Monday, September 22, 2014

The Fall Road Trip 2014


Mrs.5000 & I went to British Columbia!

We spent four days in Vancouver, an energetic and cosmopolitan city with a lovely setting and an extravagant real estate bubble that is shooting up vast towers of condominiums like bamboo.  We spent the days wandering around various energetic and cosmopolitan urban attractions, and evenings checking out the city's dynamic night life!  Just kidding.  Mrs.5000 and I are not "night life" people.  We spent evenings in our hotel room, honing our Agricola skillz.

Were there new counties?  No.  It's Canada.  They don't do counties.

Was there ogling of art?  Of course.  We went to the Vancouver Art Gallery, which is a terrific building with little of interest inside it.  For a North American city of its size, Vankers -- my personal nickname for the place, but feel free to use it, maybe it will catch on! -- seems to have been pretty unlucky in terms of public access to the visual arts tradition.

Was there running?  Actually, there wasn't.  I was all gimped up, and missed the opportunity to get some British Columbia miles into my spreadsheets.

After several days in the metropolis, we headed inland, so there were also some additions (in purple) to the Atlas of All Roads Traveled:


At the crossroads town of Merritt, we were as far north as I had ever been in Canada, and north of the vast majority of Canadians who don't live in Edmonton or Calgary.  Of course, British Columbia continues for a long ways north from there.  Really, you could drive north through British Columbia for pretty much as long as you wanted to.  Instead, we headed to the cheerful fruit, wine, 'n' tourism oasis of the Okanogan Valley and had some really amazingly good Indian food in Penticton.


Now, you can't get from the Beaver State to British Columbia without going through Washington, unless you're really bent on proving the point.

Were there new counties?  Nope.  I finished Washington back in '99, if memory serves.

Was there ogling of art?  We thought about visiting Maryhill on the last day, but didn't.
Was there running?  Nope.

Were there at least some new roads driven?  Why yes!  We followed U.S. 97 all the way through the state north to south on the way home, and the bits in red were new-to-me. 


Was there geohashing?  We looked for opportunities to go geohashing all week, and didn't find one until we were ten miles from home.

And then we went home.

2 comments:

mrs.5000 said...

Q: And what was YOUR favorite part of your long-awaited first visit to this pearl among cities, mrs.5000?
A: I finally won at Agricola!
Also, the bustling parks with mountain and maritime vistas, complete with attractively placed freighters and piles of sulfur.

gl. said...

thank you for asking the question we were all wondering, mrs.5000.