West Coast Antics

I believe we had just entered Washington State at the end of my last post. After spending one day in Spokane, WA, we drove to Seattle. My roommate from bible college, Kimberly Kulseth, lives there and she met us downtown at Pike Place Market. This was somewhere that Kim had taken me to, way back in 2001, and I had to go back because I knew Soren would love the fish mongers (they throw giant fish across the market at each other). But first, Andy had to make the most incredible parallel parking job (on a very steep uphill, with a 32 ft. vehicle). He did amazing, and after purchasing three parking passes, we were good to go.

Andy and Soren learning about the fish available for sale.

Soren did love the market (and asked to go back there for the next two days). Then we wandered around downtown Seattle, seeing the first ever Starbucks, the cruise terminal where all the Alaskan cruises depart from, Sculpture Park (where there was weird and inexplicable art), and back to Kim's apartment. After a day in the city, we headed to one of the suburbs to eat at Chipotle and shop at Target. These are two of my favourite activities when in the U.S.A. It was the first time we took the kids to Chipotle, and they were unimpressed, so tonight, when we ate there AGAIN, we got take-out for just Andy and I.

Kim came to pick me up that night and we went out for drinks together to catch up on the last 10 years of life. This trip has been so awesome for meeting up with old friends.

The next morning we headed out to the shore (we were going to drive down the coastline into Oregon). We stopped for lunch in DuPont, Washington where we had a great picnic in the park and went for a family bike ride. And that's where the day stopped being fun.

Oregon is really green. I think that's why they
have a tree on their license plate.

First of all, the 'coastal highway' only opened up for us to see the ocean every 12 miles or so, so that wasn't quite what we were hoping for. Second of all, it was pouring rain, so we couldn't really stop and get out and play, and since I was getting so sick driving along the windy roads, I took over driving. Shortly after, I got a speeding ticket for going 55 mph in a 35 mph. Apparently it goes down to 35 in front of the casino. I tried explaining to the cop that since I wasn't from here so I should be given a break, but as Andy says "[my] negotiation skills need some work." I clearly wasn't charming enough. Getting a ticket is always kind of humbling, but from a cop who appeared to be 16 years old and who was smacking his gum and using phrases like "pissed off", well, I had a hard time with that.
Andy started to get sick riding in the back as well and there was nothing to do (we were going to drive down Long Beach and visit the World Kite Museum) because of the rain, so we pulled over to eat dinner and re-assess our plans. We decided to head back in-land and go to Portland instead. We weren't planning on going to Portland, just because driving an R.V. in the big city is difficult, and we had just done 2 big cities (Vancouver and Seattle) in the last couple of weeks.

But Portland was amazing. We are so glad we came back this way. We had another rainy day today, but there was sun intermittently, so we didn't have to stay inside.

Annika, at the Rose Garden.

The kids, pulling some logs.

Andy and Sawyer in front of a 650 year old tree.

Playing on the raft simulator at the World Forestry Centre; clearly Annika was not fazed by it.

We visited Washington Park downtown and went to their playground, rose gardens, and the World Forestry Centre (a museum about trees). After that we went to Powell's bookstore downtown (the largest independent used and new bookstore in the world). I could have spent an entire day there. I walked out with a much heavier load to carry. I kept thinking, "oh man, I want to bring my father-in-law and my brother back here", because they both truly appreciate books. Anyway, tomorrow we are headed to Multnomah Falls. It's only 434 in the world waterfall height ranking, but apparently it is an Oregon must-see, and I am a sucker for a good waterfall.

Kai, carefully choosing his book at Powell's Book Store
 

10 Things that Suck about living in an R.V. and 10 Things that are Awesome.

10 Things that we love about living in an R.V.:

   1.     So many awesome places to see/go. Our kids have seen more in the last month than most Canadians see in a lifetime.  

   2.     Our house gets bigger with a push of a button!

   3.     No matter how far away from home you are, you still get your own bed at night.

   4.     Tons of quality family time

   5.     We have a stay-at-home Dad  now!

   6.     It forced me to homeschool again this year, and I probably would have taken the easy way out and put them in school.

   7.     If you end up somewhere unprepared (ie: an awesome beach, McDonald’s playland) ,  you can just run back out to the parking lot to get what you are missing (bathing suits, socks).

   8.     Never have to use gross, disturbing public bathrooms

   9.     New playgrounds/parks everyday, so the kids never get bored.

   10. Forces you to live rather simply…you realize how little you NEED.

10 Things that SUCK about living in an R.V.:

   1.     Hideous décor. R.V.’s are ugly…there’s just no way around it.

   2.     No bathtub or laundry, and we have filthy kids.

   3.     Can’t let your baby ‘cry it out’ because technically everyone’s sleeping in her room.

   4.     No babysitters=no date nights.

   5.     If you don’t have everything safely secured before you drive, it will fall on the ground, or on your head, at rocket speeds.

   6.     You can’t stop quickly. If you drive past what you were looking for, it might be a few kilometres before you can turn around and get back there.

   7.     Some things are difficult to do when you’re bumping along down the road (i.e.: filling up a bottle, wiping bums, clipping toenails).

   8.     If you drop the soap in the shower, you better hope you were done with it because there’s no way you can bend down and get it.

   9.     We’ve lost multiple shoes because there is nowhere to store them except on the door steps and they fall out without us noticing and then we drive away.

   10. If someone takes a dump, your whole house is infiltrated within seconds.

Without the RV, we might never have gone to this giant wagon!

Luscious Okanagan

We left the Vancouver area and headed to Kelowna. We spent a couple days in Kelowna, visiting our friends, Tim and Shawna Hart, and exploring nearby Penticton and Peachland. We met Tim and Shawna at their church..a rather charismatic church, and Annika was in her glory. By the second worship song, she was up on the stage (with the worship team) waving a giant pink flag. She was really loving it.

After church we went out for lunch with the Harts and then went to a downtown Kelowna park and hung out with them for hours while the kids played. We lost Soren in the park, always a scary moment, but we found him again. By the time we left the park, it was already supper, so we headed to the RV park for the night. This one had 4 pools, 3 hot tubs, playground, games room, gym, etc. So instead of eating supper, we headed straight to the pool for a swim. Well, Andy and the kids did. I had to tackle our laundry. It took me 10 loads to get everything clean. Luckily, you can do multiple loads at once in the laundromat. The next day in Kelowna was cold and rainy, so we drove around trying to find an RV place that would fix our furnace. The only appointment we could get was for Wednesday morning, so we had to stick around a while. After exploring Kelowna in the drizzly rain, we decided to drive to nearby Peachland. There is a hike that we had heard about where we could watch the salmon swim upstream to a waterfall, so we went there. The hike was wet, but after a day in the RV, it was just what we all needed. And luckily we didn't encounter any bears (they like that creek because they can get fat on the salmon). Soren, our little fish lover couldn't get enough of watching the salmon.

The red guys are the salmon swimming upstream. These guys had a LONG way to go, still.

Annika and Sawyer playing on the beach...it's almost October.

Post-hike we drove into Penticton and had a movie and popcorn night because it was still rainy and yuck out. The next morning we headed to Skaha Bluffs (a popular rock climbing spot) to check out the cliffs, and then we headed to Skaha Beach. The playground, splash pad and beach kept us busy for hours. We didn't bother putting bathing suits on the kids, since they had already gotten soaked in the splash pad and we were the ONLY ones on the beach. There was a little waterside that Kai went down naked.

Kai, splashing in Lake Okanagan in his birthday suit.

After the beach we headed to the giant peach. Ironically, the giant peach is located in Penticton, not Peachland. At night, we headed back to Kelowna so we would be close to the RV dealer for our repair appointment the next day. As soon as that was done on Wednesday morning, we headed to Vernon. 

The giant peach, obviously.

Just tickling the ivories.

Vernon was awesome. We played at their downtown park and then headed to the Okanagan Science Centre (in the park). The kids love science centres because there is so much hands-on stuff  to do and we were the only ones in this science centre, so we could have free run of the place. After the science centre we headed to a nearby children's farm called Davison Orchards. The kids loved feeding the goats, petting the donkey, milking the fake cow, digging in the corn sandbox, etc. It was a lot like Springridge Farm and Chudleigh's at home. And the views were of course, amazing.

Andy, enjoying the view in Vernon.

After Vernon, we headed to Nelson. Nelson is one of those hippie towns where people smoke pot out in the open and most of the stores are somehow organic or yoga-related. It also happens to be one of those cities where even the WalMart sits on the lakeside and has gorgeous mountain views. But more importantly, Nelson is the home of some good friends, Rene and Jen Pedersen. They graciously let us park in their driveway for a couple of nights and they fed us, let us torture their chickens and cats, and let us eat most of their fruit from their orchard. Andy probably ate over 50 plums.

Dinner with some lovely people.

We left Nelson and headed into the USA. Crossing the border was a little awkward as the border guard asked me if we keep the kids buckled while we are driving, which we do not. I was honest with her though, and she didn't seem to care. We are currently in Spokane, Washington. Time to get used to gigantic, intimidating American grocery stores and cheaper gas prices!

I think I broke my toe.

We arrived in Kelowna tonight, after an amazing couple of days of visiting with friends. The only bad thing that happened, was I shut the RV passenger-side door on my big toe this afternoon and it's not looking so good. After Victoria we took the ferry to Mayne Island, a place we had never heard of before Andy's friend, Jeff, moved there. We spent the day on Jeff's farm, apple picking, gathering eggs from his hens, and eating our first 'edible' flowers. The flowers were far from delicious. Jeff took us to the Japanese   gardens and Dinner Bay park. The park had a zip line that was really fun.

Me and my two Dads.

Ziplining.

We took the ferry back to Vancouver Thursday night and spent the night in a downtown Wal-Mart parking lot. I've never seen such a bustling Walmart. It was super late before that place settled down.
Friday morning we headed to the Vancouver Aquarium and met up with my old friend Christy.  Christy and I were roommates at Capernwray Adventure Bible School in New Zealand (way back in 2000). We hadn't seen each other in ten years, and eight kids later, we had a lot of catching up to do. Christy and her 4 kids explored the aquarium with us and I'm not sure Annika even noticed the fish because she was so wrapped up in Christy's daughters, Tenesae and Ayrian. I think she's been seriously missing female friends. Soren, however, was loving the whales, dolphins, seals, and hundreds of fish. Kai said at the start of this trip that one of the things he really wanted to see was Beluga whales. So he was quite thrilled that we could check that off our list.

Absolute wonder. She stood there transfixed.

After the aquarium we went for a family bike ride/rollerblade around Stanley Park in downtown Vancouver. The weather was warm and the park was beautiful. It was so much fun.
Friday night we spent at the Bennik's farm. They have everything a kid could ever dream of: animals, playground, trampoline, tons of space to run around, etc. So our kids were in heaven, having a campfire and running around like maniacs.

Wide load coming through.

This morning, the Bennik family took us to Crescent Beach in Surrey. The kids caught crabs, Sawyer ate her weight in sand, and Soren took a bad fall on some barnacle-covered rocks and ended up with some serious war wounds. A day at the beach when it is almost October was awesome. Saying goodbye to the Bennik's was not fun, but we had a blast with them and would love to get our families together again sometime.

Tenesae, sticking a crab on me.

Sand eater.

Thank goodness for Facebook...keeping in touch!

We stopped at Bridal Veil falls (the second bridal veil we've been at) on the way to Kelowna today and went for a hike. It was such a lush forest...it seems weird that nothing here is changing to yellow, red, and orange yet.
Tomorrow marks the ONE month point for our trip. Can't wait to see what month number two will hold!

Life is all about Plan B.

And sometimes Plan B is not so bad. We are on Vancouver Island, spending the day exploring Victoria. I really wanted to go whale watching because we have a kid who is OBSESSED with underwater sea creatures and I knew it would blow his mind to see orcas up close. After some research, we decided on the “Prince of Whales” because they were cheaper than most and they had seen whales on yesterday’s tour. So we forked over 280$ for our family to go. We spent an amazing morning playing at the ocean and exploring Beacon Hill Park. Then we headed down to the harbor to board our ship. However, we found out when we got there that our whale tour had been cancelled because there weren’t enough people. We had some very sad kids after that…and I had already drugged them with Gravol! I might have been even sadder than the kids. After that we headed over to ‘the floating village’. We played at a playground on the water and then had fish and chips at a floating restaurant. The floating village was cool. There were 2 seals there that swam around the docks waiting for people to feed them fish. So we bought some little fish from the fish market and fed them. If you twirled your little fish (the one in your hand), the seal would twirl around too. The kids were loving it. Even Sawyer tried to jump in the water and swim with him (luckily she was buckled into her stroller). The seals were so fun, they almost made us forget about our whale disappointment. I really love Victoria. It is a beautiful city with gorgeous buildings and gardens everywhere. Oh, and ocean and mountain vistas. Tomorrow we are going to try and catch another ferry to the Southern Gulf Islands and visit a friend of Andy’s. Wouldn’t it be awesome if some whales could come swim alongside our ferry?

Squamish--the outdoor recreation capital of the world!

Squamish is in between Whistler and Vancouver and it sits in the middle of tons of provincial parks. It is FULL of things to do, if you like to do outdoorsy stuff. Our kids are starting to become mountain goats. They climb and hike things that most adults couldn't do and their endurance is improving daily, which means we get to go on longer, less whiny hikes.

Last night we stayed in the Squamish Wal-Mart and then this morning we went to the Chief--a gigantic rock face that sits in a beautiful forest. We brought our climbing gear, hoping to get some bouldering in. However, after hiking and exploring for an hour, the kids wanted to eat lunch, so we headed back to the RV, hoping to come back another time SANS children. We found some blackberry bushes on the way, and took advantage of the free fruit.

Cave critters.

mmmm...blackberries!

In the afternoon we headed to Shannon Falls. WOW! This was an incredible waterfall. We hiked up the long, hard way and just loved it. Annika said, "not to brag, BUT we hiked up the way better way." We drove to Burnaby after that and are staying in a 'ritzy' RV park that has an indoor pool, a gym, a hot tub, AND a playground. We skipped dinner to go straight to the playground and the pool and tonight, while I did laundry in the laundromat, I got to go on the treadmill. It felt like we were at a hotel! Tomorrow we are hoping to head over to Vancouver Island....a first for me and the kids. Anyone know what we should see?

Peak-to-Peak

We traveled down the sea-to-sky highway and ended up in Pemberton last night. We camped out at Nairn Falls Provincial Park and in the morning did a little hike. After that, we headed into Whistler. We immediately fell back in love with this place. It's been 2.5 years since we've been here, and it is the first time we've brought the kids. But as Andy puts it, "I get this fluttery feeling in my heart being here. It's like  the first time I saw you naked."

We bought gondola tickets and took the kids up to the top of Whistler mountain. They got 5 cm of snow last night, so the kids were eating it. We ate lunch and then took the peak-to-peak gondola that was built for the Vancouver Olympics. That thing was so cool. You went through the clouds and all you could see was the three cables holding you up. We also took the glass-bottom gondola which was neat. Soren, of course, climbed over the railing and stood on the glass, which you aren't supposed to do.  So now we just have to figure out how to move here.