Along the shore

At last! We gave our poor legs a break today. Mike and Tami did compare their various cuts, scrapes, bruises, and gouges from five days of running pedals and shifters into their legs. Keenan’s legs seemed to be unmarred.

After a good lazy start to the morning we walked down to catch one of the foot ferries that run up and down False Creek. With a day pass in hand, we first stopped at Granville Island and checked out the public market and various art galleries. The last time Keenan was there he was pretty little. We remembered how hard it was to pry him out of the toy store. Now he actually enjoys going to art galleries as much as we do. Who’d a thunk it?

We hopped aboard another ferry to check out the Vancouver Maritime Museum which features a retired RCMP arctic exploration and support ship, the St. Roch. It was the first ship to complete the Northwest Passage in a west to east direction (1940-1942) and the first ship to circumnavigate North America. Very fun to climb around the ship and see how the crew had to live for months and years at a time.

St. Roch

More Roch

The museum also had an excellent exhibit on the history of Japanese-Canadian fishermen in BC, including their treatment during WWII. Interesting to see the parallels between the US and Canada in how the Japanese were treated.

After all that walking we needed more boat time so we took another ferry all the way to the end of False Creek, checked out the beer, calamari, and fried pickles (all excellent), and caught another ferry back. This ferry was being run by a skipper-in-training. She seemed to be taking the wheel for the first time and she was actually doing pretty well, but after hearing her being coached through the process for several stops, I think we all felt ready to give it a try ourselves. They didn’t offer, though.

While taking the foot ferry we got to see some members of the local paddling club in various types of boats

We had to hoof it back along the shore again to return to our hotel so of course we worked up another appetite. Tonight’s dining selection was a small Chinese noodle house with fresh hand pulled noodles, Legendary Noodle. We each had a different preparation and variant of the noodles, including black bean pork and mushroom, chicken with peanut, and pork garlic chili sauce noodles. Yum yum yum. Since we head home tomorrow, we also felt we had to finish with some ice cream so we found a slab ice creamery and now we have the sustenance needed to face packing tonight so we are ready for a 5 am departure tomorrow.