Stones and summits

One of the best things in the world to do when you're two years old is to throw stones into water. It seems that any stone and any patch of water will do, so Mr H and I have taken to endeavouring to find pretty places where we can appreciate the scenery and soak up the sunshine while Master H throws stones to his heart's content. Or until it's time to go, which is unfortunately (for us and everyone around us) usually first.

Vancouver has no shortage of gravelly beaches, but we've made it a bit of a quest to seek out quaint coves and quiet bays (well, they were quiet before we arrived), and the first one we happened across was Deep Cove. We've been there a couple of times, and managed a short walk through the woods once before it was time to throw more stones. The ice cream shop even sells Mr H's favourite ever flavour, rainbow sherbert. It's a wonder we ever leave.

With the clouds starting to clear our next adventure had to be up the mountains, and so we merrily headed for one of the closest ones to Vancouver, Grouse Mountain. We are sadly bereft of good photos from this day because it was actually still fairly cloudy at the top of the mountain, plus Master H was in a bad mood because he didn't feel very well, but we did see some of the bird show and got fairly good views of a bear, as well as seeing lots of little pikas, small animals that look a bit like tiny rabbits.

The only real downside however was that when we got back to the car we found it had been broken into. That's what you get when you buy a nappy bag that looks like an innocuous satchel I guess - I don't think thieves see the Skip Hop label and assert it's unlikely to contain much more than a couple of kids' sunhats and a spare antibacterial hand gel, and has been left in the car by parents who've stashed as much as possible into one rucksack in order to be able to run after toddlers before they leg it off the side of a mountain. I should really stop being such a smarty-pants though as on this occasion the thieves were right to look past the label: I had foolishly left my purse inside which, while it had little cash, did contain various bank cards which led to much international and rather expensive phone calling. Anyway, hey-ho, worse things happen to travellers so we've now learned from our mistake and hubby is trying to claim what he can from our travel insurance. And the silver lining is that the rental company only had a nice big 7-seater to give us for the rest of our rental period so we scored a free upgrade! That made the trip to Whistler Mountain a couple of days later a much nicer drive, where we did manage to take some nice snaps this time, starting in the gondola...

And here we are at the top of Whistler Mountain:

 

  

Thank you to the bright sparks who thought it a good idea to leave a couple of snow vehicles parked up for kids (and adults!) to clamber on...

 

And the animal statues at the top of Blackcomb...

And finally, here are a few photos taken down in Whistler Village where we stopped for lunch (poutine x 2 as I had to see what all the fuss was about: I can see the appeal, but I still prefer good old Glaswegian chips and cheese!):

Coming up... Alouette Lake, and the Sunshine Coast.