Vancouver/Victoria B.C.

Our trip back down from Anchorage to Vancouver was looooooong...a 48 hour, 2400 mile trip. We both wanted to get the long drive over with, so we decided to do it in 3 1/2 days, which made for really long days of driving. One of the days we drove from 6am until about midnight with a couple stops here and there. I even had to pitch in on the driving for this part of the trip :)

These pics are on The Alcan on the way south...

By this time, bears were kind of a dime a dozen, but we still had fun watching them.

You can't really tell, but this is a REAL LIVE porcupine!

Dustin got about 10 ft from this one and I think he about peed his pants when the bear looked up at him :) Most of the time, bears just eat and pretend you aren't there. It's never a good sign when they make eye contact. At least he got a good pic!
A bunch of bison blocking the road.

Artic Lupine. This flower was everywhere. It's beautiful!
We finally made it to Vancouver! It's a really unique, very diverse city in many aspects, which we liked alot. They were having very unusual warm weather while we were there (they have a very mild climate-usually only gets up to about 70 and down to about 40 or so), which was really nice for us. The first 80 degree weather that we had seen! We enjoyed hanging out at the beach along with the rest of the city as you can see.

We used our bikes to get around Vancouver because they had such great bike paths. They had a path that went all around the ocean, which was cool. One day we rode about 20 miles just getting here and there. It's great exercise!

Happy Canada Day! We happened to be in Canada on their 4th of July equivalent. We realized they get way more into it than most Americans do for the 4th. (As you can see Captain Canada below).
We went to Granville Island for a Canada Day Festival and they were having a dog show.

This dog's name was Woody :)
Granville Island has a really cool public market, which we really enjoyed. The food was incredible.

Fresh mixed berry tart. Quite possibly the best thing I've ever put in my mouth.






Dustin got picked to be the assistant to this English street entertainer. He had a hay day making fun of an American on Canada Day. His trick was escaping out of a straight jacket and chains. It sounds more impressive than it was, but he was pretty funny.

University of BC


Canada Day celebration on the water complete with fireworks (not as good as the US). I might be a little biased though...The cool thing is we got to be in Canada on Canada Day and the U.S. on 4th of July. Since fireworks are one of my favorite things ever, two celebrations was great for me!

Me showing my Canada patriotism. I had fun with that Canada flag (as you can see I'm holding it up in every picture :)

We took a ferry over to Victoria, BC the next day. Our first stop was Butchart Gardens. Dustin's grandma has always wanted to go, so we went and took lots of pictures. It was absolutely beautiful. These are for you, Grandma!

Japanese garden.

Italian Garden...

...complete with gelato!! We were so excited since we hadn't had it since we were in Italy in November. Raspberry grapefruit is our new fave.

There was a play going on at the gardens that was for kids, but we actually enjoyed it too.
The BC goverment building.

The beautiful Empress Hotel

The art museum in Victoria had an Andy Warhol exhibit while we were there, so we checked it out. It was pretty interesting to learn about him and pop art in general. He's one of the few artists that I remember from my art history class, so that makes it much more interesting when you know who they are.

Andy Warhol self portrait.

And probably one of his most famous pieces - Marilyn Monroe.

Some of his early 1950's art.





We also went to see an artist that Dustin and I discovered in Whitehorse, Yukon-Ted Harrison. We found out he had a gallery in Victoria, so we went to check it out. We ended up buying this painting while we were there.

The coolest thing was that he was there! We got to meet him and he signed our art and a book that we bought that is illustrated by him. We even talked him into taking a picture with us :)
We wanted to see a more rural part of Vancouver Island since all we had been to was Victoria, so we went to Sooke. It was a quaint little place with beautiful views of the ocean.

A view of Victoria from our ferry to Seattle.

Our first step onto the lower 48. Feels good to be so close to home. Now I understand why Lindsey said that when her family used to make the trip from Alaska to Arkansas she would always get excited when they got to the US/Canadian border because they were 'almost there'. :)

We are now in Seattle, WA and will be leaving on Monday, July 7th for Colombia, South America for a mission trip to an orphanage with our families. We will be back in Seattle on July 16th to resume our travels. If you think about it, please pray for our safety and that God will use us in some neat ways while we're there. We hope everyone is having a great summer!