Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

We really did get up early this time and headed into a foreign country: Canada. The border patrol questioning (abbreviated version) went something like this:

Guard: "What are you doing in Canada?"

Sarah: "Sightseeing. In Vancouver. Grouse Mountain. And buying postcards."

Guard: "What do you do for a living?"

Sarah and Halley: "Uh...we kind of quit our jobs..."

Guard: "How much money do you have on you?"

Sarah: "Nothing."

Halley: "Two dollars."

Guard: "How much do you have access to?"

Sarah and Halley: "Uh...not that much..."

Needless to say, crossing the border is a humbling experience that makes you realize you have not a clue what you're doing with your life.

Once that stressful situation was over, we headed straight to Grouse Mountain, home of the Eye of the Wind. Most unfortunately, tours were not happening that day due to weather. Slightly disappointed, we traveled a few minutes down the road to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. Holy heights.

The view from the bridge was incredible but man was it scary, especially since there were two women who seemed to like walking quickly across the bridge, making it sway. Like it wasn't swaying already.

The bridge.

Sarah at the start.

Halley at the start.

View from the half-way point.

Sarah at the end.

We soon realized that we would have to go back the way we came and decided instead to check out the Treetops Adventure. There were mini suspension bridges between trees only 100 feet above the ground (the Capilano Suspension Bridge hangs 230 feet above the ground and stretches 450 feet across).

Made it to the first one!

It seemed a lot higher while we were up there.

Feeling confident, we strode back to the big bridge.

We got this.

Almost there.

Long way down.

We had a good night's sleep and woke with one mission and one mission only: take an Eye of the Wind Tour. We called Grouse Mountain first thing and were told that there was a scheduled power outage that day but that the 1pm tour should be good to go. Well it wasn't. Thankfully the 4pm tour was scheduled to happen so we took our passes and took a tram up the mountain.

Once the tram let us off, we rushed to a counter to find out exactly where the tour met. The gentleman we spoke to informed us that there were no tours scheduled and that someone had made a mistake. For those of you who do not know, Halley has been looking forward to the Eye of the Wind tour since the millisecond she found out about it many months ago. Her heart sank and her eyes welled at this news and Sarah also became upset. Thankfully, the gentleman had no clue what was really going on and we were directed to a fire pit outside.

Our tour included six other individuals and our two tour guides, Colin and Toby. Because of the scheduled power outage on the mountain, the chair lifts that would normal bring us to the base of the Eye of the Wind were not operating. Therefore, we took a small hike in the fresh snow to the grizzly bear habitat where we were driven to the top in pick-up trucks. We took the same route that pieces of the ginormous wind turbine traveled.

To try to explain how beautiful it was up there would take too long so here are a few pictures:

Snow!

The Eye of the Wind!!

Yay us!

From the top

In the foreground is the beautiful city of Vancouver and off in the distance is the state of Washington.

We then took part in some well-known Vancouver sushi before hitting the hay.

A very special thank you to Kent for all of the wonderful suggestions!