Up at 4 am Eastern time to catch a Lyft to the airport. Short flight to Chicago, medium flight to Vancouver. Everything is biometric now. Scan your face instead of your passport or boarding pass, though sometimes you have to scan those too. YVR is decorated in beautiful Musqueam sculptures carved out of towering cedar, but is otherwise kind of run-down. Bathroom doors falling off the hinges. I sit for a bit trying to collect myself over scalding, watery Tim Hortons. The train to downtown is right outside the door, but it takes me 20 minutes of wandering around to figure out how to get into it. Shipping containers everywhere. Vancouver is my kind of town.
Walk around the waterfront long enough to find real coffee, then make my way to the complimentary shuttle bus to take me north to Capilano Suspension Bridge Park. A tourist trap I’ve had my heart set on since I booked my flight.
I’m the sole passenger on this overcast off-season Wednesday afternoon, so I sit up front behind the driver and chat with him as we cross the harbor and wind into the woods. He apologizes for the rain, and I say, on the contrary. It’s what I came for. He’s been driving this shuttle off and on for 20 years. Originally from New Brunswick, he came to Vancouver on vacation in 1986 and never went home. I tell him I’m worried that will happen to me.
We arrive at our destination, which is bigger than I expected. I stop myself from joking to him that the ride was worth the price of admission, and simply say thank you and hop off. The bag check is the last complimentary service I take advantage of before I shell out $50 (USD) to enter the park.
Part cartoon mining town, part Ewok village. It’s almost cutesy enough to make me regret it.
But I’m in a rainforest. Surrounded by 300- 800-year-old Douglas firs, Western red cedars, hemlock, and half a dozen wild-looking maple varieties I’ve never heard of. Rotting wood feeds thickets of ferns. Everything is being consumed by moss. It’s downright Jurassic.
And honestly there are plenty of thrills. If the bridge itself were not enough to make my knees queasy, there is also the “Tree Top Adventure” and the “Cliff Walk,” which just about did me in.
I mosey through the Trading Post trying to recover from the heights, but the fluorescent lighting and plastic smell don’t help much.
I realize I have not eaten. There’s a restaurant next door, where I sidle up to the bar, and sit with my back to the window overlooking the canyon. The bartender and I ask each other where we’re from. He has never been to Philadelphia, but just got back from Nashville. Originally from Germany, near the Czech border, he came to Vancouver four years ago on a backpacking trip and never went home. I say there seems to be a lot of that going around. He says it’s too bad I’m here just in time for the rainy season. I say, no, it’s not too bad at all.