A Hot Start to Summer

July 18, 2015July 21, 2015 / Maria / Leave a comment

Summer has been off to a great start this year! I think I’ve alluded to how much I love spring in BC and this year summer has been just as much of a treat for me. Temperatures have been in the high 20’s since the end of May and it always amazes me to realize that I’ll actually get to enjoy three full months of summer!

Our warm and dry winter led us into an even warmer and dryer summer. The grass that was beautiful and green all winter has turned golden brown in the summer heat. I can only recall two days when it has rained since the beginning of June. I love the sun, but the heat has definitely required a little bit of an adjustment from what I’m used to. At any given time it’ll be between 27 and 30 degrees in our house and I’ve taken to leaving all the windows open and sleeping without blankets and the fan pointed right at my face. Unfortunately, the dry heat and lack of rain hasn’t been great for the wildfires across the province and the air quality has been pretty bad in recent weeks.

But I won’t complain because I absolutely love the sunny weather! I’ve been planning my summer activities with abandon, not worrying about how the forecast might turn out. We’ve already crammed in a ton of summer activities and knocked a few more items off my bucket list.

The fun started right after my return from Brazil with a visit from my wonderful parents! They came to stay with us for the May long weekend and we took advantage of the holiday to travel down to Washington State for the weekend. It was Mom and Dad’s first trip to Seattle and we did a little exploring around famous Pike Place Market and then cheered on the Boston Red Sox at a baseball game at Safeco Field (I think it was my first time not cheering for the home team). We didn’t spend too long in Seattle though and opted instead to spend the weekend exploring enormous Olympic National Park.

The Park is located south of Seattle along the west coast, just below Vancouver Island. It was quite a bit larger than we thought, so we spent two days driving around the park trying to fit in as many of its diverse attractions as we could. We had a picnic lunch at a waterfall in Elwha, hiked through the forest near Crescent Lake, went tidepooling at Rialto Beach, and took in the amazing views along Hurricane Ridge. It’s a beautiful park and I wish we’d had a bit more time to spend there. We tried to fit in a few small hikes so we could see a bit of everything, but we did have to spend large portions of our time driving.

Olympic National Park is also home to another setting you might be familiar with, Twilight. The area serves as the setting for Stephanie Meyers popular franchise and we passed through many of the towns from her book. Rialto Beach is located just across the river from La Push and we had a good laugh when we drove through Forks on our way there. They’ve definitely capitilized on ‘Twilight Fever’ and we saw a lot of references to the books around the town. The sun came out for us though, so we didn’t see any vampires around!

Towards the end of May, Seth and I bought bikes as a new way to explore the city. Steph joined us for a bike ride around the Stanley Park seawall at the end of May, but otherwise we’ve mostly been biking around New West. We discovered one of the outdoor public pools within biking distance is free, so that’s been a great way to cool down on hot days. New West is very hilly though, so I really need to work on my leg muscles for biking!

In June we kicked off our camping and hiking season. Our first camping trip was out to Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park. Karen and Grant joined us and we had a fun drive out, stopping for a pretty memorable meal at one of the local bars called Tractorgrease. We spent the weekend BBQing, lounging by the lake, working on our frisbee skills, and making s’mores over a campfire. We ended the trip with a short hike up to Lindeman Lake, one of Chilliwack’s many mountain lakes.

We also made a trip out to Golden Ears Provincial Park in early June with some of my colleagues and went on a nice hike out to Viewpoint Beach, nestled in the mountains along one of the freezing, snow-melt rivers. The river would numb your toes, but we went for a swim in gorgeous Alouette Lake at the end of the hike, one of my favourite places from last summer.

One of the biggests excitements of the month was the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which I’m sure you know was hosted in Canada this year! I bought a set of tickets to several games in June of last year and I couldn’t wait to finally see the women play. We had tickets to two games from the group round (Cameroon vs. Ecuador and Japan vs. Switzerland), two games in the round of 16 (Canada vs. Switzerland and Japan vs. Netherlands), and the quarterfinals (Canada vs. England). It was so incredible to cheer on Canada twice at sold out games with more than 50,000 people in attendance! We finished off the tournament with tickets to the final; it was a bit of a disappointing game since we decided to cheer for Japan, but still an incredible event to witness! Most of all, I was happy to support women’s sports and I hope that Canada came to appreciate their awesome female atheletes a little bit more.

Some other highlights from June included going on a tour of UBC and Wreck Beach with Amy, seeing Ed Sheeran in concert, and celebrating my 25th birthday. I didn’t manage to get tickets to see Ed Sheeran in the first sale, so I had to pay a lot more to get tickets from a third-party, but it was so worth it! Ed is such a fantastic performer – it’s just him, his guitar, and a loop station on stage. Steph and I had such a blast watching him, we decided if he ever comes back we’ll be shelling out for floor seats! I also had a great birthday. I’m pretty sure we gathered up all the Newfoundlanders we could find in the city and had a nice BBQ at the house; although sadly, I forgot to take any pictures.

Our most recent exploit was a Canada Day hike in Garibaldi National Park. I’d heard a lot of good things about Garibaldi from people at work, so we wanted to check it out. We did the 18km hike with one of my colleagues and it was just as impressive as everyone raved it was! The hike itself is a bit of a slog – you start with about 6km of steady uphill through the trees before you really get to any scenery. We stopped for a snack at the 6km mark and encountered one of our favourite birds, Gray Jays (or as they’re known in BC, Whiskey Jacks), which don’t need much enticing to eat straight out of your hand!

The scenery improves a little after that and we hiked through some peaceful meadows before finally reaching gorgeous Garibaldi Lake. It’s a glacial lake and has some of the clearest, blue-green water I’ve ever seen. It’s surrounded by snow capped mountains with the Sphinx and Sentinel Glaciers on the far side of the lake. My colleague was doing a dry run with his big pack for a weeklong hike he’s doing in August, so he had his bag filled with every sort of sandwich fixin’ imaginable and we had a delicious meal on the shore of the lake. After lunch, we all went for a swim in the freezing, crystal clear water to cool down before the hike back. We ended the day with the New West fireworks show, which truly made for a perfect day!

That’s my summer thus far in a nutshell. I’m looking forward to lots more camping in July and I’ll be home for a full two weeks in early August. Sending lots of love and sun back to Newfoundland!

Maria

A Tribute to Winter

March 31, 2015 / Maria / Leave a comment

What does winter look like to you?

Growing up in Newfoundland, winter means lots of snow, chilly weather, and long months of dark, cloudy days. I picture driving to school in the morning after a fresh snow, when the roads are white and the snowflakes still cling to empty tree branches and weigh down the needles on the fir trees. The snow banks pile up until they’re towering over your head and small mountains are created in the mall and university parking lots. Downtown becomes an unmanageable maze of streets, where your worst fear is forgetting the overnight street parking ban and waking up to a fresh, new ticket on your windshield.

Winter is blizzards and blowing snow and wearing your pyjama’s inside out in hopes of a snow day. It’s waiting in anticipation to the closures on the radio and knowing that if only metrobus or the Avalon mall will shut down, then you’re home free for the rest of the day! Snow days are a rare time to bunker down for some quality time with your family or bundle up in your snowsuit to trudge up the street to visit your childhood friends.

Jasper Street Dec. 2013

Winter is back-breaking shoveling and kind neighbours who snow-blow your driveway for you. It’s waking up in the morning and cursing the snowplow for leaving a pile of wet-snow-turned-to-ice at the end of your driveway that you’ll have to chisel through to get to work. It’s edging your way to the corner of the road until you can just see around the snow bank and crossing your fingers that no one hits the nose of your car. If you’re a walker, it means putting your life in the hands of God each and every day as you attempt to navigate the sidewalk covered roads.

In St. John’s, winter can be long months of the rain-snow cycle which usually ends in piles of dirty, brown snow and slush. But it’s also the fun of going sliding down Pippy Park hill, building snow forts in the backyard, visiting the CONA Winter Carnival, and hitting the road for a weekend of skiing at White Hills or Marble Mountain. It’s the Christmas lights decorating the parkway, the signal hill star shining across the city, the childlike glee of waking up to an unanticipated school-free day, and snowy nights spent playing games and eating pizza with your family and friends.

If I could be in a relationship with winter on facebook, it would probably be ‘it’s complicated’, but it’s the winter I’ve grown up with and begrudgingly come to love.

This year I got to know a whole new side of winter. Nostalgia aside, it was pretty awesome!

It snowed once in Vancouver in November and I was sure winter was on the way. I came back after my Christmas break expecting to see snow covered mountains and feel that winter chill in the air, but it never came. I feel like I was waiting for winter to arrive and then I finally woke up one day and realized that it was spring and that evidently, winter had decided to skip over the west coast this year. I was a little nostaglic from all the epic pictures of snow in St. John’s, but I quickly realized that Vancouver’s mild winter has some definite benefits!

It’s officially spring and the temperature has been flirting around the 12-15 degree zone pretty regularly since February. The cherry blossums and magnolias have already come and gone and after a three week sun marathon in early March, Seth and I decided to trade in our snow boots for hiking boots. We’ve been out hiking around the lower mainland several times over the last month and love that the beautiful BC wilderness is just a short drive from the city.

Lynn Creek Trail

We started off our hiking season with a circuit around Burnaby Mountain – the highest point in Burnaby and home to Simon Fraser University. There’s a great view of Vancouver from Burnaby Mountain Park and we spent an afternoon hiking around the back of the mountain through second-growth forest looking out over Burrard Inlet. We had a great day out in the sun and finished with an exciting near-encounter with a black bear! Apparently they’ve been coming out of hibernation early this year on account of the warm weather.

We also did two hikes in the mountains of North Vancouver. The watershed and reservoirs for the lower mainland are located in North Van, so I spent a lot of time working up there over the summer and there are a ton of great hiking trails along some of the rivers. Karen and Grant joined us for one of the hikes and we ended up getting immediately lost. We’re not the most observant and missed a sign telling us that the bridge we were trying to cross to start our hike had been removed after a landslide upstream flooded the area (including the trail we were planning to hike). We ended up doing another hike, which I’m sure was just as nice, but it wasn’t until the following week when I tried to do the same hike again with my friends Amy and Steph that we finally noticed the sign informing us of the landslide. So I ended up doing two unintended hikes, but they both ended up being gorgeous!

Fisherman’s Trail

Seth and I had another little adventure in February when we decided to make a trek down to Washington to go on a camel safari! That’s right, I did say ‘camel safari’. Seth found one of the funnier groupons I’ve seen, advertising a ‘Camel Encounter and Segway Tour’ and purchased them on a limb. We decided to make a day of it and had a great time learning all about camels and how to ride a segway. They’re pretty intuitive and we had a good laugh driving them around the farm. We finished off the tour by bottle-feeding some of the younger camels!

The “babies”

In other news, I’ve been making some pretty good progress on my bucket list (see the right side of my blog for a full update). We went to see comedian Tig Nataro in January and we saw our first NHL game! The Canucks played the Jets and won in overtime, making for a pretty exciting first game. We caught our first concert of the year at the end of February when we saw Hey Rosetta! play at the Vogue Theatre. I also bought a new vegetarian cookbook, so I’ve been having some fun cooking as well. I tried out a few recipes and our favourites so far were a thai vegetable pizza, homemade samosa patties, a hearty edamame salad, and delicious spinch-baked manicotti.

Unfortunately, you can’t win at everything; the warm weather has resulted in the skiing around Vancouver being very bad this year. There’s three ski hills right outside Vancouver that have been closed almost all winter and Whistler has really been suffering on the bottom half of the mountain. We decided to try Whistler a few weeks ago since we didn’t think we’d have many more opportunities, but other then that, I haven’t accomplished any of my winter-related bucket list items. Whistler was pretty bare on the bottom, but it was completely covered in snow on the top and we still ended up having a pretty good day on the top half of the mountain. It’s a huge resort, so we stuck just to Whistler and didn’t even try to ski any of Blackcomb mountain, which will have to be a trip for next year.

Whistler

I decided to add a new item to my list and saw Vancouver’s soccer team, the White Caps, play this week. They played their rival, Portland, and didn’t let us down with a win in the last few seconds of play! It’s Easter this weekend, so we’re off to Ontario to spend some time with family. After that, my trip to Brazil will be less than three weeks away, so I’m looking forward to getting some international travelling in!

In conclusion, I didn’t get my traditional winter this year, but the warm, sunny weather in Vancouver more than made up for it! I know spring might still be a while away for my family on the East Coast, but I’m looking forward to more outdoor activities on this side of the country. Appreciate what you can about the snow my friends and come visit me if you’re looking for a little break!

Love Maria

A Year in British Columbia

January 31, 2015 / Maria / Leave a comment

It’s officially been a year since I moved to the West Coast!

It’s been a pretty eventful year and I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by! Looking back, I realized I’ve actually done very little writing about my time in BC over the past year and decided to reflect on some of the adventures I’ve had. Despite the lack of blog entries, I have been pretty busy and decided to make a list of some of my favourite things I’ve done in BC over the last year to share with you. Here are the top 12 highlights of my year on the West Coast:

12. Annual Festivals in the Lower Mainland

Enjoying hot cider at the Christmas Market

I’ve discovered there’s always something going on in and around Vancouver and there are tons of events and festivals to check out throughout the year. There’s the Celebration of Lights firework shows in July, the rotating Food Cart festivals around the city, the Pacific National Exhibition in August, Fright Night at Halloween, and the many Christmas light festivals and Christmas Market in December. We recently did Dine Out Vancouver as well, a 2 week festival in January where restaurants all over the city offer three course meals for $18, $28, or $38.

Skiing on Seth’s Birthday

11. Skiing Cypress

I have to admit that the ski weather isn’t always the best outside Vancouver, but I love having access to skiing so close to the city! I’ve been up to Cypress three times since I moved here; they do seem to struggle to get enough snow and to keep it on the mountain (although I’ve been told it’s been a bad season), but it’s a great size mountain and only 30 minutes away! I am hoping to get out to Whistler this year though!

10. Hiking in the Okanagan

HIking in Summerland

Over the Labour Day long weekend Seth and I drove out to the Okanagan and spent three days camping in Okanagan Lake Provincial Park. We spent our time swimming in the beautiful lake, visiting wineries in BC’s premier wine region, and hiking along the train tracks of an old steam train. It was a pretty relaxing weekend and we loved all the beautiful scenery in the Okanagan and along the drive.

Canadian Women’s Soccer

9. Sports and Concerts

Living near a city that actually attracts popular artists and has several home teams in multiple sports has been a real pleasure, although one that I still haven’t really taken full advantage of. We saw the women’s Canadian soccer team and the Vancouver Giants play this year and we’re planning to catch a Canucks game soon. Hopefully this summer we’ll also get a chance to see the Vancouver White Caps (soccer) and the Vancouver Canadians (baseball) play. I only went to one concert last year, Elton John, but there’s always someone putting off a concert downtown and I plan to pay closer attention to who else visits this year!

8. Hiking the Chief

View from the Chief

One of BC’s more popular hikes in the lower mainland is The Chief. We decided to hike it when my Dad visited in early June. As challenging as the hike proved to be (it’s about a 700m elevation gain in just a few kilometres), the view from the top was amazing! The Chief has three peaks that you can hike to, but we were so exhausted after the first one that we decided just to do one. Pretty much the entire hike is rock steps and near the top there’s a fair bit of climbing using chains attached to the rock, but it’s well worth the effort once you reach the top!

Cherry Blossoms in April

7. Spring weather

Spring is actually a real season in BC and this was the first year I’ve ever appreciated it! I couldn’t believe when the cherry blossoms starting budding in April and that it was 22 degrees outside when we had a team BBQ outside at work in early May. Sorry Newfoundland, but I do not miss snowy May 24 or Juneuary.

6. Kayaking the Sunshine Coast

A little starfish I found

My parents came to visit in September and we made a little journey over to the Sunshine Coast and ended up going kayaking in Porpoise Bay. It was probably one of my favourite times kayaking! Porpoise Bay is completely sheltered, so the water was super calm and we saw all kinds of interesting things, from starfish and sea cucumbers, to harbour seals and river otters! We didn’t even need a guide because it was so easy going, so we just spent the morning exploring several bays.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

5. Trips across the Border

Vancouver is so close to the US border and I love being able to hop across the border when it strikes my fancy! In April Emily came for a visit and we went down to Washington to see the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival and to visit Seattle. Then in August, as you probably know from my previous blogs, my friends came from Newfoundland and we went on an epic road trip from Vancouver all the way down to San Francisco! We decided that Oregon is the undiscovered gem of the west coast.

4. Camping at Cultus Lake

Grilling burgers on our camping trip

Camping was my new discovery this year. We went camping for a weekend at Cultus Lake, but honestly, I don’t think it mattered where we went, I just loved it! My parents gave me their old tent from the 80’s and we bought little bit of camping gear and just had a great time soaking up the sun, swimming, having campfires, and cooking outside. It’s so nice to get out of the city, especially in a place like BC where there’s so much gorgeous landscape to explore!

Alouette Lake

3. Exploring Alouette Lake

We didn’t get a chance to go camping at Alouette Lake, which is located in Golden Ears Provincial Park, but we went there for a day trip in July and loved it. The lake is located right at the base of the mountains and just has the most beautiful backdrop! You can rent canoes there, which was tempting, but we opted instead to go for about a 5km hike along the river next to the lake up to a waterfall. It was a great day and we hope to go camping there this summer.

2. Adopting the Vancouver Lifestyle

My first race!

Don’t worry, I’ll never stop being a Newfoundlander, but one of the things I love about Vancouver is the active lifestyle that people try and live. I really took ownership over my health this year; I started running and hula hooping and made a big effort to adopt better eating habits. Like Newfoundland, everyone here loves the outdoors, but there’s a bit more of an opportunity to enjoy it (weather-wise), so I made every effort to get out and enjoy nature!

Trying some Ethiopian Food!

1. Trying all the restaurants!

Vancouver is so incredibly diverse and there are so many amazing places to eat here! One day I was just thinking about all the restaurants here and realized that I’ve barely eaten at any chain restaurants in the last year! I love trying new foods, especially those that are not easily available in St. John’s, and have been busy trying out as many new foods as possible. My favourites are probably Indian, Thai, and, of course, sushi, but I’ve tried a lot new foods since I’ve been here and love that most of the restaurants are locally owed and pretty authentic. I currently have a tie going for my favourite restaurant between this wonderful vegetarian mexican restaurant at Commercial-Broadway, Bandidos Taqueria, and a delicious sushi restaurant at Royal Oak that my friend introduced me to, Sushi Oyama.