Steve's Favorite Spot in Vancouver

It is the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese garden.  It is a recreation of the garden of a scholar-official during the Ming dynasty.  I found it beautiful and serene.

The structures in the garden include a reception hall where the scholar-official would formally receive visitors, the scholar-official's study, and pavilions.  They were built in China, then dismantled and shipped to Canada.  A major design element are these limestone rocks known as "taihu stone."  They are only found at the foot of Dongting Mountain, and are almost never exported from China.

The garden is separated into two parts, representing yin and yang energy.  The decorations on the yin side are composed of curves; on the yang side  they use straight lines.  Note the stonework on the floor and the latticed windows in these two pictures:

This is the reception hall, where the scholar-official would formally receive visitors:

The hall contains this incredibly detailed silk panel, which is not painted, but needlepoint!

This is the courtyard outside the scholar-official's study:

Feeding the koi in the pond:

By train to Vancouver

The train to Vancouver left Jasper around 10 PM, something like three hours late.  The waiting was stressful, and Steve was concerned about making sure we had seats together (they do not do reservations in economy class).  It turned out to be a non-issue, because the train was not very full.  In fact, it was empty enough that we each got a pair of seats to ourselves, which made it easier to find a comfortable position to sleep in.

When we woke up, we were traveling along the Thompson River, through a scrubby, semi-arid landscape.

 

The landscape became more lush as we joined the Fraser River for the rest of the way to Vancouver.

And we arrived in Vancouver almost an hour early!  Some combination of intrepid train-driving and lots of padding in the schedule, I expect.

Jasper continued

Here are some of Suzanne's photos from our bike ride up to Lac Beauvert and the Jasper Park Lodge:

These are some giant rose hips on a tiny little rose bush.

This is how clear Lac Beauvert is!!

We signed up for a bus tour to nearby Maligne Lake (pronounced mah-leen).  We had the option of either taking a cruise on the lake or a guided hike.  Suzanne opted for the cruise, and Steve for the hike.  Our guide was a young woman named Kelli, who was great - both energetic and informative.

We stopped first at Maligne Canyon, which is a gorge carrying the outflow from the lake.  The stone here is primarily limestone, which is much harder than shale, so the gorge is much steeper than the ones back home:

The drive went quickly, except when we hit a traffic jam....

Those are bighorn sheep, a group of females and young.

When we got to the lake, Suzanne got on the boat with everyone else in the group.  Here are some images from that cruise.

Here you can see just a bit of glacier remaining between the two peaks - you have to look closely!

The destination of the cruise is Spirit Island.  It is sacred ground of the indigenous people of the area and we were asked not to step onto the island.

 Steve went for a walk to Moose Lake.  He was the only one who didn't go on the boat, so he got a personal guide.

Yes, the lake is frequented by moose; they like to eat the moss on the lake bottom. A number of people were hanging out there hoping to see one, but none showed up.  We did, however, see a black bear with 2 cubs on the drive back to town.  They were eating the buffalo berries, which are their primary food.

Then, it's off to Vancouver!

Jasper - the smoky mountains?

We arrived in Jasper on Friday evening, after taking the train from Edmonton.  The train was late (as often happens), but quite comfortable.  One pleasant surprise was the food on the train - it was cooked right there, and reasonably priced.

Here's a view from the back window of the dome car, as we got close to Jasper:

As you can see, it's hazy.  And yes, that's smoke.  Jasper is surrounded by mountains, but you wouldn't know it - yesterday (Saturday) the smoke hid them almost completely.  This morning (Sunday) you can at least see their outlines.

Suzanne has had a lot of trouble with a sore heel, which has made a real dent in our ability to go hiking.  So we rented a couple of bicycles - much better! We rode around town, then I tried riding up one of the trails.  It was quite steep and rocky, and I am not an experienced mountain biker, so I wound up walking the bike much of the way.

Jasper is a very compact town; there is no sprawl, no malls.  That's because the federal government owns all the land, leasing it to residents and businesses, and they do not allow any expansion into the surrounding habitat.  And if you want to live here, you have to have a job or other reason for being here; you can't just buy a vacation home.

During the day Sunday, the smoke gradually dissipated.  Look - there really ARE mountains out there!

We rode our bikes a little way out of town to a lovely spring-fed lake called Lac Beauvert.  It's one of those "clear blue mountain lakes," tho the color varies from blue to turqoise to green depending on the depth of the water and the viewing angle.

We rented a kayak from a spiffy lodge there and paddled around the lake.

We saw a bald eagle; it sat in a tree for some time and then took off:

Then Suzanne did some more riding while Steve climbed up a hundred steps and up a steep slope to a point overlooking the Athabasca River:

Edmonton - Day 3

Thursday we rented a car to go to two places about 50 km east of town: the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village and Elk Island National Park.

It seems that this part of Alberta has the heaviest concentration of Ukrainians this side of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  One sign of this is that lots of restaurants - including a fish-and-chips place we ate at - have pierogies on their menu.  A Ukrainian who migrated in the late 1800s went back home and sold lots of his countryfolk on the virtues of settling in East Central Alberta, and Ukrainian towns sprouted up all along the rail lines.

The Village is a collection of original buildings that were moved to the site and  meticulously restored, complete with furnishings and all the stuff that would have been there back then.  People in period costumes are in the buildings, playing the role of an actual person who lived or worked in that place.  Here is the interior of an early Orthodox church.  The settlers had to make a lot of compromises, but did their best to maintain a traditional feel. While a full-scale Orthodox church would have a wall covered with gilded icons in the front, the settlers made do with a mail-order church decoration kit.

This humble church was beautiful and is sometimes used for liturgies.  Thus our tour guide asked the woman you see in the background to come out of the further part of the church because it was considered holy and only the priest (who comes in from Edmonton a few times a year) was allowed.

The photo below is of a more elaborate one as the community became more prosperous.  I find these domes so beautiful!

To the left of the church you see the grain elevator which sits adjacent to the rail lines.  It was explained that this ensured that if there was a fire (grain is highly likely to spark a fire) the rest of the town would be far enough away to be safe.

After the village, we went to the Elk Island Park, which is supposed to have lots of bison, elk, moose, and other wildlife.  Suzanne saw one bison from the highway before we even got to the park, but once in the park they seemed scarce - even on a road called the "Bison Loop."  We went to a good-sized lake and walked around there; saw a lot of interesting birds, including a white bird that nose-dived straight down into the water from 25 feet up, in order to catch fish.  We couldn't get a good picture of that, but here's a red-necked grebe:

We decided to try the Bison Loop again, and Steve did see a few in the distance from there.  But on the way, this guy was hanging out in one of the roadside picnic spots!

Edmonton - Day 2

Woke up in the morning and it seemed rather dark.  Looked out the window and the sky had a yellow haze.  It was smoke, from the fires in northern B.C.  There was more than a hint of the smell in the air, and all kinds of health warnings in effect.

We decided that spending most of the day indoors was a good idea.  We just lazed around our rooms for a while, then headed out to the Muttart Conservatory.  They have very distinctive pyramid-shaped greenhouses, one each for arid plants, tropical plants, temperate plants, and special exhibits.  Here's an aptly named "shrimp plant" from the tropical room:

After that, we walked to downtown over the "Low Level Bridge."  It seems that one bank of the river is much higher than the other, so the "High Level Bridge" mentioned in the last post is at the level of the higher bank, while the Low Level Bridge is at the height of the lower bank.  To get up the hill from the low level bridge we took a funicular that operated much like an elevator.  Here's a view of the bridge from the top of the funicular.  Note the haze; the smoke had lessened by this time but was very much still there:

We hunted down a gluten free Fish n Chips place, aptly named Brit's.  Here's a photo of the sign and the artistic decoration below it outside - it might not be too easy to make out, but I'll label it after the photo.

I think it's made up of "found" items.  Got it?  It's a big metal fish with a wooden tail!  Steve got his deep fried fix with haddock and onion rings!!  Yum.

We then walked to a nearby Dairy Queen where Steve paid on his "debt" by buying me a banana split.  Also, Yum!  Then we walked a bout 10 blocks back to our apartment.

Edmonton - Day 1

On Monday, we packed up and headed for the airport to catch our plane to Edmonton (via Toronto, which felt a little odd!).  The trip was uneventful, tho when we got to Toronto we had to walk what seemed like miles down little corridors to get to immigration.  The good news is that they have a separate immigration desk for people making connections, so it went quickly.  Also, they don't make you collect your bags and schlep them thru customs like they do in the US of A.

We got in shortly after 11 PM (local time; that's 1 AM body time) and took a taxi to our Airbnb apartment.  At first arrival, it seemed rather disappointing, but there was nothing horribly wrong, so we went to bed.

The air feels different here.  It's drier here, for one.  It smells different, too, with a hint of smoke, from the wildfires in B.C., I expect.

Edmonton is not a compact city.  There's a lot of it, and it goes on and on.  But our place has decent bus connections (once you walk 8 blocks or so).  Today we took it easy, and tried to go to the farmers' market (but it was closed).  Then we rode the historic High Level Bridge streetcar to downtown.

The streetcar's route follows an old railway line that crosses the river far above the water (and anything else).  It used to be that there were 3 tracks on the bridge, the railroad in the middle and the streetcars on either side.  They barely fit, but apparently no streetcar ever fell off.  Now it's just a single streetcar track in the middle.  The motorman let me into his cabin to take this photo,

We wandered around downtown for a bit, then had an excellent lunch at Doan's Vietnamese Restaurant.  Then we took the streetcar back, got some groceries at an organic market, and took the bus back to our place.