After getting into Canada pretty late, all we wanted to do was find the Walmart and go to bed. We had to go towards North Vancouver to find one. This particular Walmart just so happened to be on an incline, so we had to pull the Yella in as much we could without it feeling like we were sleeping downhill. Lights out and tomorrow the Real Vancouver!
We woke up to the sounds of shopping carts banging into one another, since we had to park right next to the cart return. I mean, it was the most level spot, presumably. So, we got our warm clothes on and headed for the Capilano RV park which is on an actual Indian reservation. We checked in and ate some lunch before we headed out for the city bus into downtown. Turns out in the summer there is a salmon run along the river that runs right through our RV park. Too bad we didn't come then, that would have been really cool to see. Just think about the Indians back in the day. They must have had some good eatin'.
We hopped the bus just outside of the Park Royal Mall after we had exchanged some American into Canadian for bus fare. Ouch! Even though the rate right now is only a couple cents to the dollar, it still hurts to know that the Canadian dollar is doing better than ours. We inserted our Canadian coins, a "Toonie" ($2 coin), a "Loonie" ($1 coin) and 2 quarters and were on our way. I thought it was cute that they refer to their there one and two dollars as "toonies" and "loonies", but I did not however find it cute that I had to lug around a whole bunch of change.
The bus was super clean and again, everyone seemed friendly and helpful and everyone seemed to dress quite nice, not at all what I think of a city bus when I think about the HART line back home. We made our way across the Lion's Gate Bridge (an awesome suspension bridge) and headed for Granville St. to explore. We checked out Yaletown, Gastown, the Heritage District, Granville Island and the ferry port. All these little areas of downtown were so cool, clean and happening. On our way to Gastown, however, we somehow managed to stumble into what seemed like skid-row. I mean, I have seen a meth/heroine/crack user or two wandering around a town in my life before, but so many at one time, was a bit overwhelming and just down rightt frightening. I told Ryan that they can smell fear, so we acted naturally and quickly to get the hell out of East Hastings STAT.
Ryan and I recalled a TV program we had watched before that spoke of free needle clinics for these people and an area in a downtown that was geared for these people and this behavior. After walking through East Hastings, we realized that the city in that TV program they were speaking of was Vancouver. No need to gross you out with the details of what we saw, so we jaywalked more times than I can count to avoid these folks and ended up in the beautiful cobble-stoned street area alongside the water called "Gastown". We sat at a park bench for a minute to catch our breath from dodging all the crack heads, but couldn't avoid this one lady who wandered into the nice part of town, with decayed teeth asking us for change in exchange for her fake tiffany charm. We told her the same story, "Sorry, we don't have any change." She walked away weirdly, almost as if she didn't even know she had just spoke to us. For all we know, she was a soldier in her head in some war zone or something. At this point, we decided it was time to get out of downtown and head back to the RV for some R & R.
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