On Monday, I took the day off from work to spend with Mackenzie. We decided to do a bit of exploration around North Vancouver, and area she hadn’t seen much of previously. We had a bit of an epic day, starting on Cypress Mountain, heading over to Lynn Canyon, lunch at Lonsdale Quay, out to Lighthouse Park and then wrapping it up by meeting Justine downtown for an epic sunset happy hour!
We’ll start with the map of our day - we covered a lot of ground!
We were up pretty early on Monday, to get a start on our epic day! Sadly, Justine had to work, but we were going to meet her later in the day. We headed north, through downtown and over the Lion’s Gate Bridge into North Vancouver. Since it was a beautiful, sunny day I thought it might be a good idea to drive up Cypress Mountain and give Mackenzie a nice view of the city. We drove all the way to the top at the ski resort first, so she could see some of the local ski hills.
It was incredibly busy and the parking lots were all full, so we could really get out and look around. Instead, we headed back down the mountain and made a short stop at the lookout, for a view out and over the city.
After admiring the view for a while, we headed back down the mountain and took a drive over to Lynn Canyon Park, so we could see the suspension bridge and walk a bit in the forest. There’s a nice, reasonably short loop that we could do. The parking lot at the park was surprisingly empty, so it was easy to park the truck and wander into the park. Sadly, the little cafe (a local gem) was closed, but we did get lucky in the that they had just re-opened the suspension bridge after some maintenance work last week. While it was open, it was very slippery in the icy conditions, and we had to be very careful walking across it!
A bit more from our friends at Wikipedia - The Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge is a pedestrian bridge located within Lynn Canyon Park. It is 50 metres high from the bottom of the canyon. The bridge was built as a private venture in 1912.
The bridge connects the extensive hiking trails on the two sides of the canyon and is part of the Baden-Powell Trail. The free-to-access bridge is often compared to the nearby and widely advertised Capilano Suspension Bridge. While the bridge is shorter and not as high, it is narrower and moves around more when people walk on it.
Mackenzie and I on the Lynn Canyon Suspension Bridge. I almost wiped out getting down!
Just getting over the bridge was an adventure! It was so slippery, you had to really hold on to both cables wth your hands, and then still sort of slide down the slick boards. It was a bit sketchy… But ti does give you such a great view down to the river and the canyon that it cuts through.
After crossing over the bridge, I talked Mackenzie into a short hike. There’s a short loop that you can do that really shows off a lot of the great sites of the forest and the general area. After crossing the bridge, we followed the very snowy and icy trail down towards the Twin Falls Bridge. From the bridge, you got more great views of the river and the canyon. The bridge is more traditional (and more stable) and was not nearly as icy. On the other side you climb a pretty large set of stairs, before taking a trail back to the truck. Sadly, I messed up recording this walk on my watch.
After walking back to the truck, we headed into the city of North Vancouver to find some lunch. We headed down to the new(ish) Shipyards District near Lonsdale Quay, as I thought it would be fun to check out, and I knew there were some good restaurant options for us. Lonsdale Ave is only a couple of stops down the highway from where we were, so it did not take us long to drive over, find a parking spot and wander about.
It had been quite a while since I had been over to the North Shore, and I was really surprised how empty Lonsdale Quay was! They have a great little market, the North Shore equivalent to the Granville Island Public Market, but sadly half the stores in the market were empty. I had hoped to find a fey items for dinner that night, but that did not work out. So our exploration was really cut short and we headed over to Tap and Barrel and had a lovely lunch looking out over the harbour.
By the time lunch was done, it was early afternoon. We had a few hour to spend before meeting Justine, I decided we should drive over to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver to go for another little hike and get a different view of the city. We drove out Marine Drive, through the cool little villages of West Van, and out to where the park is.
I managed to remember to track our walk around Lighthouse Park.
Lighthouse Park is a great place to bring people from out of town, as it provides access to a number of great things to see and do, all within a relatively small area, not too far from Vancouver.
The hiking trails are relatively easy - nothing too steep or too long; there are lots of big trees, including a few remaining examples of old growth trees; and there are spectacular views back to Vancouver when the weather is nice. And did we ever have the right day for that!
And there is the lighthouse that the park is named for. It’s quite pretty, sitting out on the headland. And while it doesn’t really need to do much in these days of advanced navigation equipment, it still shines when needed.
We walked a few of the different trails, checked out some of the bigger trees in the park and enjoyed the sunny day. We also had sightings of so many bald eagle! They were everywhere! At one point I counted 8 flying right above us. We had a couple land in trees right over our heads! That was pretty great.
One of the many bald eagles we saw in the park.
We walked a number of the trails - they were a lot better than the trails in Lynn Canyon - and enjoyed the views of the city. We walked over to the lighthouse to have a look around. It was pretty quiet in the park - we basically had the place to ourselves, but eventually it was time ot head back into the city to meet up with Justine.
Justine had been working hard all day, but had suggested that we meet her at the Top of Vancouver, our (much smaller) version of the revolving restaurant at the top of the CN Tower in Toronto. According to the Vancouver Lookout's website the observation deck is 168 m (551 ft) above the 'street level', sitting atop Harbour Center. It’s one of the tallest buildings in the city and offers amazing unobstructed 360 degree views. And on a day like we had, the views were amazing!
We met Justine for Happy Hour!
With it still being winter, the sun was going to set around 5:50. making it perfect for Happy Hour. We got cheaper drinks and some snacks, while sitting in the revolving restaurant, watching the sun set and the light put the city inot a beautiful glow. We shared our adventures of the day with Justine and had an nice late afternoon snack.
We had a prime seat at one of the panoramic windows, watching the city rotate underneath us.
Towards the end of the night, we saw the sun go down behind the city.
After Happy Hour ended, we headed for home. The sun was still setting, and provided beautiful glow over the city. We had parked basically across the street, so it was easy to hop in the truck and head for home. I made us dinner, and we called it a night.
Sadly, I had to go into the office Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Fortunately Justine was able to make a lot of time to spend with Mackenzie. They did some shopping on Tuesday, explored Gastown and some other areas of the city. Friday I was taking off as a vacation day, and we had and epic outing to Squamish and Whistler planned. More on that in the next (last) post.