Hello All!

I know that, considering my acquisition of a digital camera, it's been a longer time since I updated this web page. But no need to despair! This update is so full of pictures that you'll be sure you haven't missed anything in our absence!

We begin with a silly picture of Murph. Here he's coming up the stairs while smiling for the camera. I thought it was a weird but cute shot, so I'm including it here.

Above we have the graduation photo from Murphy's advanced beginner obedience class. Three yellow Labs, a couple of Goldens, a bunch of Border Collie crosses, a Wheaten Terrier, a Portugese Water Dog, a Standard Poodle, and a couple of dogs that are who knows what! Once again Murphy was the smallest, but it didn't seem to bother him too much. I think we're heading back for another round of Advanced beginners in April, as are some of these other people in the photo.

Next we have Murphy taking a nap next to the treadmill. Allie was walking on the treadmill at the time, while I worked at the computer nearby. Allie took a break from her exercise to capture Murphy sleeping right next to a whirring, rattling machine. Note: He's using his bone as a pillow.

 

This is what Murph usually does around the treadmill, assuming no one is using it - he jumps up and sits behind me while I'm on the computer, and waits for a scratch. Here he was luck enough to have my father come along, and indulge him.

Now, the real meat of this update. I took Murphy into Vancouver for a walk along busy city streets last weekend. I figure it's good for him to stay familiar with crowded sidewalks, so every so often we head into the city. Now, for those of you who have never been to Vancouver, I took some pictures to explain all this to you.

See the mass of white buildings in the distance, beyond the boats? That's North Vancouver where Murphy and I live. We live beneath what are known as the North Shore Mountains, as you can see. Vancouver and North Vancouver are separated by an inlet, from the Pacific Ocean. You can cross this inlet on one of two bridges, or by taking the Sea Bus, which is a little ferry that's part of our transit system.

This is Lions Gate Bridge. It's one of the two bridges you can take to get to Vancouver from the North Shore. Behind the bridge you can see West Vancouver, which is also on the North Shore. I took this picture from Stanley Park, a gigantic park that is on the tip of Vancouver. Murphy and I come here sometimes to walk the sea wall. It goes for miles and miles around the park and into Vancouver.

This is another part of the sea wall, the part that goes around English Bay. Along English Bay people rollerblade, walk, run, cycle, and just generally bring the whole family down for some relaxing. The top photo looks to the West, to an area called Kitsilano. The University of British Columbia is out that way, beyond the right hand side of the top photo. The right hand photo, with Murphy at the bottom, is pointed North. You can see the North Shore Mountains in the distance. If you walk the sea wall that way you end up in Stanley Park.

So Murphy and I wandered along English Bay for a bit. As you would expect, I took several photos.

Here we have Murphy looking down at English Bay. He wasn't too thrilled about staying put for a photo, as there were lots of people, kids, dogs and so on walking along the sea wall.

Now the order I've shown the photos in here isn't actually the order we did things in. We drove to Vancouver, walked along Robson Street (you'll see that later in the update), got to English Bay, wandered a bit, then walked back along Robson to our car. THEN we drove through Stanley Park. But I thought it best to show you the Stanley Park photos first, to give you an idea of where we live, and where we traveled to that day. At any rate, by the time we got to English Bay we were a little tired, so we hung out here for a few minutes, catching our breath.

The above photos just show a little more of the area. In the left hand photo you can see strange piles of rocks on the edge of the sea wall. Apparently it's some sort of pastime, trying to balance piles of rocks. In the right hand photo you can make out some ships in the distance. Vancouver is still a large working port, so we have a lot of shipping traffic in and out of this area. They don't come into English Bay, as it's shallow. They go under the Lions Gate Bridge to docks over that way. We also have a lot of cruise ship traffic, heading to Alaska along the BC coast.

And here we just have Murphy taking in some sun before we headed back into the busy shopping district of Robson Street.

So, that's my cue to talk about Robson Street. Robson is one of the main shopping streets in Vancouver. It has all your major stores like The Gap, Banana Republic, Body Shop, Benetton, Nike, Levis, Roots, Lush, Guess, plus lingerie stores, chocolate shops, restaurants and so on. At one end is English Bay, at the other end is our art gallery, our huge departments stores, The Bay and Eatons, and major hotels.

As you can see in the photo to the right, the traffic along Robson can be a nightmare. And pedestrian traffic isn't much better. Murphy did very well along such crowded sidewalks, and even got several complements and some pats. There are lots of street people along Robson Street, since people with money come here to spend it, plus this is a major tourist area. Murphy wandered by the street people without any problem. There's also this woman, I'm not sure if she's a homeless person herself or an advocate for the homeless. At any rate, she walks along Robson with a duck on a cart. She sells people duck food, and collects the money for the homeless. So this woman came wandering by and looked down at Murphy, saying; "What a nice cocker spaniel, we don't see too many of those!". I couldn't believe the Duck Lady knew what breed Murphy was! So I smiled, Murphy waggled at her, thankfully without spotting the duck (there could have been a bit of a scene if he had) and we continued on our way.

Here you can see the Hotel Vancouver, or the top of it at least. It's one in a series of hotels across Canada that was built around the turn of the last century, along the route of our transcontinental railroad. They're very much the grand old hotels of Canada. Below it, in the foreground, is a Roots store, extra popular these days after the Olympics, as they designed our uniforms. Those Canada jackets and sweatshirts that our athletes wore have become quite popular around here. You can barely see the Roots store here due to the setting sun.

So from here we returned to our car, drove through Stanley Park where I took all those photos from the beginning of this update, drove over the Lions Gate Bridge, and returned home!

In coming updates I'll try to show a little more of Vancouver, plus lots of the North Shore, where we live, as well as other surrounding areas.

Email me!

Meghan

Here's the link to the next update: May 4, 2002
Here's the link to the previous update: March 11, 2002

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