British Columbia: Other attractions

Writing about these old trips has been kind of a mental trip, I guess. I will mention things to my sisters, and they will remember things I completely forgot. Mentioning Minter Gardens to Julie, she asked if that was the place with the fairy tale statues in Mission. I had forgotten that place, but trying to find it I was looking at the map and noticed Abbotsford. How could I forget that we had gone to their airshow? Twice, I think.

(The answer probably being that I am the only person who does not adore planes in the family, so I have been to my share of airshows but I try and block them out.)

One thing I can see is that we didn't actually do that much in Vancouver proper. With Victoria, perhaps by virtue of it being an island, everything we did was fairly close together. When we went to Vancouver instead, everything was more scattered.

Abbotsford

Yes, there was an airshow in Abbotsford. That might have been the one where they were having a special World War II commemoration, and where I met Pappy Boyington, but you know, we also went to airshows in Everett and Bellingham, in Washington, and they all run together for me. The Snowbirds are Canadian; maybe we saw them at Abbotsford.

http://www.abbotsfordairshow.com/

Rosedale

One of the few places that is still open, Dudley Duck Water Park is now Bridal Falls Water Park. They do still reference Dudley Duck for the kiddie water slides.

Although they have clearly done some renovating, the pictures bring back a lot of memories. I remember the optical illusion water tap, and the overall layout of the park. I love water, and I enjoyed most of the slides a lot. The only one that did not work out for me was the one where you are supposed to use an inner tube. I kept falling off, but part of that may have been the set up, where you had a series of flat pools with small slides in between. I would fall off on the slides, have to retrieve my tube, and get back on. It was a very laborious process. It looks like they still have that one.

http://www.bridalfallswaterpark.com/

The closure that hurts the most, and that is the most recent, is Minter Gardens. I really wanted to go just from seeing pictures. There were two that grabbed my attention. One was a giant peacock. The body was a statue - I think it was metal - but the tail was formed by a hedge and filled with flowers. There were also topiary women in full skirts. I guess you could say it was less formal, and more whimsical in Butchart Gardens.

http://www.mintergardens.com/

Kelowna

The following story is very complicated. We went to a place we called Flintstones Park. It may have in fact been called Bedrock City. Possibly due to licensing issues, it may have just removed the Flintstones aspects and gone with a dinosaur theme. However, in the process of that it appears to have also moved, so that it is now in Cultus Lake, and then apparently closed again and reopened at Bridal Falls.

I know that there was a place with various dinosaur statues, a Flintstones house with Gazoo's spaceship outside, and a live stage show with Fred and Barney singing "Rock and Roll is Here to Stay."

There were also rowboats, where my mother and I found ourselves to be not skilled at rowing. My father came and took Julie and Maria into his boat, but left us. Well, if I were going to tell vacation stories about my father being a jerk, that would be a pretty long post. However, this may be why I never feel safe trying the Davy Crockett Explorer Canoes at Disneyland.

http://www.dinotown.com/

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/1517

http://www.theprogress.com/news/209695821.html

Mission

Now that Julie mentions it I kind of do remember something like Storybook Lane or Trail or something. I cannot find any references to it now. I vaguely remember the statues being more creepy than charming though, and so many of these places that I have really loved have had difficulties staying open, that it is really not surprising.

Kaleden

Okanagan Game Farm was kind of different in that was used to stop no matter where our final destination was. Looking at the map now, it seems out of our way. I don't know how we made it that often, but with my love for animals I was very fond of it. I know they had more there, but I remember goats and petting the donkey.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okanagan_Game_Farm

One reason that it was so great to go to Minter Gardens was that I was always kind of scared to ask for what I wanted, so when something happened anyway, it felt amazing. That leaves one memory.

We would take I-5 up, every time, and at some point around Tacoma I would see a sign for a place called the Enchanted Village, which I assumed would be rather like the Enchanted Forest, where I have been, but I was always curious about it, and we never went to that one.

Well, a water park went up next to it, and different things happened, and Six Flags bought it. There is something there. How similar or changed it is, I have no idea.


https://www.wildwaves.com/

So my final thought is a bit of nostalgia, I guess. I am glad I go to see so many of these places, and sad that so many have fallen by the wayside. Declining tourism has been mentioned for most of the closures. Don't people pack their kids into the car and just drive anymore? Maybe not.

I don't know why lately it seems that the only viable family entertainment is water parks. I have nothing against water parks, but the quirky and unique other spots were important to me, and I want to support those as much as I can.

Anyway, that's everything that comes to mind about our trips to British Columbia. Next stop, Ontario!

British Columbia: Other places we went in Victoria

Somewhere, in the drawer full of large Zip-loc bags full of family photos, I'm sure there are photos of these places. I have not dug them out, so for now we are just dealing with memories.

My memories of Sealand are kind of tarnished now, but that was not the only place we went, so here are some of the others.

Butchart Gardens: We really do want to make it there once more. It was beautiful, but as a small child I remember finding it kind of boring. There were some little dwarf or gnome statues in one part, and a fountain, but otherwise it was all plants. I believe I would appreciate that more now. I'd at least like to give it a chance.

http://www.butchartgardens.com/

Miniature World: I mainly remembered the doll houses, but looking at some of the other pictures, yes, I do think I remember Gulliver on Lilliput. It looks like they have added quite a bit since then, so it would probably be worth another look.

http://www.miniatureworld.com/

Royal London Wax Museum

My strongest memory of this was of refusing to go through the Chamber of Horrors, but it kind of didn't matter, because the picture of the Algerian Hook was in the brochure. I never got rid of that image, and knowing that the victims usually survived was not comforting. Is this why I think wax figures are creepy?

Sadly, the attraction has been closed since 2010, in need of a new location.

http://www.news1130.com/2010/09/15/victorias-wax-museum-forced-to-close-its-doors/

We also took a sailboat ride around the harbor. There were at least three different family groups on the boat, possibly more - maybe 25 passengers and crew. I can find lots of links for tours, but they all seem to focus on ferries and water taxis. I suspect we were just wandering around the marina and found it, and that can be reasonable.

The other thing I remember is just walking around, and how beautiful the city was. There were floral baskets hanging from the lampposts, and other cities do that now, but Victoria was the first that I had seen. The streets were clean and the people were friendly, and it was just really nice.

Also, there were a lot of Italians, though that is true in Vancouver as well. On the ferry we met one Italian family and they invited us back to their house. Decades later, dining just outside of Vicenza, Italy, we encountered some Canadians who knew them.

It is indeed a small world after all.

Dining in Canada

It probably says a lot about us that one of the places we most wanted to visit in Victoria, if we had managed to get there, was a food court. (That and the Butchart Gardens.) Obviously we have never been fancy people.

We did not know the name or location of the food court. We just remembered a sign with a pink giraffe. The odds of it still being there seem small, but there was still this idea that it would be cool to find it again. To be fair, this was the first food court we had ever seen. It would be years before hanging out at the mall was a common activity, and even then, it was a long time before the food court at Washington Square became what it is today.

Worse than that, I don't like poutine. I don't hate it. I tried it, once was enough, and I'm good. So, you can use this for a guideline as to whether or not to trust my judgment.

In Toronto I mainly ate at the food court in Eaton Center or at grills at whatever place I was visiting. The soup at Casa Loma was good; I don't even remember what I had at Niagara Falls. It is probably not worth eating at the CN Tower. Their chicken basket was very dry.

There were a couple of exceptions. On one tour, the guide recommended the lunch buffet at a Thai restaurant. I decided to splurge and go there for dinner, because I like Thai food, and it was reasonably close to my hotel. It was very disappointing.

This may go back to not being fancy. It was clearly very trendy for the time, from the square white plates to the hipster-ish wait staff. I realized almost immediately that I was going to overpay for nothing great, which makes me wonder in retrospect why I just didn't leave. What I really should have done is made my way over to Chinatown and found something there, but without having any inside information you're just guessing what will be good.

The other random thing is that I was walking along and found a place called the Regal Beagle, and I had to check that out. They did not seem to be capitalizing on the "Three's Company" connection, which is a shame. The burger and fries were okay, but nothing special.

If I go to Toronto again, there was a small shop with a bakery case near my hotel (the Marriott on Bloor) and in that case were some chocolate-coated wedges of yellow cake that were much better than that description can convey.

We had better luck with the Thai restaurant in Vancouver, but the real story of Vancouver is that there was gelato everywhere. We disagreed about which place was best, but we all had gelato multiple times, and we also found many opportunities for crepes. I think we only had crepes twice, but they were available everywhere. And it's amazing that for all the signs we saw advertising souvlaki that we never had Greek food. It was a short trip, so that was part of it.

You may notice from the photos that I am showing two fast food chains, and take it as further proof of our lack of sophistication. Without arguing that, we like A&W but don't make it there very often because it is out of the way. This one was so conveniently located that we had to stop by, and their little fry baskets were adorable.

Finally, McDonald's is more of a breakfast place for us, but on our first day we saw a sign for Cadbury Egg McFlurries. Maria adores Cadbury Creme Eggs, and stockpiles them every Easter. She had to try it. That location was out, but we found another one later and she was able to achieve bliss.

I think the creme eggs are a little gross - too sickeningly sweet without any contrast - but I still tried one because it was a unique opportunity. I guess it's the same way I feel about the poutine.

All of that being said, I am sure that if we were coffee drinkers we would be very fond of Tim Hortons.

We never did Vancouver and Victoria on the same trip

While the primary purpose of the trip was visiting our friend, as long as we were in the area we felt some nostalgia as well. That's why we had to go to Stanley Park, and we thought we would take one day to go to Victoria as well. That ended up being more complicated than we realized.

There is public transportation to get you to the ferry, though it was a longer ride than we anticipated. The ferry mainly takes people with vehicles, but you don't need one to get on. We got to the terminal and we totally could have gotten on. The problem is that once we were looking at the ferry schedule, it was completely impractical to go and then come back the same day. We would only have had two hours, I think, before the last ferry of the day, and being on foot, would not have been able to get around much. It was still possible, but not practical. We took some pictures of the terminal, and then went back to the bus stop to return to Vancouver.

(This is why we had time to kill and took the trolley tour.)

Honestly, we should have known. We were talking to someone at the tourism office, and she was saying things about the travel time that we weren't really hearing, but she was right.  Looking at the map now, the two spots are only about 70 miles apart, but that is a lot without a car, and when you need to factor in two water crossings.

It was at this time that it occurred to me that we had never gone to both Vancouver and Victoria on our family excursions; it was always one or the other. We were driving, so we could have, but it would have added a layer of complexity that perhaps is not wanted when you have a truck full of kids.

Anyway, I don't know that the Tsawwassen ferry terminal would count as a big tourist attraction, but we saw it, and it brought back some memories.

In light of this, our experiences with the Victoria stop on the cruise were even more frustrating, but it's okay, we will get there.

http://sporktogo.blogspot.com/2012/11/going-south.html