Vancouver, bee

Saturday, 16-Sep-2006
We really wanted to hike to the top of Mt. Benson today, so we got up at 6am, had some yogurt and oatmeal, some juice, and a handful of ibuprofen, and hit the road by 6:45.

Uhhh... right. Woke up around 8:30, made some coffee in the room, looked at a crossword puzzle for awhile, lifted arm not holding coffee to write in an answer, put crossword down, rolled over. ZZzzz. Vacation, right? At about 11am, we actually started moving towards the mountain. And by this time, we realized we had to pare down the hike to just Westwood Ridge instead. Not really the major trek that we'd been thinking about, but probably the wiser thing to do even if we HAD gotten going at 6:45. (Eh??? I can't hear you because my joints are creaking too loudly.)

We were hiking around the lake, and heard a little rustling near then side of the trial... Athens, can you find anything here in the grass?


Okay, so that's really not that great a picture, but I thought Athens might like playing hide and seek. Well, seek anyway; he could hide, but I'm not sure the snake would ever find him.

[Okay, so after looking at this again, I realize the snake is harder to see than I first thought. If you didn't see it, check this:Personally, I think it would be more considerate of the snake to be outlined in turquoise in the wild; it would certainly make it easier to see when walking along.]

We kept hiking and started getting to some really steep sections. The trails weren't very well marked, so we decided to make sure we'd be able to find our way back at a few of the forks in the trail:

Here, Vanna, is indicating that the way home is down to the right behind lovely tree #2.


We kept winding up the ridge, and expecting the top to be just around the next bend, and we'd get around the next bend, and ... there would almost be a great view. But just around the next bend, I'm SURE that we'll be there. This went on for bend after bend. After bend.

After bend.

And then finally... we made it. Well worth the perserverance!

That's Westwood lake in the foreground (well, Marc, those are actually trees in the foreground, but just beyond them is the lake), and then the city of Nanaimo back there. Downtown is to the right where you can just barely see a tall building sticking out beyond the trees above the very right end of the lake (just a little white smudge). The big body of water (past the lake, Marc) is the Strait of Georgia, and then way back there in the distance is mainland BC.

Lynne was so excited, that she was jumping all over the place; I mean really, you try to take one nice picture of the view, and she just gets all over it...

We sat here and had lunch, (pb and honey sandwiches, apples, chocolate), and discussed the important things in life, like what we were going to have for dinner. Cheeseburgers seemed the likely choice. Sitting here at the top, we really felt like we were actually (finally) on vacation.

Headed down to make sure that we didn't miss the last bus of the day, showered back at the motel, and headed downtown in search of the burger joint that Lynne had seen from the bus window. Didn't dress up, 'cause, let's face it, it's a burger joint. Uhhh, well, not exactly a burger joint, as it turns out. It's a gourmet burger joint. But what the heck, we're hungry, we're in front of a restaurant that sells burgers, we don't know where another one might be... we go in.

Do you remember the scene in Pulp Fiction where Travolta and Thurman are at the restaurant, and Uma orders a milkshake? Travolta says (probably inaccurately quoted here), "You just ordered a 5-dollar shake?!?" Well, I have now had the cheeseburger equivalent. And just as Travolta seemingly decided that the 5-dollar shake may have been worth the money, I think that he may have decided (perhaps you should sit down now) that my 17-dollar burger was worth it. Yes, granted, it was 17 dollars Canadien, but that still puts it over $15US. But hey, it came with a salad. And you know, I think I would have been willing to pay another $5. Officially it was a bacon, cheddar, mushroom burger. It came on a large plate; half of which was covered with the organic salad, and the other half looked like a hamburger bun resting on top of a 4-inch high stack of grilled mushrooms. Seriously, without some serious excavation, you couldn't see that there was even a burger on the plate. The mushrooms alone would have been a filling meal. Split a piece of cheesecake for dessert... great meal. Mmmm.

So much for taking the bus home... after stuffing ourselves, it was definitely time for another walk. And boy, did we pass out that night.