Last Monday we packed up and moseyed over the pass. We figured that we might just as well visit with Cindy and Terry one last time before heading south. It also gave us a chance to get warm and dry. The Tri-Cities run about ten degrees warmer and obviously drier. Tuesday the four of us played an18 hole round of golf at the Columbia Park course. Columbia Park is a "par 3" course and is about 1/3 the length of regular courses. We haven?t had a chance to do much golf the last couple of weeks and apparently that's all that?s necessary to lose one's edge. The bottom line is our scores were rotten but we did have fun - I guess.
A couple of weeks ago, I talked to my Aunt Audrey. Audrey was on her way to Miami and wanted to know the next time we were going to visit my mother, so that she and Aunt Bonnie could meet us over there, and visit my mother at the same time. Everything was set up for last Wednesday and Nancy volunteered to do lunch for everybody. Visiting my mother doesn?t take a lot of time as she is unable to reply very much any more; so after a brief visit we all sat down to a nice lunch. After lunch we came back over the hill and were home before dark.
Nancy's last knitting class was Saturday in Mount Vernon. Nancy really gets off on the whole teaching thing. Not only would she do this sort of thing for free, I think she would pay for the experience. Her interest in fiber arts has been and will continue to be an ?ice breaker? for meeting new people.
A couple of months ago when we went to Victoria we saw a carved Haida chest that really made an impression us. We talked about it - a lot - and decided to go for it. Rather than going back to Victoria we thought we might be able to find something similar in Vancouver. The advantage to Vancouver is we can drive to Vancouver in about the same time/distance that it would take to get to the ferry dock for Victoria. Not only is Victoria two hours further but also the ferry fee runs about $55 each way. The other reason for going to Vancouver is that we haven?t been there since we went to the World's Fair in '86 with Adam and Hanne`, our Norwegian exchange student.
Vancouver has changed, a lot - in the last years, since the British lease on Hong Kong ran out, there was a mass migration of people from Hong Kong to Vancouver. To accommodate the influx of high-earning immigrants, hundreds of high-rise, luxury, apartment houses were built. It?s weird to see row after row of apartment buildings. Not only is Vancouver affected, but all the towns around Vancouver appear to have the same disease.
We asked around locally to limit our search in Vancouver and found that no one from around here had been to Vancouver in years. As we crossed the border we stopped at the visitors center and asked them where we could buy some Native American art. The visitor's center not only told us where to go but provided a detailed map. We found the two shops right away, but decided the bentwood boxes were a little too pricey at this time and came home with nothing.
We had changed a twenty-dollar bill to Canadian money and had only spent two dollars for parking.
The perfect lunch would use up all of our Canadian money. We found a little Vietnamese shop and had some pho for lunch - yum. It's been something we've been missing up here. And, it used up our Canadian money.We still had a little more time, so we went looking for a bookstore with the idea of finding better books on English travel. Found an interesting shopping center but it only had it only one bookstore and it was nothing more that a news stand.
So, we headed south for the border and were home before dark.