FreePress Blog

2007-08-08

After getting breakfast then heading back to the hotel and checking out, we ventured out to / through Stanley Park, which might be best described as the “Central Park of Vancouver” [note: I don't know if people actually call it that, or if we coined that phrase], in that it’s a fairly large park in the center of a “big city” environment (in this case, on the tip of the peninsula).

It was really cool to drive through and check out even more of the excellent natural scenery that we’ve been surrounded with for most of this trip. One particularly cool part was at one section along the beach there was a pool / water park area right on / over the water, and right next to a regular grass park on the shore (with playgrounds, jungle gyms, etc.). So, you can basically have a day at the park, the beach, and the pool / waterpark all in the same place. There was also a large hallow tree that the kids could climb on / in.

Once we were done enjoying the park, we got back on the road, headed toward our next destination (Mt. Shasta / Trinity Lake). We took the same border crossing on the way back out, and this time (now that we knew where we were going on the Canada side) it turned out to be very quick - undoubtedly faster than trying to squeeze through the main I-5/99 crossing. Again, there was no waiting - sailed right through and on our way, despite our large cargo containers strapped all over the car, which could have contained God knows what kind of threats to homeland security (weapons, drugs, civil liberties education literature, etc.).

We knew we would need to stop somewhere along the way, but we figured we’d just play it by ear, so we just drove until we got to Portland, by which time we figured we’d probably want to stop in Eugene, OR, so we pulled off to the nearest Starbucks to grab a coffee and make the hotel reservation online, then finished up the drive down to Eugene.