For his birthday in 2016 I decided to get my brother-in-law the thing every b-i-l wants more than anything - an extra evening with the extended family.
Laura and Zane were kind enough to put us up on Zane's 49th birthday (granted, it was only the first of several 49th birthdays he is planning, but still). Then, when the weather messed with our plans for the remainder of the week, they put up with us for an extra day and Laura and Euan even showed us some of Vancouver's more interesting sites.
Black Forest Cake. Make sure to pick the cherries out... (Maybe next year just serve them in a bowl on the side...)
Thank god these photos didn't capture the singing.
The Achilles' heel of this trip has always been my plans to go back country hiking in Jasper. Emma has started making it more and more clear that she doesn't like hiking (fortunately just by suggesting 2 KM hikes instead of the 4 KM hikes I had planned). But the Jasper leg of our vacation was particularly ambitious. The plan was to drive about 9 hours from Vancouver to Jasper (and lose an additional hour by travelling from PST to MST. Then, after registering at Jasper (which could easily burn another hour) then finding the trail head and parking (again, an hour or so), we would hike 4 KM upwards towards the mountaintops, hopefully making camp before sunset. Failing to do so would be potentially catastrophic.
So when I looked at the weather forecast starting on the Friday before and saw daytime maximums of ~12 degrees, steady rain, and overnight lows below freezing, I finally threw in the towel.
Laura and co. didn't balk at letting us linger for an extra day, after which we headed back to the Rockies on a less ambitious route.
Of course, we made the most of our time in Vancouver.
The Capilano Suspension Bridge - it sounds like a weird tourist attraction, but what this park really is is a chance to walk around an old-growth forest and climb up among the branches, snagging some magnificent views from raised platforms, cliff-walks, and of course the suspension bridge.
And if you were wondering where in Vancouver you could have your wingspan verified, this is it.
A great horned owl. Who knew?
My oft-times raven-haired boy has wings to match.
Barely a Canada Goose. Make an effort.
Yeah, I take this seriously. And that's how I win. Boom.
My OCD side has a lot of trouble with this picture.
I know it looks like we put the kids in some kind of cage. If only...
Actually they were overlooking a fish pond.
Everybody looking surprisingly relaxed on the cliff walk several hundred feet above the valley floor.
The three cousins and a totem pole. I couldn't think of another caption. "I totem not to make faces?"
The treetop adventure. Probably my favourite part of the park.
Next time we visit we'll wear our ewok costumes.
I think this could have been the true highlight of the trip, but sadly we walked right past...
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