Sunday September 17, 2017

You don't need an alarm clock at Snug Cove, especially when you're on E dock. You know what time it is because the ferry comes in starting at 6:30am. And when the ferry comes in, you can hear the prop sound all the way through the aft cabin. The trick is, can you go back to sleep?

We caught the 8:35 ferry over to Horseshoe Bay. We piled Bella into the dog carrier (*not* a popular idea) and hopped on the Express Bus to Park Royal South. Greg transferred to the Marine Drive us and headed to National to pick up the rental car. B&S and Bella and I headed over to Cafe Artigiano to have breakfast and coffee and wait for Greg. No use in putting Bella through another bus. It only took him about half and hour and he was back to the Cafe to have his own coffee and breakfast - so really pretty good! We also decided this morning that we would keep the car for a 2nd day since we knew were weren't leaving Snug Cove tomorrow either. (Tuesday weather is looking best).

It was supposed to rain today, but so far it hadn't. We decided to go for a walk at Ambelside since it was still relatively nice out. Down near the water is was quite windy and cool, but it was still OK. Turns out they have a Farmers Market there on Sunday too! Who knew?! So we did a little shopping there too, not that we needed any provisions. We walked down and watched the Harbour Police chase all these boats away from the traffic lane where the freighters were going in and out under the Lions Gate Bridge. It was a Sunday and there were boats all *over* the place. And the salmon are running so there were a ton of little fish boats everywhere too, but they were generally closer to shore. It was really quite entertaining to watch all the goings on.

Byron and Sue ended up getting the "Janice Historical Tour" of North Van. We drove up to Grouse Mountain, but Sue declined a Gondola ride to the top. Back down to Lonsdale Quay to walk around and see the sights. Grabbed some lunch at Cheshire Cheese! The old stomping ground.



We headed down to the Cove and drove by the old house on McCartney Close. It has been kept up and looks OK really which is nice. Funny to see all the old houses in the neighbourhood. Then back along Dollarton Highway and stopped at Dollarton Shopping Centre to pick up some wine. I had been texting with Cathy a couple of times throughout the day and she found out we were "in the area", so she invited us all to an impromptu dinner! How thoughtful. From there we went down to Deep Cove to look around. It started to rain pretty hard as soon as we got there, but we braved it for a short while. We did make it down to the water and looked around at the kayak rental place. Since it was a Sunday, even though the weather was pretty crappy, there were still a handful of people kayaking in the water and purposely "dunking" as practice. We were still full from our constant eating all day so we couldn't even take advantage of any coffee shops or Deep Cove Pizza!

From there we drove up to the Parkgate area, and then drove to the top of Mount Seymour. It was still pouring rain so there was no point in stopping anywhere or going outside. It was foggy once we neared the top so nothing really to see. Not sure what the point was other than to say that we went. Back down the mountain and then headed over to Cathy and Steve's. We had a great dinner and a great visit. Interesting to have two different set's of friends meet each other for the first time.

We were worried about ferry stuff so we ran out of there pretty early and pretty quickly. We went into the wrong parking lot at the ferry terminal initially, but then found the right one. The former is the "parking lot" and the latter is the "parkade" for anyone needing to know. But we'd left lots and lots of time, so we still got to wait awhile for the ferry. Back to the Union Steamship company and everyone crashed, especially Bella.