Life Off the Trail: Eating all the Things

Over the week since finishing the PCT, Shawn and I have been resting and eating our way through Vancouver, BC and Washington. We were fortunate enough to have a friend in Vancouver whom we had met hiking Mt Kilimanjaro just a year ago last September. Our group for that trip had included 9 Americans, 1 Canadian, and 1 guy from Luxembourg… or as he referred to the group: himself and nine and a half Americans. 😂

At any rate, our good friend Sarah picked us up from Manning Park on Tuesday afternoon, bringing us a terrific little welcome basket of Canadian delicacies, like Canada Dry Ginger Ale, which came in handy for me as she sped through the winding mountain roads, and Lays Ketchup Potato Chips, which – questionable these are produced in Canada, but we thanked her for the awesome welcome gift nonetheless. There was also a giant book of crossword puzzles. On our Kili trip, we found out she was a bit obsessed with crosswords and soon we were doing them as a group activity to pass the down time in the afternoons, probably much to her frustration since it seemed she could do them must faster without the rest of us. Unfortunately, we were unable to complete the crossword puzzles in our welcome basket since we can’t read Canadian. We appreciated the thought, though, eh!

We had actually used some of our time walking into Manning Park practicing our Canadian by adding “eh” to the end of all our sentences and apologizing for everything. This way, when I asked our waitress at breakfast the next morning if the French toast came with real Canadian maple syrup and she said “No, sore-y aboot that,” I could fully understand her. Canadian crossword puzzles were probably beyond our comprehension though.

Before we even arrived in Vancouver proper, Sarah stopped at a mall outside of town so we could immediately purchase some town clothes to wear, our hiking gear having served its time. Even having washed everything that morning, I think there was a very slight funk in the car that she was anxious to get rid of. I was pretty excited to get some new jeans. Before leaving for the PCT, I was at the heaviest I’d ever been and most of my jeans barely fit. Having lost a bunch of weight hiking, jean shopping would be so much fun! Right?!?

Entering an American Eagle, I was immediately dismayed by the options for jeans. OMG… all skinny jeans, all high-waist. Options: skinny, skinnier, skinniest. High waist, higher waist, highest waist. Full panic mode. I took stock: through all of our travels, it had been over two years since I’d been jean shopping. Is this what had happened? “Do you have ANYTHING besides high-waist skinny jeans?”. “We have Mom Jeans!”, the retail clerk answered enthusiastically. WTF. There is literally a jean called “mom jeans”?!? When I was younger, we’d use this phrase as a joke – the jeans we would wear after popping out a couple kiddos. Now, this is literally the name of a jean that young women are wearing to be cool? I picked up a pair and looked at the shape. The thighs bulged out. Seriously? These are the two options – high waist or mom jeans? I was embarrassed for fashion. I know, I know…it’s me that needs to catch up with the times. But really, the mom jeans? This is something young women are buying right now… as a fad? Regardless of mom status? (Cries a little on the inside)

Deep breath. Deep breath. Fortunately, Sarah is very efficient. Not wanting to visit too many stores, she scoured the shelves and found some that were not really high waist. They were still skinny jeans, but guess what? After losing over 20 pounds hiking, the skinny jeans actually looked pretty decent. See, I can be in fashion! Kind of. Soon enough, Shawn and I were walking out in our new duds. Just jeans and simple comfy t-shirts, but feeling like a million bucks.

VANCOUVER

In Vancouver, Sarah set us up in her apartment, located in an awesome neighborhood not far from English Bay. Our visit happened to coincide with a week she was very busy with family and already planning to spend the week at her parent’s place, so after a brief tour of the area, she left us with the keys to her apartment and sped off.

As we had hiked through Washington, nearing Canada, I’d been very excited for the finish and our trip to Vancouver. I’d not been to Vancouver before and always heard such great things. I laugh now, thinking about how I’d thought we’d spend our days exploring Vancouver. Lolz. I mean, we certainly did walk around, but it turns out that just after finishing a 2,650 mile hiking journey, you aren’t exactly in a sight-seeing mood. Also, Vancouver appeals to many travelers (including ourselves) for all the awesome outdoor activities: hiking trails in the mountains and nearby islands, kayaking on the bay, etc. All things that aren’t nearly as appealing after finishing a thru-hike, having lived in nature for nearly the last five months. All this to say, we will need to visit Vancouver again someday to really do it justice.

*Closest we got to seeing an Orca… Free Willy style…*

For now, we concentrated on the things our body really wanted: rest and good food, eating our way through the plethora of downtown food options: sushi, Malaysian, sidewalk hot dog carts, poke, ice cream, and froyo. Our last night in the city, we even went out for a nice steak dinner with two other friends from Vancouver whom we had met hiking in Death Valley earlier this year. It turns out that we make some of our most lasting friendships while hiking.

We also couldn’t consider our trip to Canada complete without … poutine! We went to Frites for the best, trying out some of their special poutine creations, including spicy buffalo chicken and a pulled pork and bacon variety. Don’t judge us, we are still in the “eat whatever we want” phase.

And, we ventured to the Urban Winery and Postmark Brewery for tasty adult beverages.

We also took care of some very necessary foot care, getting pedicures to clean up our weary trail-worn feet, and visiting Big Feet for awesome foot massages. Unfortunately, my guy was way too good at his job, making my massage more painful than relaxing, but in the end it was definitely for the best.

All this isn’t to say we didn’t explore Vancouver at all. We took some time to walk along English Bay and through the Gastown area, visiting the famous Gastown Steam Clock and the statue of “Gassy Jack”, the namesake of the area. Sounds like a good trail name. We also did FlyOver Vancouver, so technically – through a virtual reality flight – we visited pretty much all of Canada in eight minutes. Very efficient sightseeing. And definitely easier than walking. A return trip to Vancouver one day will need to include a trip out to the islands.

BELLINGHAM

Having had our fill of Vancouver for the time being, we slowly made our way to Seattle via a weekend stopover in Bellingham. We’d heard great things about Bellingham and the older sister of my best friend growing up lived there with her family. When she’d seen that we were hiking through Washington, she’d reached out about visiting Bellingham and we’d taken her up on this. Lizeth had also babysat for us once in awhile growing up, probably the only normal babysitter my mom ever hired. She actually liked kids and played with us. Cool points.

Anyway, Lizeth and her son picked us up at the airport, where our bus from Vancouver dropped us, and by afternoon we were getting a full tour of Bellingham, which seemed to have a slight bent on getting us to move there. Haha. We definitely liked what we saw. Bellingham has some great little old town districts and a beautiful waterfront, and – while we didn’t have the time, energy, or necessary equipment to check it out – apparently among the best mountain bike trail networks in the country. Again – return trip needed.

No trip anywhere would be complete without… a brewery visit, and we visited one that Lizeth had been hoping to check out for awhile, Twin Sisters Brewing. It had a great outdoor space and – much to my pleasure – also had a full bar, so I could enjoy this awesome blackberry mojito:

With a very rainy Sunday, we also spent some time doing some very non-local activities – like going to the movies, and spent the afternoon playing card games with Lizeth, her husband, and youngest son, which is always a great way to spend a rainy day. While I hadn’t seen Lizeth in a very very long time, she and her family welcomed us like family and we really enjoyed spending time with them. Though a short stop, it was a great visit, and definitely added more ideas to our bucket list, like a return to visit the San Juan Islands.

SEATTLE

Monday morning, we took the bus to Seattle. Since we’d already done the “tourist” thing in Seattle, we didn’t have too much we wanted/needed to accomplish while here. We ate more delicious food and caught up with Nathaniel and Megan, two other PCT hiker friends that were in Seattle for a few days, for sushi and a comedy show on Monday night.

On Tuesday, we went to a great little restaurant downtown that we had visited on our last trip to Seattle. Lola has these great little made to order donuts that we love. A beautiful sunny day, we took some time to stroll along the waterfront and through Pike’s Place Market before relaxing in a coffee shop for the afternoon.

We wrapped up our time in Seattle with a visit to Hot Cakes, highly recommended to us by Squishy, it’s molten lava chocolate cake did not disappoint.

NEXT UP?

Not knowing exactly when we’d finish the the trail, we’d given ourselves some buffer time when booking our flight out of the Pacific Northwest, so we’d basically just been killing time in Vancouver and Washington waiting for our September 19th flight to … sunny… ARUBA! That’s right, don’t be jealous. Before we’d even left for the PCT, we’d packed a small box and labeled it “VACATION”, knowing that if we made it through the full PCT, we deserved to lay on a beach for a week. As we made our way through the first half of Washington, we decided on Aruba, mostly because we’d already been. Typically when we travel, we like to pick new places that we’ve never been before; however, for this trip, we purposely decided to do the opposite and pick somewhere we’d already been so we wouldn’t be as tempted to explore, having already seen much of what the island has to offer. This would making it far easier to lay on the beach all day without feeling like we needed to find time to see and do all the other things Aruba has to offer. It also helped that we were able to use our American Airlines points for the trip, and that we have lodging there that we really like (check out My Aruban Home if you’re interested in a great place to stay in Aruba). And so, we traded out our gear, my mom mailing our vacation box to Seattle, while we mailed our hiking gear home. Sleeping bags for swimsuits… sweet as…

Since I’m getting this blog out a little later than planned, we’re already laying on the beach! I’m planning on putting together another post this week with some interesting stats from our trip – time on the trail, average miles/day, and some other fun numbers 🙂

Stay tuned…

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