliantly coloured moss and lichens along with green grass, fully-leafed trees, flowers and balmy temperatures around +13C. It took about a week until we finally arrived in Vancouver. We'd seen all four seasons in one week of road travel!

The final part of the drive, down BC Highway 99 from Cache Creek, through Lillooet, Whistler and Vancouver, was also the most scenic of all the miles we traveled this year. This stretch of the 'Sea-to-Sky' highway is absolutely magnificent. Unfortunately, we were unable to take pictures as there were very few places to pull over (and I was hanging onto the seat for dear life). The road is narrow, twisty and in many places drops hundreds of metres, without any guard rails, to the floor of steep Fraser River gorges. It's not for the faint of heart. It runs first through desert-like Cariboo country, then the Coast Mountains and eventually you end up along the Pacific shoreline with an easy run down to Vancouver. A spectacular finale to a very long road trip.

CONTINUE READING