JUNK BOAT TRAVELS: Day 16 - Olympia WA to Vancouver BC

Sunday, September 24, 2017

Day 16 - Olympia WA to Vancouver BC

September 2017

September 20

So why did we come back into the States for a day? Mainly because John decided to knock an item of MY bucket list, the Chihuly Glasshouse and Gardens in Seattle!!

What a yucky morning as we started out.

But the weather or Chihuly gods are on our side and it clears.

Oh how we remember hilly Seattle from our 2008 visit. We pass the hotel we stayed in the last time. Our hotel preferences have changed, we now are very brand loyal for points! After all, this road trip hotels have been funded, in large part, by points!

After a lot few wrong turns we get to Chihuly Glasshouse and Gardens at the base of the Space Needle. We'd been up the Needle in 2008 that we didn't need to do that. Just a glimpse!

Or click here to see the Chihuly Exhibit in Toronto last year.

John's new profile photo!

The Needle and Chihuly.

MoPop or Museum of Pop Culture is also new to us. I would like to visit this but we have a schedule!

It's about a two hour drive to Vancouver from Seattle and the weather is great.

Once we check in we set out to explore. We decided on Gastown as we had been there together.

Vancouver train station has been totally renovation and looks fabulous. We stop for a glass of wine before continuing our rambles.

This is a working steam clock, one of only a few in the world.

Underneath Vancouver, runs a series of steam pipes connected to a generating plant at Georgia and Beatty Streets. The system provides heat to most of the downtown core, and provides the steam for the whistles of the Gastown steam clock.

Despite seeming like a remnant of the Victorian era and being located in Vancouver’s “Gastown” (which was the original townsite from which Vancouver grew in the 1870s), the Steam Clock is actually from a hundred years later, built in 1977 by horologist Raymond Saunders and metalwork specialist Doug Smith.

The name Gastown came into use because a Fraser River pilot turned saloonkeeper with the name Capt. John 'Gassy Jack' Deighton was in 1867 the first settler on the site from which Vancouver was to evolve. (In Victorian times the term 'to gas' referred to talking a lot, something which Captain Deighton had become famous for.) It is said that Deighton had erected his saloon at Luck-Lucky which meant grove of maple trees close to Stamp's Mill (near what is now the foot of Gore) with the help of eager workers from the mill just 24 hours after arriving on the shores of Burrard Inlet. He called it the Globe Saloon after his former saloon in New Westminster.

Gassy Jack had come to Luck-Lucky from New Westminster in a dugout canoe with his Indian wife, her mother, and Big William, her cousin who was along to do the paddling. It was while in New Westminster that he earned his reputation for being "gassy" entertaining customers with stories at his Globe Saloon, according to a contemporary, of "desperate adventures and hairbreadth escapes from Sydney docks, Yankee road agents, Mexican bandits, grizzly bears, etc.".

A random piano.

Measuring nine square feet, each mosaic features a common border anchored with images of Vancouver’s natural environment, including an evergreen tree, the mountain skyline, billowing wind, and ocean waves.

Each mosaic has a circular centre with a different abstract design reflecting a dynamic theme – such as people, entertainment, architecture, music, logging and fishing -- that captures the essence of downtown from both historical and contemporary perspectives, contains between 3,500 to 4,500 hand cut ceramic pieces in a kaleidoscope of colours and takes approximately 160 hours to create.

Sea to Sky Artist: Kelly Cannell

This project represents all of what Canada has to offer in terms of natural landscapes, abounding wildlife, and rich cultural diversity. Located on traditional Coast Salish territory, the artwork represents a land where our ancestors lived and gained their livelihoods. The imagery shows Vancouver's surroundings in the heart of the city, while acknowledging the four directions (north, east, south, and west).