I'm traveling in the Northwest, on research leave this fall, visiting the TRIUMF cyclotron lab on the University of British Columbia campus for two weeks (almost over now) and then to the University of Washington for three weeks. I'm working pretty long hours during the week, but on the weekend I get to go out and enjoy the exceptionally good weather the area has been having lately. While "Beautiful British Columbia" is literally a licence-plate slogan, in this case it is stunningly accurate.
Last weekend--I didn't have the time or energy to post these picture before--I took two gentle hikes. On Saturday I went to Minnekhada Provincial Park outside of Coquitlam, a small town just a few miles east ov Vancouver.
Minnekhada has two small, marshy lakes, with birds resting on them. But it also had beautiful old growth forest surrounding it.
Saturday night I got a ticket to "Bard on the Beach," Vancouver having a lively arts scene, and saw 'The Taming of the Shrew," which was done to the hilt as a "broad" comedy (pun originally unintended but there it lies).
On Sunday I did two short walks--not really hikes, but as on Saturday walking around. First I went to Lynn Canyon. Nearby is the famous Capilano suspension bridge, crowded with tourists and, in good weather like this, even locals. (Like Seattle, in exceptional weather you can find half the city population in a park or on a beach enjoying the day, and the other half stuck in traffic trying to get to a park or a beach to enjoy the day.) But just one canyon to the east is Lynn Canyon, with its own suspension bridge, smaller and less grand, which to my slightly acrophobic mind is all the better.
The river below the bridge flows over some lovely falls and there are, again, cool forest paths to trod.
It only took me an hour to circumnavigate most of it, so I headed off to another park. I'd been to Lynn Canyon years ago, but I had never been to Lighthouse Park, northwest of Vancouver, just on the lip of Horseshoe Bay.
In addition to the beautiful views of the ocean there were, yes, forest paths. I was in heaven.
I took fairly short hikes because I wanted to get some work done on the weekend, as that was my main purpose for coing here. Tomorrow I'll take another, more extensive hike before heading down to Seattle on Sunday.
