Day 12 (7/22) – Breakfast at the hotel. The usual things: yogurt, sausage, cereal, muffins, bagels, English muffins, oatmeal, etc.
The first stop of the day was the Mount St. Helens Visitor Center. It’s not very far off the highway; easy to stop on the way by. Further up the road are the Forest Learning Center and the Johnston Ridge Observatory. The observatory, however, has been closed and will remain closed until at least 2027. The road was destroyed in a landslide.
The visitor center has an interesting set of exhibits. Including a walkthrough volcano diorama to show off the interior structure.
Lunch was at the ilani complex. I had it down as a point of interest as a large entertainment complex (though mainly a casino). We needed to eat something, it was on the way, and I figured there’d be food there. Maybe even decent food at subsidized prices–but I guess that’s not a thing at casinos anymore. At the entrance they had a few fast-food places. Corinne had fried rice, I had surprisingly decent street tacos, Jess and Heather had mediocre pizza by-the-slice (though it was huge slices!):
Back across the Columbia River into Oregon. We stopped in Portland at Hopscotch–a set of interactive, immersive, art exhibits. A ball pit of translucent balls over changing multi-colored lights. A room sculpted into a cave using discarded, plastic grocery bags. A room with strings of changing multi-colored lights hanging from the ceiling with 4 wall of mirrors. A bouncy floor with projectors and motion-responsive, algorithmic art designs. And more. It was certainly unique. The girls had a blast.
Destination for the night was another Best Western Plus. This one in Albany, OR. Dinner at Elmer’s.
Day 11 (7/21) – Breakfast from the bin as we packed up the hotel room and then loaded up the van. Out of Vancouver headed south across the border. Once we returned to the U.S. we stopped for lunch at Bob’s Burgers and Brews. Then into Seattle to visit the Space Needle, Chihuly Gardens & Glass, and a quick IMAX movie about the James Webb Space Telescope. Had tourist-trap-expensive ice cream at the top of the Space Needle which we ate while hanging out on the rotating, transparent floor.
Dinner was a smorgasbord of nearby options. Nuggets from McDonald’s for Corinne. After grabbing those we walked over to the armory which had a food court. Heather got a Subway sandwich and Jess and I got individual pizzas from Mod Pizza.
Back in the car to Lacey, WA where we spent the night at a Best Western Plus.
Day 10 (7/20) – Breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel lobby, Abode. Walk along the harbor up to the Vancouver Aquarium; with a free preview of seals on the way.
Intentionally left the aquarium trip for Monday hoping it would be less busy and it wasn’t too bad. Far less busy than some trips to Monterey Bay Aquarium that we’ve done. Special exhibits on dragons and axolotls, so it was pretty much designed for our girls. Heather got to hold a gecko.
We ate lunch at the aquarium’s cafe, out through the gift shop, and back to the hotel to crash and rest. Corinne did some swimming in the hotel pool and I rested my feet in the hot tub again. Dinner was on the corner across the street at Coco Rico Cafe. Then to the other side of the street to try Japanese cheesecake. It’s fluffy in contrast to the American smooth/dense variety.
The view of our hotel from the plaza across the street:
Day 9 (7/19) – Having spent more than a week on the road we were now out of clean clothes. I had hoped to find ourselves at a hotel with guest laundry available (either self-serve, or possibly willing to splurge on a service), but that hadn’t happened yet. The hotel on day 8 did have a guest laundry facility, but it was out of service. And here, the Blue Horizon, has a laundry service, but it only operates Monday through Friday and we needed clean clothes sooner than Monday evening.
So I packed up all the dirty laundry into two duffel bags and carried them a half-mile to a laundromat when it opened at 9:30. Fairly nice walk, much of the way was streets that had been closed to vehicle traffic and had trees. Got there early enough to grab two washers–which fit all the laundry with room to spare. With the washers running I walked next door to a cafe for breakfast. My order flag was this classic T-rex toy:
By the time I finished breakfast it was time to move the laundry. On the washers you pay for a wash cycle, but for the dryers you just buy 3 minutes per quarter. So I asked the attendant how long a full load usually takes to dry. She told me about 40 minutes, but it’s a good thing I didn’t listen to her. I put them each in for 27 and they were both almost entirely dry. So I combined the few things that were still damp for another 12 minutes while I folded everything else.
By this time I found myself as the new resident expert on their machines and was helping other people get their laundry going. The machines were…not obvious in their functioning and very often spit back quarters or had quarters get stuck and you’d need to smash the reject button several times to get it to spit out.
Anyway, laundry washed, folded, and loaded back up into the duffel bags for the half-mile walk back to the hotel. The girls had gotten up and eaten breakfast from the bin and with fresh laundry everyone was dressed and ready for lunch. For which we stopped at the new bakery on the corner next to the hotel and split a chocolate croissant, a caramel almond pastry, and a sourdough baguette.
From there we did a little walking tour of the city. First stop the Vancouver Public Library – Central Branch because it’s an interesting building:
Then on to the Gastown Steam Clock, which plays Westminster Chimes via steam whistles! I somehow missed that information when looking it up, so it was a fun surprise. We caught the 1:30 chimes and then looked around at some shops and ate some donuts to await the top of the hour:
More walking to reach Science World (currently dressed up as a soccer ball for the World Cup). The girls had a blast. Lots interactive displays–in working order!
One favorite was the generative-AI system which was seeded with your motion. You could select a prompt as to what kind of images to generate. The girls preferred the kittens and the flowers.
And the other big hit was the responsive, Winter wonderland room. It also responded to your movement with ice-skate tracks, blowing snow, and such.
We closed down the museum and our legs and feet were shot. Fortunately, there was a SkyTrain stop just outside which would get us to ~2/5 of a mile from the hotel. Showing my American-centric viewpoint, in planning the trip I hadn’t even looked at intra-city rail options for getting around. So it was a nice shortcut to take and straightforward to use. Though Jess somehow lost her ticket in the 3 stops we took and had to buy another one to get out.
The girls were beat at this point and ate dinner from the bin and rested their legs. I went for a walk and had a slice of pizza for dinner. Then rested my legs and feet in the hot tub for a little while. Sunset from the hotel window:
Day 8 (7/18) – Breakfast provided by the hotel today! It just so happened that the previous weekend they held a sand sculpture competition in town and, though the competition was complete, the sculptures were available for public viewing and voting. None of us had ever seen professional sand sculptures in person. They were pretty neat. The amount of detail is pretty incredible.
Heather and Corinne both voted for the girl with the dragon. Jess voted for the owl. I voted for the big, furry guy offering free hugs.
Our next stop was the North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre. Which is a larger facility than it seems. You turn a corner and realize it just keeps going, again. Lots of injured birds. Jess enjoyed watching one of the ravens messing with the objects in its enclosure. A different raven, this one leucistic, named Opal, was working on digging a hole under the wall of its enclosure. And we saw a real life axolotl. So the girls were agog.
By the time we finished up with the animals it was past lunch time, but our next stop was the old country market known for the goats on its roof. Which…I give them credit. There’s no reason for anyone to be out at this place. Certainly if they just had a little shop selling sundries they’d be struggling. But, put up a sod roof and throw some goats up there and now you’ve got endless customers. They also have a cafe inside which is where we ate lunch. We saw one of the goats when we first arrived and it’s a good thing I snapped a picture, because we couldn’t see them anymore by the time we left.
The trip plans had an option at this point to head deeper into the island to Horne Lake Caves, but timing dictated we skip it in favor of catching the ferry and getting to our hotel before dark. Driving in cities is stressful enough, driving in a foreign city after dark sounds even less fun.
So we headed back to Nanaimo and lined up for the ferry. This ferry was substantially larger than the one we took to Victoria. I think it had 4 decks for vehicles. This was a 2-hour ferry ride and then we needed to drive into Vancouver proper–which we managed to do during peek rush hour. That was not so much fun, but we did it. We parked the van at the Blue Horizon Hotel and didn’t get back in for 3 days.
After getting the van unloaded through the maze of passageways at the hotel we headed out on foot to look around and find something for dinner. I had read that for the World Cup (and then extended through the end of summer) the city had closed a nearby street to vehicle traffic and created an extended pedestrian mall space. We walked down there, but discovered it seemed to mostly be bars. Wandering around some more we eventually ended up at an Italian restaurant, Pacifico pizzeria & ristorante. It was pretty good. I don’t recall why I’m making the face that I am in the picture. The girls had cookies from the restaurant for dessert. Jess and I got a slice of red-velvet cake and an eclair from a bakery across the street from the hotel. The hotel key cards were wood, which was a fun extravagance.
