OK, I thought I’d spare you the pain about reading more about geocaching while discussing our latest outings, lest you think this was a geocaching blog. However, we did catch a few caches down on Westham Island, and up on the Sunshine Coast too.

One of the caches was just outside the bird sanctuary, down a bit of a trail by the slough that borders the sanctuary. Gwen took some delight at taking a “view from the cache” shot:

There was another cache on the island that was on private land: a farm that had a produce stand. The farm owners have given permission for the cache and I’m pretty sure are actively involved with it. It was a bit of a unique cache: a foam pumpkin in an old seed planting machine on the edge of what I assume was a pumpkin patch. After retrieving the cache, we picked up a couple boxes of fresh raspberries — which I’m pretty sure is the reason that the farmers approve of the cache!

On Sunday, while up on the Sunshine Coast, we picked up a cache right at the narrows. We took a few more pictures since Nana was minding the boy while Gwen & I hunted down the cache. Behold another “view from the cache” as well as pictures of us and the cache site itself.

The narrows themselves are part of an “Earthcache“, which is why you see me holding the GPS in one of the previous photos.

On the way back to the ferry, we picked up a cache near the rock beach you saw in the previous post. We were 4th to find for the cache — the first to find (FTF) happened only the day before. So close!

And, while waiting for the ferry in Langdale, Gwen and her mother picked up another cache inside the ferry waiting area. Not a bad weekend, but now that the weather’s turned hopefully we can grab some more caches next weekend. Maybe we can hit 50 cache milestone!

Sunday was Canada Day. The past two years we have gone down to Granville Island and enjoyed the festivities. This year we did something different: we got up early and took the ferry to the Sunshine Coast. The ferry ride is only 40 minutes long and even with reservations, this was almost as long as we waited in the parking lot to get on the ferry. We met some friends on the ferry who were also going to Skookumchuck. After arriving in Langdale, we drove up to make the traditional stop at the only Tim Horton’s on the Sunshine Coast just outside of Gibsons. We fuelled up, and unfortunately Gwen ate a small piece of the apple cheese danish that was supposed to be a cherry cheese danish. Gwen’s allergic to apples, and didn’t have any medication on her, so this made for a bit of a tense time. We continued to drive to the north end of the Coast and headed inland to the Skookumchuck Narrows. Aidan normal travels quite well, but on this day we discovered that he gets car sick! I can’t really blame him — I get car sick too. Plus, the road north of Pender Harbour (highway 101, continuing the West Coast tradition) is mountainous: twisty, turny, and hilly. Add to that the tall trees and high mountain walls, and you get the effect of driving through a twisty tunnel. After puzzling out why he was crying something other than his “I’m not getting my way” cry, we pulled off the road and spent some time cleaning him up and cooling him down. Our destination was still another 15 km away, but we turning back wasn’t an option. Fortunately the bit of apple danish that Gwen had wasn’t a problem. Having two sick people in the truck would have been unpleasant.

The Skookumchuck Narrows are a tidal bore, where the flow going into the Sechelt Inlet rushes in and out a very narrow chokepoint. The current can hit up to 16 knots and you can often see large whirlpools being shed. There’s a 4 km hike (flat by BC standards, a little hilly by any other standard) to two points over looking an inlet. I’ve created a Google map that you can see here.

We hiked in (I had Aidan in the backpack) and were suitably impressed by the display. Check out the video and pictures below:

Note in the video you can hear Aidan singing the ABC’s. Also note that when Gwen turns the camera on him, he immediately clams up. This is why we’ve not been able to capture any audio of him singing. Yet.

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Before heading back to the ferry, we stopped at the marina store in the nearby village of Egmont and Lorraine bought some Gravol. We broke up one of the pills into quarters and gave Aidan one in a fruit bar. The subsequent drive back was uneventful! The boy didn’t seem to get sick and stayed pretty happy for the whole trip. We stopped for a bit in Sechelt, and Aidan had a chance to play on a rock beach bordering on the Georgia Strait.

We stopped in Gibsons on the way back to have supper at Molly’s Reach. You know, that place from The Beachcombers? We didn’t get a photo because the boy was pretty cranky, but the one you see there is up on Flickr (click the photo to go to that person’s Flickr page). The fish and chips were good — as usual — but as I mentioned, the boy was pretty cranky so we were in and out of there pretty quickly. We raced to the ferry around 5:45 pm, hoping to catch the 6:50 pm ferry for which (1) we didn’t have reservations, and (2) had sold out all its reservations. We weren’t too sure that we’d make it on, but after arriving at the terminal it was pretty clear that we would.

We caught up with our friends on the ferry ride back, and Aidan spent pretty much the whole ride flirting with the women. He’s pretty shameless. I hope to get some video that Ali shot, and when I do I’ll post it.

This past weekend was the Canada Day weekend. It was also Lorraine’s (Nana’s) few days visiting with us.

On Saturday, we went to the Reifel Bird Sanctuary down on Westham Island in Ladner. I’ve blogged about this before. It was a wonderful bright sunny day, and Aidan was finally old enough to fully enjoy the various birds. The big attraction (for kids, at least) at Reifel is the ducks. Hundreds and hundreds of ducks. And geese, but they’re much more annoying and aggressive.  You can tell from the photos and video how much fun the place is now.

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Gwen’s already covered all the salient points, and pretty eloquently too. I thought I’d add my two cents for the sake of completeness. Plus, it makes for a good blog post.

So, as Gwen has noted, it was a rough night to start with. In addition to the restlessness of the boy, the weather has been pretty much the pits. Last night, we were subject to brief periods of torrential rain. It was pretty warm, so all the windows were wide open and these downpours would wake us up every once and a while. It was the type of weather that you’d associate with severe thunder and lightning, but Vancouver so rarely has thunder and lightning, and we didn’t last night.

I woke to a woman shrieking. It was a cry of pain and terror. It was followed shortly by an angry man’s voice and the sound of a dog going nuts.

Before I had a chance to fully appreciate what was going on, I was out of the house barefoot and shirtless heading down the stairs to the alley. Despite the hour (1:30 am?) our condo complex was reasonably well lit. The alley was a different story.

I reached the alley, opened the gate and made my way to the middle of the alley. It wasn’t raining, but it had been recently and the pavement was pitch black. The alley itself isn’t too well lit, but there was some sort of light at the end of the alley as I looked east. This had the effect of backlighting the scene laid out in front of me.

What I saw was a large-ish man dressed in dark clothes straining at the end of a leash. Well, at the business end of the leash was a large dog, pulling, and barking endlessly. It didn’t look like a Shepard, instead it looked like a large pit bull or some other large, muscular dog. Hidden in the darkness of a carport must have been a woman. She was whimpering and crying, but other than that and the dog barking, there seemed to be no other sounds. Certainly the man wasn’t saying anything, nor was he moving.

I took in the scene and tried to make sense of it. There was clearly a woman in some distress, but it didn’t seem that she was actively being harmed. In fact, it seemed that the man had pinned her in the carport with the dog, and was content to keep her there. At this point I was thinking domestic dispute or something, and I yelled down the alley inquiring if everything was alright, and if anything was needed. Clearly it wasn’t alright, but I figured we had to start somewhere.

The shadowed figure said nothing. Possibly he didn’t hear me over the dog barking, but I certainly did get a look. Some sight I must have made too. Anyway, I yelled down the alley again and this time I got a response: “Police”.

Now, this wasn’t the most helpful response in the world. Was he asking for the police? Was he claiming to be the police? Pretty unclear. Regardless, I’d seen enough. I started back into the condo to call 911 when one of our neighbours from the front of the complex came to the alley. After a quick discussion of what was going on, I resumed my journey back inside to call 911. Just as I turned around, though, a police car came down the alley from the east end with lights flashing.

At the same time, two unmarked cars came rushing into the parking lot at the west end of the alley. Two plainclothes officers jumped out and ran down the alley. At that time, it became clear that the man with the dog was a policeman with the dog squad. By this time (only a few short minutes later I’m sure) quite a crowd was gathering in the alley. Another neighbour from our complex was coming down the stairs, and some people from some of the neighbouring condos were poking their heads out. Suddenly feeling rather underdressed and ancillary to the situation I went back inside.

Gwen and her mother were on our balcony (which overlooks the alley) and I went up and joined them. Not much to see. The woman was now angry and was screaming bloody murder, and the police were going about doing their job. I’d seen enough and knew it was going to be an uphill battle getting back to sleep, so I beat it back to bed and started down the path to slumberland. It was going to be another hour and a half before I got there.

After discussing the happenings with folks throughout the day, I’ve come to a few conclusions.

I should have brought a phone with me. A cell phone or our mobile, it doesn’t matter. If there was something unpleasant happening, going back for a phone wouldn’t have been helpful.

Shoes would have been nice.

There was some discussion about going into the alley in the first place. Ali wondered what would have happened if the person had a gun. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind until then. In retrospect, though, I was in the alley before the cogs started turning in my head. Oh well.

Just part of living in a big city, I guess!