What I Love About This Place - Part 5

Despite my semi-regular tirades about human behaviour, I really do like people for the most part. In fact, the overwhelming majority of my best friends are humans. But once in a while I feel a definite need to get away from them, and luckily for me, Vancouver is full of convenient opportunities to do just that.

It was one of the first things that struck me when I came out here for my exploratory visit before packing up shop and making the move. I was staying with a friend who didn't own a car and by public transit we were able to get out to Capilano Canyon in about an hour, where we spent the afternoon wandering around the trails. The cool thing was that even though the parking lot was full of buses, everyone in them was just going to gawk off the bridge, leaving us with the rest of the place all to ourselves. I think we ran into maybe three people the whole time.

I moved out here pretty much a year to the day after I left, and five years later I'm still finding new places to ditch all of you clowns. West Van's Lighthouse Park is an old standby. It doesn't really seem that big, but I've always been pleasantly suprised when I show up to a packed parking lot and then spend three hours hiking the trails and shoreline without running into anyone. Lynn Canyon is another good one... if you go where the crowds aren't, and just two days ago I found another great place in West Van. Waterfalls, a river, quiet trails, two other people, and four dogs. It's pretty small though, so I'm not going to spill the beans. Besides, from the signs it looks like a large chunk of the area is slated for future development so I'm just saving you from future heartbreak. And it's more fun to seek this stuff out for yourself, right? I'll give you a hint though... it's named after something.