In winter Grouse Mountain is a ski park with 4 cable cars (pictured) that run up to the top of the mountain. In summer they have other activities & shows to keep Joe tourist occupies & charge them $32 for the lift ticket.
It occurred to me that the cable car looked a lot like one I rode up to the summit of Mt Pilatus in Switzerland some years ago. I stepped into the car & saw a sign saying "Made in Switzerland". Funny that!
This is the view from Grouse Mountain. This picture was taken from the cable car just after clearing the support poles at the top.
One of the attractions at Grouse Mountain is the Grizzly Bear exhibit. It is actually an experiment the Canadian wildlife protection group are trying to rehabilitate & eventually release orphaned bears. It just happens to be a great way for the public to see the bears, These two males are about 5 years old now & even hibernate in the enclosure which is rare for captive bears.
Our first wild bear sighting will have to wait.
Grouse Mountain also has a lumberjack show. It is really quite entertaining, but a bit touristy.
They had two lumberjacks competing against each other in events such as the climb & chop (pictured), axe throw, log saw, Pole climb (next entry) and log roll. (I'm actually not too sure of the name of some of the events.) All the standard stuff, but worth a giggle.
Grouse Mountain also has a lumberjack show. It is really quite entertaining, but a bit touristy.
They had two lumberjacks competing against each other in events such as the climb & chop (pictured), axe throw, log saw, Pole climb (next entry) and log roll. (I'm actually not too sure of the name of some of the events.) All the standard stuff, but worth a giggle.
These guys are nutty! That is a long way up & they were motoring!
The other attraction on the mountain showed off their birds of prey. If you are into birds of prey it was pretty good. Kerri wasn't so keen. Each to their own. I enjoyed it.
I threw this one in for mum, who has a special interest in owls.
Stanley Park
After the Grouse Mountain visit, we had a bit of a wonder around the Downtown shoreline. It's actually a very relaxing spot. There are parks that run alongside the river that you can just sit & relax or there are bike tracks & walk tracks if you feel a bit more energetic.
The backdrop is really quite nice. (See pic). Stanley park is in the foreground. It is a huge patch of parkland with all sorts of things to do & see. We only scratched the surface. It's something we'll do one time we go back to see B.C. properly. Pictured behind Stanley Park is Grouse mountain (right of picture) & the ranges. If you expand the photo & look closely, you will see the summit & the cable car that runs middle to top right of picture.
Vancouver is a pretty place, but the city has become too big for its surroundings. There are 2.5 mil people there now. The problem is the river takes up a heap of area & the mountains jag up so sharply that you can't build anywhere anymore.
I'm not too sure about this ...... piece of art, I guess you call it. I thought it was amusing so I took a pic of it. It sits between the Vancouver Downtown & the river front.
These Canadians are claisey! (Not really, they are nice folk over here).
The tourist shops are just as bad as anywhere else in the world. Check out this merchandising ploy.
They have an obsession with killing animals & sticking them on their heads over here. (I guess we do in Australia as well.)
No, you can't take him with us!
Kerri took a liking to this bear at the front of one of the tourist shops. She wanted to take him with us & then send it back to her mum. Fortunately he wasn't for sale. The freight costs would have been horrendous! It would have been a great gag having him sit next to us on the train trip over to Calgary.
Vancouver Skytrain
Before I leave Vancouver behind & start on about the Rocky Mountaineer, I mentioned the Vancouver Skytrain before. These run about every 3-4 minutes around Vancouver, & they're fast! The freaky thing about these trains is that they don't have a driver!!! They're all controlled by a central control room. It must be like running a gigantic model train set. Bad news if you get it wrong!
As for most major cities around the world, they look much nicer at night. The photo below was taken around 11pm from our hotel. Bloody twilight near the Arctic Circle! Doesn't make it easy to sleep! I'm sure we will learn to live with it. The 6 hrs of daylight in the middle if winter could be less of a novelty.
