Aussie visitors

We have a long weekend here. Lucky!! We need today to recover from the last few days. We have had a couple from Geelong over here. I taught with Rhonda for about 10 years at Mandama. She and Adam, her husband, came over with another couple. They flew into LA, went to Las Vegas, Death Valley and the Grand Canyon before flying up to Seattle. They drove up to Vancouver and Rhonda and Adam stayed for the last 3 nights. The other couple stayed in Bellingham catching up with a friend. We drove them back down to Bellingham yesterday, and they were flying from Seattle to New York for a week before splitting up with Robert and Debra going to Florida and Rhonda and Adam heading back to LA for a few days before flying home. They will be back in Geelong on 28th May.

We went in to Downtown Vancouver on Thursday evening to drop Bridget off at a theatre she was going to. She has become interested in “Free the Children” through becoming an “O Ambassador” at school. We then drove to Kitsalano, near the Maritime Museum and got a good view of North and West Vancouver before heading in to Costco and getting Bridget and diving around Stanley Park before heading home.

On Friday I took the day off and we went on the Sea to Sky Highway to Whistler. It was nice weather and we stopped at Shannon Falls and Brandywine Falls. We had lunch at Whistler before returning for a salmon meal at home.

On Saturday we took them to Cleveland Dam at the end of our street, then to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. We spent a couple of hour there taking in the scenery and atmosphere of the Cliffhanger Walk and the Treetops Walk. We called in at home for lunch and then went up Grouse Mountain. It was the first day of the Summer activities for the season. We watched the Lumberjack show, caught the chair to the peak for amazing views of Vancouver, then checked out the two local resident grizzly bears. They were rescued as cubs and instead of putting them down, as is the practice, they began a pilot program to see whether they might be able to use electric fences to confine bears for rehabilitation to the wild. They have a large enclosure on the top of the mountain. These 2 will never go back to the wild because they have had too much human contact, but they look like they will be able to use this technology with other bear cubs in the future. We went down to the chalet and watched the 2 video presentations – one about the bears and the other about Grouse itself and an eagle’s eye view of BC. We came back home to a dinner that Daniel had cooked while we were up on the mountain. Bridget and Daniel stayed home during the day to get some homework done and catch up on their own things, but after dinner we all went to Gastown. We walked around the tourist area, saving our money because all the shops were shut, and then walked around Canada Place, where the cruise ships berth, and the new Convention Centre.

Yesterday we took them down to Bellingham and had lunch at Anthony’s, a seafood restaurant at the marina. Robert and Debra had been visiting Irene who they had known when she and her husband had lived in Australia. He had been in Geelong in the 60’s and 70’s with Alcoa where they had met Robert’s family, and she had been a teacher. Debra had been one of her students. We went back to her “mobile home” which is at a “retirement park” that used to be an old caravan park. It was a really nice setting around small lake in a forest setting.

After we left them we went to Whatcom Falls in Bellingham. This was a beautiful forested park with a stream running through it. It also had a trout hatchery there. We then headed to Burlington, caught up with Roger and Patty, got the address of Bridget’s grade 2 teacher, spent an hour or so chatting there, and then headed back, crossing the border late last night.

Slept in this morning. It is Victoria Day – a public holiday in Canada.