so afraid of what people might say, but that's okay 'cause you're only human We made it home from our whirlwind adventure in van-Groove-ey yesterday afternoon (pics here). A recap:

We left bright and early Saturday morning, aiming to beat the rush of traffic out of the city. It was pretty crowded on the Trans-Canada for most of the drive out of Alberta, but things thinned out as we got farther into BC. Devin was a champ and did the driving for almost all of the twelve-hour journey. froo relinquished driving responsibility at Lake Louise and he took over from there. With quick stops in Golden, Revelstoke, and Chase, we kept ourselves hydrated through the intense heat of the BC interior (over 30 degrees). I said this the last time I spent time in that area, but I really need to do some camping and boating near the Shuswap Lake. It's a huge lake and a gorgeous area - positively breathtaking. Alas, we didn't have time to stop...

I was surprised to see that the Kamloops area wasn't that pretty. I guess it's pretty dry around there, so there's a lot of brown-ness. Kinda reminded us of good old brown Calgary...(!)

So we rolled into Vancouver around 7:30 pm local time. We stayed at my brother and his girlfriend's place, but they had actually left town earlier that morning, so we had to get the key from one of Kris's friends. Kris and Tannis have a lovely and spacious apartment right at the intersection of Broadway and Granville (fabulous location), so we crashed there with our host Sabby the cat. Since I left Salsa home alone for three days (!), it was nice to have a feline host, but it was kind of a bummer that we didn't get to visit with Sabby's people..!

Our first night in town we headed down the block to the Cactus Club - we just love the food there. Petter came over from UBC to have some drinks with us, too, so it was nice to visit with him - I hadn't seen him since leaving Bishop's last year. We caught a bus downtown to enjoy some beers at an Irish pub (although they called themselves an "Irish Snug", whatever that is). After our marathon drive that day, though, we were pretty tired and didn't last long in those comfy leather booth seats, so it wasn't a wild and crazy night.

The weather on Sunday was spectacular and hot. We started our day with a visit to another favourite place - Paul's Omelettetry - for a scrumptious egg breakfast. Then it was off to the beach. We settled in for some sun but it got super-scorching super-fast. We were positively baking out there, and I'm not really designed for that much sun. Big OOPS on the sunscreen application, too - I clearly missed the belly button zone - see my pics to see the amusing burn pattern. Eep.

We visited Stanley Park after the beach. It was maybe a mistake to drive there on a long weekend on such a hot day - it was jam-packed with folks, finding parking took forever, and we didn't even manage to get close to the beach spot we wanted. Ah well, we sat down on the seawall, made some sandwiches and watched seaplanes take off. It's so nice to see the ocean and just breathe in that ocean smell. Gorgeous.

After a lovely afternoon nap we headed down to Granville Island for dinner and drinks. Petter joined us again and even recommended a nice waterfront pub to us. We managed to get a great table on the patio overlooking the water and we relaxed over pitchers of beer and more great food.

Yesterday morning we had a quick breakfast at Club McDo and some coffee at Starbucks, then Devin and I hopped a bus for the airport. We were a little sad to leave the beautiful ocean paradise that is the city of Van-groove-ey, but we left froo there to enjoy it for the week. Back to real life today. Work. And ramping up for the Stampede. YA-HOO!  | ¶ 12:00 p.m.