Making Plans on the Fly in Langley, British Columbia

Langley, BC, Canada

We crossed the border into Canada on Saturday night. We found our rental house, followed instructions on how to get in, unpacked and went grocery shopping. Then we came 'home' and prepared spaghetti with meatballs and salad for dinner. There were too many noodles and not nearly enough sauce. Everyone washed laundry, Kris and I took a walk downtown, we read Cheaper by the Dozen and then The Book of Mormon, said prayers, and went to bed in our borrowed bedrooms. The next day we got up and ready for church. The ward was quite friendly and several people introduced themselves and then they asked a couple questions. Where are we visiting from? To this one I still always go with "Colorado," its simple, but becoming less so as we get further from our last days there. What are we doing while we are here? That one was harder because we didn't really come here with very concrete plans beyond the desire to leave the US just once this summer.

Our plans regarding what to see and what to do in a particular place are rough and ever evolving. Sometimes right up to the morning we actually do them. We planned this week after we were already here but still saw some pretty great things. First we came up with this rough plan: Monday, Wednesday, Friday we would go do something, Tuesday and Thursday would be stay home days or school days or veg days, we haven't really decided what to call them, but we need off days if we are going to maintain a traveling lifestyle for any length of time whatsoever.

So then we googled "free stuff to do in Langley, BC." A google search will usually produce several different lists of the top 10 or 25 favorite things according to whoever made the particular list. They also will often list the "not quite" free things too. People who live wherever you are, are also great sources. The ladies at church gave us several ideas, though after I looked up their first suggestion I began to suspect that these apparently sweet women were really out to kill us Yanks. They recommended something called the Grouse Grind. Its a stairway up a mountain. For my Colorado Springs friends, this appears to be The Manitou Incline on steroids. Its longer, it gains more elevation, and it has the added benefit of winding and twisting among large rocks and twisting tree roots. We skipped that one, but we did use some of their less suicidal ideas. And on one of our days off, Kris went out in the yard to wash the car and met neighbors who also gave us ideas.

This is what we ended up with:

View of Vancouver from the sea wall, Stanley Park

Monday we went into Vancouver and spent most of our day at Stanley Park. Basically Vancouver's version of Central Park I guess (I think its even bigger, I could be wrong). We walked along the sea wall, saw the totem poles, posed inside a giant cedar stump, and visited third beach.

Totem Poles, Stanley Park

Hollow Tree, Stanley Park

  

Chinatown

Then we drove to Chinatown. Probably if we had researched this one better, we wouldn't have. We even thought it would be fun to eat in Chinatown, so we found a restaurant on google, spent a good long time walking back and forth over the same roads trying to get google maps to actually locate both us and said restaurant, went in, sat down, perused a menu that at least had English translations, but when nearly every choice included "pork innards" in its description we decided we weren't quite up to this level of authenticity and made a break for it. We bought pizza instead.

Picking Blueberries

 Wednesday we went to Kraus Berry Farms. It is primarily a u-pick farm, but they have added a store and restaurant and bounce park I think. I don't know if it was a bounce park. It said family fun zone and we didn't go. We did pick our own berries though. We all took ziploc bags in, because we don't actually have buckets or baskets with us like everyone else was using. It worked. We got a few weird looks, but its fine. Then we bought waffles piled high with berries and cream and syrup at their restaurant.  

Fort Langley Historic Site

After we delivered our berries back to our house, we went the Fort Langley Historical Site and learned a little about how British Columbia started out as a trading post and Fionn was very grossed out by all the furs so Liam told her not to worry that they only took furs from animals after the animal died of old age because if they shot the animal it would ruin the fur of course. She didn't quite buy it, but still didn't ask me for the truth for a good 48 hours. 

Alouette Lake

 Friday wasn't settled until Thursday afternoon when some neighbors told Kris about Golden Ears Provincial Park. Yes, Golden Ears. I thought they said "Golden Years" and that it had something to do with David Bowie who I was pretty sure wasn't Canadian. Anyway, we drove about 30 minutes to Golden Ears and stopped first at Alouette Lake. Yes I taught Fionn and Liam the song, and yes Fionn has been singing it obsessively ever since. After hanging out at the

Lower Falls Trail, Golen Ears Provencial Park, BC

lake we went in search of a trail and found the Lower Falls Trail at about 2.5 km to be perfect.
After our hike, we headed back home and then to see a movie. As we were watching the new Planet of the Apes movie, we were remarking on how much the forest looked like what we had just hiked though that day. Well, that's because it was the forest we had walked through that day!

So that is how we started out our week with no plans and ended it having had several adventures and even managed to coordinate our hike with our movie. 

PS.... some things do take a tad more advanced planning. For instance, we will not be seeing Alcatraz on our visit to San Francisco because you need to book those tickets a whole lot sooner than we thought to. So we also did look ahead to where we are going to be next week and next month and purchased tickets for whale watching in Port Angeles, WA and the Shakespeare festival in Cedar City, UT.