Hiking Lynn Valley on a sunny day

That is the plan, at least. The malaise of Wednesday evening that landed me in Royal Columbia Hospital (One out of five nurses over there actually was friendly and compassionate, Thank you Tamara!), had me in a taxi cab to North Van at 2am, in bed or bent over the porcelain fixture all of Thursday, and on the bus and skytrain to New West at midnight on Thursday to pick up my car, is GONE!  So is the trip by float plane to Sechelt that was planned for Friday, but Harbour Air actually accepted a 3-hour prior to flight cancellation without charge.  (!).
So what I told a relative in Germany last year, namely "Life has the tendency of shrinking made plans by two sizes; better to make the plans XX Large" is holding true ;-)

I am waiting for James and Rufus (the latter presumably a canine life form) to walk up the mountain beyond Lynn Vallley Suspension Bridge. Note to tourists:  I do not like crossing the Capilano on a river!  The Lynn Valley Supsension Bridge is FREE, is situated in a park instead of a parking lot, and there actually is something on the other side; somewhere to walk to ;-)

Here are Rufus and James on the bridge, which wobbles and shakes, but that is part of its appeal.

 

A nice short walk with lots of scenery. (Yes, you can walk all day too, if you want to; we took a short loop) If you decide to go past the marked and fenced borders, prepare to tumble down a steep slope and bloody your knees in the process like yours truly.  But the results may be worth it. Not only might you see the famous Sasquatch, but also some gorgeous semi-untouched BC scenery.

However, even sticking to the trail boundaries you'll get some nice views like from the Twin Falls Bridge and of old tree stumps resembling Indian carvings.

All of this did not make much of an impression on Rufus, who was just happy he had found a stick for the day.

One thing absent in this story is traffic.  We caught the back-end of a blocked Iron-Workers-Memorial Bridge on the way to Lynn Valley. On the way back to Lions-Gate Bridge we ran into the rear end of there compensating traffic (whenever one bridge is blocked traffic moves to the other one). Checking the news after my return, there it was again: Iron-Workers-Memorial Bridge closed in both directions to a 'police incident'.  Are we all 5-year-olds that can not be told the facts of life? Everyone knows that it was another person standing on the side of the bridge threatening to jump.  And I'm not going into what to do here, but take think about the two extremes: Every person's life is precious (even if they don't think so themselves). It only takes 365 separate people threatening to jump and Vancouver is left with only one bridge (or less than one if some of those try their bad luck later that year on the other bridge).

So while Vancouver car drivers were suffering through the inevitable (?), I was loading my bike on the bus, which thanks to bus lanes got on the bridge fast and I managed to complete a trip from the North end of Lions Gate Bridge to Nanaimo Skytrain station and return in less than 50 minutes.  Not bad for a day with one bridge closed ;-)