Memorial Day Weekend: Bowen Island and Britannia Mine Museum

After leaving Capilano Suspension Bridge Park, we headed to the ferry terminal and took a ferry to Bowen Island. We have been wanting to go there for some time, especially since the island has such as great name!

On the ferry

We stayed at a charming cottage that was beachfront property. Lucy loved the mirror doors of the hallway closet, and she kept going in and out of them. She pretended that the closet doors served as a portal to Oz, and she kept going to visit different Oz characters. J and I joked that she was confusing the Oz closet with the idea of a Narnian wardrobe.

Throwing rocks on our private beach

Digging in rocks on our private beach

We went on two short hikes during our stay on Bowen Island. The first was a quick 1.5 mile hike to Dorman Point, which had a lovely overlook of the water.

Our second hike was after lunch, and we walked from Killarney Lake to Bridal Veil Falls. I think this was about a little over a mile hike altogether.

The kids loved jumping on the trampoline at the beach house

On Memorial Day, we took the ferry back to the mainland and headed to the Britannia Mine Museum before driving home. Sam wanted to go to this museum because he thought he could make some associations with the game Minecraft, but I don't think he really was able to make any good connections, Regardless, I'm so glad that we went here and I think that we all really had a good time. It was a little bit more expensive than I had hoped, but it was definitely worth it. The exhibits were really interesting, and I liked learning about what this mining community was like in the early 20th century. It was also fun to go inside the actual mine and the mill. I learned quite a bit about mining too. One thing that stuck with me is that the song "Sixteen Tons" is actually referring to the amount of rock that muckers were supposed to shovel and load in a ten-hour shift.

Waiting for the train to take us into the mine

The mill was huge! This photo doesn't even do justice to the vast space contained in this structure.

And then, we headed home. Lucy conked out after all that fun and slept for a good portion of the drive back home. She tends to only nap in the car now, which is unfortunate since she really could still use a nap each day. She often will fall asleep if we drive anywhere in the late afternoon.

Memorial Day Weekend: Burnaby and Vancouver

Our first full day in Canada was mostly spent in Burnaby and Vancouver. We visited a lovely park and farmer's market in Burnaby, and everything was walking distance from the Burnaby Village Museum. The museum recreates the appearance of a village in the 1920s, and volunteers are dressed in period costume throughout the site. The village was free and open to the public, and we all had a really fun time. I especially liked visiting the houses in the village and seeing all the interior decoration. We also had fun seeing places like the Printing Shop and the General Store.

"Riding" on the stationary trolley

This antique carousel was accompanied by music from a restored Wurlitzer organ!

After we left Burnaby, we headed to Vancouver and visited the Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. I was curious about this park because I noticed it when J and I spent our anniversary in Vancouver over a year ago; our bed-and-breakfast Thistle Down was just up the road from the park. It was fun to walk across different bridges and take little hikes in the area. We didn't have our hiking backpack for Lucy, which was unfortunate, but we managed alright by carrying her when her legs got tired of walking.

Sam was nervous on the suspension bridge, but he managed alright!

The Cliffwalk

Memorial Day Weekend: Car Ride and Stack-Ranks

We took a road trip up to Canada for the Memorial Day weekend. Our car drive was really fun, especially since we introduced Sam to Back to the Future and got to eat at a fun drive-in called Boomer's in Bellingham. The kids were thrilled that their food came in little cars, and Lucy was really taken with the idea that she got to eat her dinner in the car (which is funny, because she snacks in the car all the time).

On the drive, we played a fun "stack-rank" game that we invented. You basically compile a list of your favorite things by interrogating a person and asking one at a time, "Which is better? ______ or ________?" We picked a few themes for these lists, and here they are, ranked from best to worst:

Lucy: Princesses

--

Elsa

Moana

Belle

Cinderella

Sleeping Beauty

Ariel / Snow White

Rapunzel

Jasmine

Gizelle

Anastasia

Ana

Sam: Heroes

--

Harry Potter

Ron Weasly

Steve

Dumbledore

Chewbacca

Ewoks

Chirrut Îmwe (Rogue One blind guy)

Ash

Pikachu

BB8

Hermione Granger

Jyn Erso

K2SO

Batman

Emmet (Lego Movie)

Rey

Yoda

Cassian Andor

Poe Dameron

Baze Malbus

Monica: Artists

--

Van Eyck

Bernini

Michaelangelo

Vermeer

Van Gogh

Sargent

Waterhouse

Gerome

Caravaggio

Da Vinci

Manet

Monet

Hopper

Rembrandt

Aleijadinho

David

Jeremy: Movie characters/vehicles

--

Batman

Batman Tumbler

Darth Vader

The Delorian

X-Wing

Tim Burton Batmobile

Millennium Falcon

C3P0

R2D2

Number 5

Death Star

E.T.

Roger Rabbit

Marty McFly

Karate Kid

Mr. Miagi

Wesley, Princess Bride

Jeremy: Artists

--

Mark Rothko

Anish Kapoor

James Turrell

Agnes Martin

Josef Albers

Sol LeWitt

Franz Kline

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Gerhard Richter

Ed Rucha

Joseph Cornell

Barnett Newman 

Sargent

Bernini

Richard Serra

I think these lists will serve ass a great memory of our interests at this point in our lives. The drive passed by quickly with this game, and we got to introduce Sam to Back to the Future while we waited to cross the border. Once we passed the border, we went to our motel and the kids got to swim in the pool.

Paintings of Étretat

My sister E got engaged to her boyfriend Taylor a few weeks ago! We are very happy for them and wish them great success and happiness in their future together. They got engaged on the cliffs of Étretat in Normandy, and I can't help but think of the 19th-century paintings of that same location.

Boudin, Courbet, and Monet stand out as the three main artists who really focused on painting Étretat (see some information about these artists and a nice compilation of some of their Étretat paintings here). Between October and December of 1885, for example, Monet painted nearly fifty paintings of the Normandy coast! I found a Pinterest compilation for some of the paintings created by Monet, but I don't like how those paintings are cropped in the compilation. I've highlighted some of my personal favorites by Monet, Courbet, and Boudin below:

Monet, The Cliff, Étretat, Sunset, 1883

Monet, Cliffs of the Porte d'Aval, 1885

Monet, Etretat, Cliff of d`Aval, Sunset, 1885

Claude Monet – Coucher de soleil à Étretat, 1883. Oil on canvas,  60x73cm. Nancy, Musée des Beaux-Arts

Monet, The Cliffs at Étretat, 1885. The Clarke Institute (Wikipedia has a darker image here, but I think that the Clarke Institute image is probably closer to the correct color)

Claude Monet Etretat, la porte d’Aval, bateaux de pêche sortant du port, around 1885. Oil on canvas, 60 x 80 cm. Dijon, Musée des Beaux-Arts

Courbet, Bay with Cliffs, c. 1869. Oil on canvas

Courbet, The Sea-Arch at Étretat, 1869. Oil on canvas 79 x 128 cm

Courbet, La Falaise d’Étretat, Van der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal

Boudin, The Laundresses of Étretat, 1890 

(When writing this post, I was amused at this particular subject matter, because I should have included this painting in my "Washer Women" compilation on my art history blog! Ha ha!)