Thursday, August 5th

Thursday was the first day where I was in charge of the itinerary, and I have to give kudos to Mer. I had no idea how much pressure it creates. I worried if I had the plans right, and if it was going to be a good use of time and money. With Mer in charge, I just go where I am told and have a good time.

We started the day off with breakfast at Subway on Granville Street (again) and then headed down to the now very familiar Waterfront Station and caught the seabus. If I remember correctly (it may have been on Friday instead), there was yet another new cruise ship in dock next door, which was smaller than the previous two, but still plenty big. Anyway, we crossed the bay and caught a bus that took us back to the entrance to Lynn Canyon Park, where we had been on Monday with Beata and Ionut and Andrei. I was glad we were on the bus instead of walking; the trip took about thirty minutes, and had a lot of pretty steep uphills to go up.

I had come back to Lynn Canyon because I had seen in a brochure that there were some cool waterfalls up the canyon, but I could not remember the name. Sadly, the ranger at the information station told me they were not very spectacular. It turns out that she misunderstood me; I found out from Ionut later that the falls are worth seeing, but that they are six miles up the canyon and the ranger probably did not think we would go that far. The ranger did give me a map of the park and recommended a walk around most of the trails in the area (they all tended to be a couple of miles long or less), so I decided to do that instead.

Happily, the walk had us starting out to go south along the canyon, so I got to avoid the suspension bridge. The trail went down some steep steps, some without safety rails, and ended at a small but sturdy bridge. It was still thirty feet or so above the water, but I was okay with this. Mer and I stopped and looked around, and enjoyed the natural beauty both up and down river. I saw a few people in the stream downstream, so I thought it might be fun to try to get down there. We crossed the bridge and started to head south. The trail was immediately much rougher, and as we crested a hill with me in front, I heard a loud cry. I turned in time to see Mer come stumbling toward me. She had caught her foot and was trying to catch herself, but she was stumbling downhill and could not stop. I yelled that I had her, and then almost caught her. She ran into me with a fair amount of force, and I tried to hold her up, but could not. I did break her fall, but she had a slightly scuffed leg and a bruised ego and was scared. She had been in the process of falling for about ten feet and had even had time to think that she might hurt me as she careened toward me. She was much more shaken than hurt, but the incident made me immediately change my mind about going on south along the rough trail. It scared me to think of either of us tripping in the wrong spot along the canyon. I turned around and we went back north, catching up with the much better trail north of the bridge.

This turned out to be a good choice anyway. The trail was very pretty, although it was largely uphill. Mer was game about yet-another-hill, and it was long enough that by the time I got to the top I was sweating. We stayed on this northbound trail for some time, and passed a new in-the-woods water treatment plant that was unexpected by us in what seemed to be the middle of the woods, although Lynn Park is very narrow, so the edge of the park is always close by. After the plant, we came to a parking lot and a ranger station, and a path diverged and went down toward the canyon and an advertised bus stop. We kept on north, though, because I wanted to see Rice Lake and take the 45-minute walk around it.

Rice Lake is a small lake, surrounded by trees and mountains, and is soul-soothing. Or should have been. We made our way to a large dock near a parking lot, and sat down to rest and have crackers for lunch. Nearby was a group of four or five older people, and one woman was talking very loudly about how pretty the park was and then switched to something about the government. It was too loud for the serene surroundings, so we finished our crackers and moved on along the trail around the lake.

The walk was different than I had expected. The trees were so thick it was very difficult to see the lake. There were several vista spots with benches along the path, and we stopped at them to rest and enjoy the view. In all, I think it took about an hour to get around the lake, and then we headed back along the trail to Lynn Canyon.

We took a new trail down to the creek bed, as opposed to the trail that led back to the small fixed bridge. The new trail was cool, with stairs to climb down, and then getting to walk along the stream itself, and it was all very pretty. The bad news is that the trail led back to the suspension bridge. That was not all bad – I wanted to get a picture of Mer on the bridge, and she wanted to cross it to bolster her confidence that had been sapped by the Grind trail and her recent trip-and-fall. Still, I was not excited about having to cross it myself.

We came to the stream near a place called 30-Foot Pool, and so we walked over to it. It turned out to be a deep pool of crystal-clear water that was (I’m guessing) 30 feet deep. There was a small beach here as well, and so there were a number of people here swimming and wading. The more adventurous ones were climbing 10-20 feet up the rock face to jump into the pool. It was entertaining to watch, but I was glad I did not have my swimming trunks, so I had a good excuse not to jump into the pool.

We then wandered a little ways downstream, to an area pretty close to where we had gone wading on Monday. I took off my shoes, gave Mer the camera, and waded out to the middle of the stream. I wanted to sit on a rock and dangle my feet in the water in the small rapids next to the rock. I got to the rock, and turned partway around so I could sit down more easily. As I turned, I looked upstream, and about 20-25 feet away was a black bear. My brain went sort of numb, and then I quickly started planning how to run across a rocky stream bed if needed. I looked over to Mer, and said with surprising calm, “That is a bear.” She looked up and was startled. Happily, the bear was on a mission to get across the stream, and kept on going. As he approached the other side, Mer had the presence of mind to take a picture, and then the people up by 30-Foot Pool saw the bear and started taking pictures. Once I figured out that I was not going to be lunch, I admired the animal – it was very handsome and very powerful looking. As an aside, I guess the park was not kidding with its “Be Bear Aware” signs around the park entrances.

I did dangle my feet in the water, which was very cold. I made my way back to shore, where Mer expressed her relief that I was okay. She did muse awhile and decided that if I had been eaten by the bear, she would have been sad, but could have put on my tombstone Shakespeare’s most famous stage direction (from A Winter’s Tale), “Exit, pursued by a bear.”

We continued downstream, but the path started going back up. We stuck as close to the stream as we could, and so got to see some pretty spectacular views of the canyon as it grew deeper. We stopped at a high spot, but could not see the river below. We could see a lookout on the other side, so I took note of that in case we found a way over to it.

We finally made it back to the bridge. I crossed over, and as I feared, the bridge swayed a lot more since there was almost no one on it. I made it across, but was pretty scared the entire time. Mer walked out and looked over the edge on both sides, and I got the picture I wanted. We then went back upstream a little ways and found the lookout that I had seen. Mer pointed out some rapids where she had seen some teenaged guys shooting the rapids like a waterslide on Monday. It was insane. The things that teens can convince themselves to do is astonishing.

We left the park and caught a bus back to the quay, where we grabbed another bus and went back out to Cleveland Dam, where we had been on Monday. I wanted to walk around the trails there as well. It was still beautiful, even though the day was quite a bit more hazy than it had been on Monday. We crossed over the dam and walked downstream. The path was wide and flat, but pretty steep in some places. It was covered in gravel, so we slipped and slid around a bit. It was perfectly safe, as the canyon was not even in sight from the path we were on. We did get to where the path crossed the stream, and we walked across the fixed (non-suspension) bridge. I was able to stop and admire the view from the bridge, which was great. There was a bench and overlook on the far side, so we sat for a short while, but then crossed back over the bridge so we could stay near the canyon.

We walked upstream for a ways, and came across several pools where people were fishing from the far shore. We admired them briefly and then went on. The trail I wanted to take to see the falls over the dam turned out to be closed, so we turned back toward the pools. Near the pools was another bridge, so we crossed over and walked back down to where the people were fishing. It was a very tranquil spot. We stayed for 5-10 minutes, and saw lots of fish jumping in the pools, but never saw any of them get caught.

We stayed on the far side of the canyon and kept heading back upstream. This meant quite a climb out of a parking lot near the fishing pools. Mer was once again a game soul, and after some labored walking we came back out to the dam. We rested for a short bit and watched the water come over the dam, and then we walked back to the bus stop which took us back to the quay.

We just missed the seabus back in to the city, and the next one was about 15 minutes away. Since we were nearby, I decided to give Beata a call and see what she was up to. She was home, and happy to hear from us, and invited us over. So, we got up and went back to the buses to save ourselves the eight- or nine-block walk up the steep hills of North Vancouver. Just before the bus took off, a man looked over at us and smiled – it was Ionut, and he came over and sat with us. We all got off at the apartment complex where Ionut and Beata lived, and we went in.

Ionut changed out of his work clothes, and Beata asked us about our day while Andrei played with his toy trucks. Ionut came back out and seemed to approve of how we spent our day and also told me the falls I had wanted to see up Lynn Canyon were worth seeing, but 10 km (6 miles) upstream. I’ll see them next time.

We then decided to go out to eat, but had a false start. The restaurant I had suggested from a brochure I had read turned out to be a breakfast and lunch only restaurant, so we had to turn back. We ended up going to a Canadian chain called Fatburger. Not very subtle, but the burgers were very good. We sat on the sidewalk patio and enjoyed the evening. It was a leisurely meal that took well over an hour, and then Ionut insisted on taking us back to out hotel again. We also made plans to have supper together on Saturday, which would be our last day in Vancouver.

My first day of planning in Vancouver had gone pretty well, especially considering how I was not eaten. The tour-director role that Mer usually handles really is no easy thing.