Category Canada

Capilano Suspension Bridge Park

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Temperate rainforests are located in only a few regions around the world; they’re characterized by high annual rainfall and the ability to generate new growth without relying on fires. The largest area of temperate zone rainforest in the world is in the Pacific Northwest, stretching from northern California to Alaska. Located in north Vancouver, the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park takes you on an ecotour through part of this coastal rainforest, moving you from forest floor to canopy via a series of bridges and treehouses.

We decided to make a daytrip of it rather at the last minute, apparently because we both enjoy visiting Canada underprepared. As AT&T customers, we shut off our cell phones once we hit the border to avoid getting nailed with roaming fees, but as we’re both heavily reliant on phone GPS, we really should have a plan in place or a map in the car in case of necessary detours. Do as I say, not as I do. I printed out directions before we left, and the directions noted that one of the roads we were taking was a toll road. Toll roads are the bane of my existence, because it seems like there’s never any good information about where the stations are, what the rates are, and what form of payment they accept, or I am very poor at my internet search parameters when it comes to toll roads. I tried to look this up before we left, and was informed that there were only two tolls on that road, neither of which were near where we were going. It should therefore surprise you not at all to find out that there was indeed a toll almost immediately after we merged onto Highway 1, and zero information about how one could pay that toll, which left us scrambling for Canadian currency. We ended up at a convenience store on the outskirts of Surrey so we could withdraw cash from an ATM (which, to my delight, is a polymer that’s pleasingly see-through), made our way back to the highway, crossed the toll bridge, and discovered that you pay online. I have no regrets about being able to keep my see-through money, however.

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At the entrance of the park is an area that informs visitors of the history of the land and of the suspension bridge across the Capilano river, which was originally built in the late 1880s to connect the sections of forest George MacKay had purchased. It’s changed hands (and bridges) multiple times since then, and one of the owners also invited First Nations tribes to place their story poles at the park, so it now houses North America’s largest private collection of First Nations totem poles.

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The Capilano Suspension Bridge is a simple suspension footbridge in that it’s anchored at either end with no deck stiffening. The bridge’s main supports are the handrails with the deck suspended underneath, which makes the handrails sturdier but creates a lot more side to side motion on the deck itself. At 450 feet (137m) long, I can say to you with no reservation that each foot is more terrifying than the last. The bridge lurches sickeningly underfoot, rolling and pitching with your movements and those of everyone else crossing at the same time from opposite directions. We visited on a sunny and high-traffic day, and I’m certain this only amplified the effect. I felt as though I were fighting to keep my balance with every step, and after crossing it a second time (as you have no option but to return the way you came), I felt unsteady and nauseated for hours afterward. The handrails and side barriers make it virtually impossible to fall off, but high above the river on a wildly swaying bridge, you are keenly aware of your own mortality.

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Once you’ve crossed the bridge, there are a number of things to see and do. Immediately after you step off the bridge, there’s an outdoor exhibit that teaches visitors about the rainforest and how the park helps to keep it alive and thriving even with tourists moving through it daily. For instance, they stock their pond every year with around 800 rainbow trout, which provides a food source for otters, herons, and osprey.

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On Raptor Ridge, they have several birds of prey, along with two falconers available to answer questions. My first question had to do with the sign cautioning dog owners to keep away: had that been in issue in the past? As it turns out, it had. “People would bring their dogs right up to meet the birds, and some of the birds were…too interested in the dogs. Like Smaug, the female Harris hawk–she has no fear or sense of her size. She would try to take down a bear if given the opportunity.” The sign on the kestrel cage said that kestrels weigh as much as a quarter pounder with cheese, and I remarked that was an oddly specific unit of measurement. “That’s the female, for the male you’d have to subtract the bun and the pickles. But people are so health-conscious these days that we’ve been thinking about changing the sign to something a little less controversial.” I suggested a head of kale, but in retrospect, I think a cheeseburger is a perfect measurement unit for a raptor: meaty, exciting, and dangerous. Something leafy and floppy just doesn’t have the same effect.

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The Capilano Treetops Adventure starts off in a treehouse and continues on seven suspension bridges up into the canopy of old-growth Douglas fir trees. They’ve designed the structures with a compression system so that nothing is driven into the tree itself, which means that no harm comes to the tree and it can continue to grow naturally. In fact, their adjustable collars allow the attraction to grow upward with the trees!

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After we were done walking through the trees, we did the Natures’s Edge walk, which is a long boardwalk along the edge of the rainforest that gives you views of the suspension bridge and the Capilano river. Approximately every ten feet, there was a sign telling people not to graffiti the wood railings. People complied with this order and instead defaced nearly every single sign, indicating that either a lot of smartasses visit, or one smartass was particularly dedicated.

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Back on the other side of the suspension bridge is the new (as of 2012) Cliffwalk attraction, which consists of suspended walkways along the granite cliff faces. They sell this as the EXTREME (in the Mountain Dew sense of the word) part of the park, but honestly, I felt much safer on the Cliffwalk than on the suspension bridge or even the treetop adventure, as the Cliffwalk structures were firm underfoot. The only part that gave me pause was the portion in which you’re standing on glass, but that’s just because I have an inherent mistrust in the ability of glass to hold my fatassery, so your mileage may vary. Plus, I’m extra wary as I know that my role in life is to live as a warning to others, and I would really prefer that my epitaph not read “So fervently enjoyed the cheeseburger that no glass could hold her.”

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After you’ve visited all of the areas of the park and stamped your passport as proof that you braved the bridge, they give you an “I survived!” certificate which is suitable for framing and makes you feel like you really accomplished something other than walking around for a few hours. I’d like more certificates in my day-to-day life as affirmations that I’m awesome. “You haven’t let the house fall into utter disrepair!” or “You got groceries before letting the pantry get to the point that you’re forced to eat macaroni and cheese that’s been expired for a year!” or “You didn’t fake a headache in order to get out of your dentist visit!” But making the certificates and awarding them to myself is a little odd, plus awarding myself a certificate for making the awards certificate could result in an infinite loop where I just photoshop until I die.

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On your way out, you would be remiss if you didn’t give a Mountie that also happens to be a bear a low-five.

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“Oh look what you did! Now I’ll have to go get my cold cream gun.”

In July, Jason and I took a trip to Vancouver for IMATS (the international Makeup Artist Trade Show). We had plans to attend the previous month’s event in Los Angeles as LA is by far the bigger show, but it unfortunately fell on the same weekend that Jason was committed to being in a wedding so it didn’t work out. However, the next LA IMATS is in January, which is right around the time that I start losing my mind in the cold, dark Seattle winter, so it will be an ideal time for a trip to a place where the sun peeks through the smog. Vancouver is essentially a cleaner, friendlier Seattle, with better candy AND Plants vs Zombies scratch off tickets!

I wasn’t interested in the push and shove aspect of the trade show floor–I love makeup, and I love discounts, but it has to be a hell of a discount or a product I cannot purchase otherwise to make me want to deal with crowds of people elbowing one another to get the last item–I’d rather pay full price AND shipping and never have to deal with a human being. What I was interested in was the student creature competition, the makeup talks, and the makeup museum. The student competition was broken up over the course of two days, with beauty on Saturday and creature on Sunday; I only attended on Sunday, and I was impressed by the quality of the work I was seeing. I wish self-taught people like myself could compete, but unfortunately it’s only open to makeup school students.

The makeup museum, though small, was also very cool, featuring mostly work by Toby Lindala (keynote speaker, creator of SFX for X-files, Supernatural, and V, among others) and Todd Masters (featured speaker, creator of MastersFX, SFX on Big Trouble In Little China, Predator, Underworld, True Blood, and more). Questionably, however, they also included submissions from various local schools, some of which were so bad that I was embarrassed for the artist and the school. Everyone has to learn somewhere and everyone works to the best of their personal abilities, and hating on someone for trying is the height of uncool…but showcasing pieces that aren’t ready to be shown do a disservice to both the student and the school. It’s why you don’t see macaroni necklaces in the Louvre.

Taking a photograph of a video camera videotaping a video feed. The only thing that could make this better is if someone behind me took a photograph of me taking a photograph of a video camera videotaping a video feed. Both Todd Masters’ group and Toby Lindala struck me as likeable, humble artists with a genuine love for their craft and fascinating stories to tell, and their speaking time went by far too quickly. If MastersFX still had a Seattle studio, I would beat down their door for an opportunity to work there, to observe, to help, to sweep their floors…but sadly, it is no more. The only thing that stuck in my craw about the event in general was that the floor was full of tons of women (and some men, but predominately women), but nearly all of the speakers were men. Where are the women, and why don’t they rise to the top of this craft? More women learn to use makeup than men, so how is it that the most notable figures in the business are men? Is it the glass escalator effect? Surely there are women who are just as talented…so where are they? Halfway through the day, we decided to take a break and head to a nearby pub for lunch rather than suffer through convention food, and there I learned two important things. One, there are vampires actively prowling Vancouver:

and two, I learned an important lesson about Canadian light and how it interacts with steak fibers. At the time, I was on a restrictive diet and could only eat carbohydrates one day a week, so I’d been eating/preparing/ordering a lot of proteins and veggies. I ordered a medium-rare steak with veggies while Jason ordered some carbtacular dish that I remember being insanely jealous of at the time. What I received was a completely well done steak, and even though I’m the sort of person who haaaaates sending anything back to the kitchen, I flagged down the waiter and told him that it was far too well done while apologizing profusely for bothering him. He disappeared with my plate and came back twenty minutes later with….another well-done steak! He disappeared before I could cut into it, and when he came back around again to ask if this one was better and I responded negatively, he said “Oh, I know what your problem is” and grabbed the fork off my plate and poked at the steak. “Yeah, that’s medium rare, I can tell. It’s just that you’re sitting by the window and the light is what makes it look brown. It’s why steakhouses are so dark inside, so you can’t see that the meat is actually brown when you expect it to be red.” HUH. It’s fascinating to learn that the Canadian visible light spectrum is missing the color red! You’d think that I would have heard about that before, read it somewhere, seen it in a documentary…SOMETHING. I didn’t think to look while I was still in Canada, but does this mean that their national flag is actually a brown leaf and they’ve been too (typically Canadian) polite to inform the rest of the full light-spectrumed world that we have it wrong? Because, and I don’t mean to boast, I have cooked and eaten many a steak within the borders of the United States in both darkness and in light, and they’ve always been a varying shade of red inside. So it must be Canadian light, right? I refuse to believe that an actual Canadian could have lied to me just to get me to shut up and eat an overcooked, shoe-leathery piece of meat.

The next time I burn the hell out of dinner, I’m going to tell Jason that we must have had a Canadian air front sweep through the kitchen, but not to worry…even though it looks and tastes burned, that’s just a factor of the air, and it’s actually the most succulent thing he’s ever had in his mouth. Thank you, Canada!

Victoria. Not the Beckham. Not the Queen. The other one.

Way back when my dad was in town, we took a daytrip to Victoria. This entailed getting up at an ungodly early hour in the morning to take a long ride on the Victoria Clipper to our destination. We were all a little overtired and punchy, and thus took to telling hilarious stories and became THOSE cackling people. The glances we got from other passengers were signs, I’m certain, that they were envious of our free spirits, and not “sweet jesus, please shut up” death glares, though I have been known to be wrong from time to time.

Although none of us had eaten, we decided we’d be sorry if we ate aboard the Clipper, as the inclusion of Craisins with every meal was a sure indicator that everything there was terrible. By the time we arrived in Victoria, we were quite hungry, and we voted that our first task upon arrival at the Butchart Gardens would be to cram some food into our faces. Unfortunately, before the gardens came a bus tour of the area. An incredibly boring bus tour. If you think listening about politics in your country is boring, it’s even more boring listening to a conservative nutbag bus driver go on and on about taxes and public spending in some OTHER country. Every time I would get a pleasant nod going, he’d hit the brakes and I’d smack my face against the seat in front of me–I’m guessing this is a technique he’s developed over the years to ensure people listen to his awful jokes and rambling bullcrap.

By the time we arrived at Butchart, we practically fled off the bus. There were a few different places to eat inside the Butchart Gardens. We immediately decided against the cafe as none of their premade cold sandwiches appealed. We made our way to the next place…and the menu was exactly the same. Apparently, crummy premade cold sandwiches were our destiny that day, though we did manage to avoid Craisins. Seriously, does anyone eat really eat those? They’re like tiny wrinkly balls of tastebud poison! The Butcharts were cement barons, which is not quite as grandiose sounding as oil barons, but at least a half step up from styrofoam baron or balsa wood baron. Upon exhausting a limestone quarry on their property, Jenny Butchart used her gardening hobby to spruce up the place, creating the sunken gardens.

“Jesus Christ, it’s a bear! Get in the car!”

By the time we got to the Asian gardens section, I was feeling more awake and clever, so I began to play tour guide. However, since I didn’t know what I was talking about, I made things up. “Over here, you will see the rare Japanese “luminous blossom”; these are native to the southern regions, and, via the process of photosynthesis, they are able to convert light into clean, usable energy. However, the oil lobbyists have grouped together and convinced Congress to ban their import into the United States.” A few tourists I didn’t know had been listening to my spiel, and when they looked over my shoulder to where I was pointing, they realized they’d been had and laughed when they saw I was indicating a raised electrical plug. I’ve used this “just make something up that sounds halfway believable” method before, especially when I worked retail. I vividly recall working a cash register on a busy day at World Market when a customer asked me what made the candle scent “Mexican Pumpkin” instead of just pumpkin. I told her with an absolutely straight face that pumpkins grown in Mexico tend to have an earthier, spicier scent profile than those grown farther north. She completely bought it, and every once in a while I wonder if she informs people of her worldly pumpkin knowledge. On our way out, we checked out the guestbooks. Most people had written variations on a theme: “Beautiful!” “Very nice!” “Wonderful!” However, I saw one that made me do a double-take: “This is how Jehovah’s New Kingdom will be” …I sincerely hope that if this is the case, Jehovah works a little on his food offerings. This musing was expressed by MY guestbook comment: Then, I fulfilled my urge to ride everything by straddling their foal statue. I’m as surprised as you are that it didn’t crumble under my ass.

We wasted some time in the gift shop, looking at the sort of assorted crap that none of us wanted to buy–none of us except John, who is drawn to gift shops as if by the world’s largest magnet. After rearranging some salt and pepper shakers in a semi-obscene manner and checking out some tiny statues of Mounties and a section of glass angels with what I suppose was intended to look like dark, curly hair but gave the effect of a head full of dog turds, I realized that it was getting quite late and we were almost going to miss our bus back to the city. We hustled back to the bus and arrived on time, only to have to wait for two ladies who had evidently found some excellent deals in the selfsame giftshop and were not about to be hurried away by the time constraints of anyone else. On the way back, the bus driver told us the road we were driving on had been given historical status and could not be fixed or replaced, so we had a rather bumpy ride–thanks, Canada. The bus driver again began to drone on and on about crap even I could not make entertaining, and thus I drifted off to sleep again. By the time I’d really settled into my nap, however, we were back in the city, and I woke up just in time to hear the bus driver ask us for tips. I’ve got a tip for you, buddy: Get a job that doesn’t involve interacting with the public.

We got some more coffee and then wandered to Chinatown, stopping along the way to do a little souvenir shopping. I got a cozy owl tuque, and enough Canadian candy to choke a horse (but not me, even though I did try to cram it all into my face at once). I’m sure the guy working at the 7-11 had a few choice thoughts about what comprises the bulk of my diet when I plunked thirty bucks worth of delicious candy in front of his register.

The bus driver told us the lions are supposed to come to life when an honest politician passes through them, but as you can see, we haven’t found one yet. Oh, ha-ha, bus driver. Ha. Ha.

Fan Tan Alley used to be used for gambling and opium and all sorts of interesting things. Now it’s merely famous for being a narrow thoroughfare, paralleling the career of Kate Moss.

After some more wandering around the city, we found ourselves with just enough time to inhale a street sausage (not THAT kind of sausage, perverts) and some ketchup chips before heading back to the Clipper, where we waited in a waiting room for approximately forever, and then we had to wait standing in line outside in the cold air for another time period approximating forever while they loaded more sandwiches and Craisins no one was going to buy onto the ship. We were among the last on board and had difficulty finding a group of seats together that additionally wasn’t adjacent to a screaming child. We settled in, my dad got ripped off on some duty-free cologne which, as it turns out, he could have purchased more cheaply online, I stuffed my face hole with candy, and sometime between Victoria and home, we got to watch large swaths of water behind the boat glow and shimmer in the night. “Ain’t it just beautiful?” a stranger asked, in between handfuls of Craisins. I had no choice but to agree.