Things that might be decidedly odd…

Vancouver Island

I took Monday and Tuesday off from work so that I could take an extended 4th of July weekend. My friends and I went to Vancouver Island, spending the first two days in Victoria for Canada Day and the next two out at Goldstream Provincial Park for camping. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a lot of pictures, but here’s one of me standing at the western terminus of the Trans-Canada Highway in Victoria:

Vancouver

On Friday afternoon, Robert and I drove up to Vancouver for the weekend. It was yet another brief to escape Seattle for a weekend scenery change. We stayed with these two guys Jean and Javeed we met back in August while in town for Vancouver Pride. On Friday night, we hit up 1181 and Odyssey for drinks and to see some strippers. Unfortunately, the strippers weren’t at Odyseey that night because of a special Madonnathon, which was fine. Strippers aren’t really all that exciting to me, but I admit they’re sort of novel since we don’t have them in Seattle.

Saturday we did some shopping and saw lots of different parts of town–Stanley Park, Gastown, Downtown Eastside, Granville Island. That night, we went to a house party being thrown by a friend of one of our hosts. All in all, it was a nice getaway where we got to know a bunch of new people and see the town a bit more from the perspective of some locals. It was definitely the best visit I’ve had there before, which is not to say the previous times were bad at all.

One thing that was surprising about the trip was the amount of snow not just on the road up there but also in town. Vancouver looked like it really got slammed by the snow storm that came through here last week. Even in the west end near the water front, there was still snow piled up from the plowing that happened days before. There was even more snow every time we ventured outside of the lower elevation downtown area too.

I didn’t take too many pictures, but the few there are here.