Scenes from Stanley Park

All these photos were taken on Friday March 18th in Stanley Park.

And once again I find myself with the need to de-fluff and while we were in a gift shop by the Totems in Stanley Park Dear called me over to a case to show me this…

If it wasn’t so pricey I would have bought it! I’m losing the same weight I lost before our son Dan’s wedding last year. Ha! Anybody else out there find yourself gaining, losing, and gaining again? I’m not trying to be skinny just want to have a bit of room to spare in my jeans and tops and I don’t want to go up another size! I joined a gym on Friday with my Silver Sneakers and even made it through a Zumba class. Met some nice gals who let me know about other good classes at the gym. On Monday I meet with a personal trainer for an assessment. Scary but good.

We had a productive weekend again with mowing, weeding, and moving vehicles into and around Dear’s shop. Today after church we had a birthday brunch for our son-in-law, Andrew. His birthday is on Tuesday. Josh and Laura joined us for Eggs Benedict, Hash Browns, and Fruit. For the birthday cake we had cinnamon rolls, much appreciated by Andrew. We have a quiet week coming up. Hope you all have a good Sunday and start to a new week!

Signs and Fences…

The signs and fences I’m sharing today are all from Stanley Park in Vancouver, B.C. taken on Friday March 18th.

We were happy to find Stanley’s at lunch time. We were still full from our hearty breakfast but after walking about we were ready for some refreshment.

May would be another great time of year to visit Stanley Park to enjoy the Rose Gardens. I still have a post with the beautiful flowering trees we enjoyed on this day. After we had our refreshment at Stanley’s we hit the road back to the good ole U.S.A.

I’m linking up with Lesley for signs, signs and with TexWisGirl for Good Fences.

We have another few days of sunny weather here in the Seattle area and there are predictions of the temps getting close to 80 tomorrow!! I’m back in a pattern of walking which is a good thing. I finally got my Senior Sneakers membership card so I will head to a gym nearby to sign up and see how that goes…

What’s new for you?

Totems at Stanley Park

The nine totem poles at Brockton Point are BC’s most visited tourist attraction. Because many of the original totems were carved as early as the 1880s, they have been sent to museums for preservation. The totems you see at Brockton Point today are new ones commissioned or loaned to the park between 1986 and 1992.

Luke Marston’s sculpture, Shore to Shore, stands at the site of his family’s ancestral village site X̲wáýx̲way, and celebrates Portuguese adventurer Joe Silvey (“Portuguese Joe”) as well as his first and second Coast Salish wives, Khaltinaht and Kwatleemaat. The artist Luke Marston is the great-great-grandson of Portuguese Joe and Kwatleemaat.

Joe Silvey was born and raised on Portugal’s Altantic Azores Islands, though after several adventures, Joe found himself on the Pacific, and an early pioneer of Vancouver’s Gastown.

The sculpture honours the link between Portuguese and Coast Salish First Nations cultures, marks the land’s rich heritage, and symbolizes unity for the Vancouver’s present-day diverse inhabitants. The large bronze sculpture is surrounded by engraved Portuguese stone, prominently installed in Stanley Park’s Northeast shore, overlooking downtown. You can read more about Shore to shore here.

The Skedans Mortuary Pole is a replica as the original was returned home to Haida Gwaii. In the late 1980s, the remaining totem poles were sent to various museums for preservation and the Park Board commissioned and loaned replacement totems.

In March Dear and I had an overnight trip to Vancouver B.C. and we were able to spend a few hours in Stanley Park on March 18th. We stopped at the Totems at Brockton Point for a while. You can buy an all day parking pass for $6.00 which worked well for all our stops. I’ll share our other stops at the park soon.

I’ll be linking up to Tuesday’s Treasures hosted by Tom the Backroads Traveller.

March in Vancouver B.C.

On March 17th (St. Patrick’s Day) we headed North for the border between the U.S.A. and Canada. We are fortunate to be a few hours from our friendly neighbors to the north.

On this trip we were headed to North Vancouver and had to cross some bridges to get there. We found our hotel and after a wait in line to get into the parking structure of the hotel we checked in and looked at our room.

The room had a nice view of downtown Vancouver across Vancouver Harbor. We were ready for our first adventure on the SeaBus that would take us across the harbor to the downtown area of Vancouver. We were ready for a meal.

We disembarked close to Canada Place and walked along the harbor to find a restaurant recommended by Lovella of the Mennonite Girls.

We found the restaurant and later when we shared our view Lovella realized we had sat in almost the same spot a week after them and we definitely had the same view. See the boats I marked with an X? Thanks for the recommendation Lovella. We enjoyed our meal at Cardero’s.

We walked after our meal and saw some interesting things and then headed back across the harbor to our hotel where later in the evening we enjoyed a light meal in our room that we purchased at the Quay Market that was located under our hotel.

We didn’t make reservations in Vancouver until we saw that the weather would be good for walking and exploring. Having Dear working from home gives us that flexibility to decide on last minute trips with the weather in mind. Being so close to Canada is another win win for traveling and seeing new things. On Friday the 18th we checked out of the hotel and drove to Stanley Park. On the way we stopped for breakfast at De Dutch…

I’ll share what we saw at Stanley Park in another post.

Dear and I are having a hard time standing up and sitting down today after several hours working outside yesterday. I’m glad we still can manage to do what we did. Cleaning gutters, pulling some weeds and cleaning out some planters, pressure washing the deck and cement areas, and then washing the car! Sheesh, this weather brings out the work in us! Thankfully I had a leg of lamb marinating in the fridge that I could throw in the oven for our meal of the day with potatoes and carrots that cooked underneath the roast in my handy Jamie Oliver pan. Today after church we had lamb sandwiches with our leftovers. So happy not to have to do anything today. A good day of rest.

Hope your Sunday is going well.

Since this post is filled with blue skies and blue water I’m linking up with Jeanne at Backyard Neighbor for Blue Monday! Thanks Jeanne!

Foreign Fences…

Washington State borders Canada to the north (British Columbia) and it’s great to be able to visit a foreign country so easily that’s not really too foreign since for the most part they speak English and they accept our currency. Dear and I drove up to Vancouver B.C. to enjoy an overnight on St. Patrick’s day. Here are a couple of photos of a wooden fence next to the Totem Poles in Stanley park.

Next week I’ll be sharing a longer post about our adventures in Vancouver and Stanley Park.

I’m linking up to Good Fences #106 with TexWisGirl.

We’re having another great weather day in the Pacific Northwest so I’ll be going out to mow the lawn. I’ll visit later…

We Bid Adieu to Great Britain from London…

Wrapping up our 2004 Literary Tour of Great Britain with our daughter Katie with our old fashioned film camera. London was our final stop after a long train ride from Edinburgh and lugging our luggage across the train station to the tube that would take us to our tiny room with 2 beds that covered almost the entire floor minus a 6 inch space between them to walk to the very tiny bathroom. Oh boy! I forgot to mention the 3rd floor we had to haul our luggage up to. We managed to recover from it all and enjoy some great spots in London.

Katie and Dear mastered the tube stations quickly and they always knew the correct trains to catch.

The Tower of London was on the list of places to explore.

We were in London for the Queen’s birthday on the 21st of April we saw and heard the 62 gun salute.

While walking toward Buckingham Palace we were told that a better close up view option of the changing guard would be at the Horse Guards Stables. We enjoyed viewing the Queen’s Horse Guard.

Up close and with a lot fewer crowds around us. I’m thinking by now the word has gotten around and the crowds are probably crazy here, too.

Dear and Katie in Trafalgar Square.

The pigeons decided they were a great perch.

Our favorites in London were the National Gallery and the British Library where so many great literary classics and authors are featured. Katie and Dear toured Westminster Abbey and viewed the small tablet to the memory of Jane Austen in the Poet’s corner of the abbey. We also enjoyed attending the live stage performance of Les Miserables.

Thank you for indulging me as I documented our trip from 12 years ago!

Edinburgh and Monty Python…

This will be my second to the last post on our 2004 literary tour with our daughter Katie. We traveled north by train from York to Edinburgh. We made arrangements at a self catered apartment for our days in the city and beyond.

We walked from the train station to the street where our rental was and found no one there to answer the door. We finally were spotted by some neighbors who happened to have the key to the flat and they let us in. It was nice to have a tea tray waiting for us.

We toured Edinburgh Castle and walked down High Street where St. Giles Cathedral stands.

We ate at the Royal Mcgregor where Katie had her favorite hamburger on our trip.

the-royal

Our main side trip from Edinburgh was by bus to Stirling with a connecting bus to the little town of Doune where you’ll find Castle Doune. Castle Doune is the sight of some of the filming of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. This was a must stop for our daughter Katie. We were the only people at the castle (it was part of our Heritage Pass). To those of you who are familiar with this film you are handed coconut shells to walk around the grounds with. We were throwing out lines from the movie (Run Away, run away!) and making horse clip clop noises (with the coconut shells). They even take a picture of you here and post it on the official web page for Castle Doune and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Hilarious fun.

From Edinburgh we took the train south all the way to London where we would finish off our literary tour.

We are entering a busy week leading up to Easter. I love Easter and all the preparations that it involves.

La Conner

In 1869 John S. Conner purchased the trading post on the Swinomish Channel and named the area in honor of his wife Louisa Ann Conner and that’s how La Conner got its name.

After we mucked about in the fields of daffodils my sisters and I drove a few minutes away to La Conner for lunch and a little shopping.

We chose Nell Thorn on the channel with good food and nice views.

Lana, Kathy the youngest and oldest and me and Vera in the middle.

We each chose something different for our lunch and everyone enjoyed their choices.

Whew! Happy my sisters were here last weekend instead of this weekend as we had quite a wild Sunday. Our power was out for 13 hours and we were happy to wake up to electricity again. Schools in our area are cancelled today as 85,000 are still without power. Trees were down and some of the trees brought down power lines, too. Here’s our light sources from last evening…

Hope you all have power today and are enjoying the light!

A Host of Golden Daffodils!

Oh what a glorious Saturday my sisters and I enjoyed on a 10 hour outing north to Mount Vernon and La Conner and then beyond to Whidbey Island over Deception Pass and south the whole length of the island. In this post I’m showing the fields of daffodils we enjoyed. But…first things first, when visiting tulip or daffodils fields it is good to don your mud boots!

I was happy to be able to come up with 3 pairs of good mucking boots/shoes and borrowed the fourth pair from our DIL.

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

William Wordsworth

From Mt. Vernon we traveled a short distance to La Conner for lunch and shopping. I’ll share some photos of our time there next. It was great to have leisurely time together to share about the challenges my oldest sister faces in caring for our dear old pop and the life changes my sister Vera faces in widowhood and moving out of the home she shared with her husband Nick. It’s good to let the tears roll freely and also to be able to laugh heartily with each other. Just for the record…we sisters have four brothers, too.

The Walls of York…

After we spent time in Derbyshire we traveled northeast to the city of York and dropped off our rental car for the remaining days of our literary tour. For York we had a walking guidebook that Katie was in charge of and we saw many things we would have missed otherwise.

We weren’t looking for any of our literary favorites here but just enjoying the walls and history surrounding this city.

We attended our first evensong at Yorkminster and were so blessed by that hour of singing and readings. Katie and Dear also climbed to the top of the minster and Dear took this great photo above.

We went to a history museum and donned these heavy helmets for a photo op.

And…of course we had to take a photo of the Pharmacist in front of the Apothecary.

From York we boarded a train to Edinburgh where we would enjoy the city and take a bus to Stirling for some fun with Monty Python. Two more posts to go to wrap up our 2004 Literary Tour of Great Britain.

Back to the present…I’ve been very busy with my sisters the last few days. On Monday my sister Kathy flew home and on Tuesday my sister Vera will be flying home. I’ll share our Saturday road trip when I have some time to create the post.

The Happy Wonderer ~ ellen b.

To honor and encourage

Category Archives: Travel