Business and Play in Vancouver

I need to spend time in Canada in order to keep my Permanent Residence or qualify for Citizenship, so it made sense to spend a week and start to figure out some of the info we need for our eventual move. We thought that we’d stay in Vancouver for a few days.

We started our Monday morning at the Canadian version of the DMV. We were going to start the process of obtaining our drivers' licenses but then decided we’d better wait as we were not ready to give up our California licenses.

From the DMV we went to the provincial insurance company with a list of questions about importing our cars. Needless to say, some of the procedures are different so we had to sort thru those issues. We didn’t make it down to immigration but we still need to find out how much it will cost to import the sports cars. Hopefully, we can find some answers by phone.

Although we do not anticipate living in Vancouver, we did want to visit the local ski resorts. We have been to Whistler and planned to go there again, but we have heard about the local resorts and were anxious to check them out.

On Tuesday morning we packed up a lunch and started at the furthest one from our campground, Cypress Mountain, 30 min away. We walked around looking at the ski slopes and maps. Then we happened upon a trail, a loop around the Yew Lake.

Cypress mountain

The 1.5-mile trail is an easy walk and although the trail is not paved, we did see someone pushing another person in a wheelchair. The lake is quite beautiful, however, the light was not great so photos, while fine, are not great.

Yew Lake

From Cypress, we drove another ½ hour or so to Grouse Mountain. Our Vancouver friends ski Grouse and had lots of good things to say. Unfortunately, the parking was not free and one must take a gondola to the mountain so we could not see anything. We decided that we’d just come up and ski sometime in order to check it out.

Our last resort to check was Mt. Seymore. We did not find a hiking trail but did walk around. The resort reminded us of Shirley Meadows, the resort near Bakersfield. It did look like a great little place to take some of the younger grandkids.

Vancouver from Mt. Seymore

We hope to return to Vancouver in January and actually ski some of the ski resorts.