Day trips to Fort Langley & Whistler
It’s now Wednesday and we’re in Victoria, on board the cruise ship Norwegian Sun. I just re-boarded after going ashore simply to get an Internet signal strong enough to download some photos so I can show you what we’ve been up to the past few days.
On Saturday, Dad and I continued visiting places we used to know, in Fort Langley in particular, and old friends further out the valley.
As usual, we took the “scenic route” from our hotel in Richmond, and were constantly amazed at the changes since we each last visited the places we passed though. The new perimeter road beside River Road in Delta is impressive.
Is it really that long ago that Fraser Highway was a quiet 2-lane road through a mostly-agricultural area of Surrey?
Not quite everything is changing in the Fraser Valley – it was great to see the Barnston Island ferry still running.
Nothing had changed at my old house in Walnut Grove, but Mom and Dad’s place in Fort Langley was barely recognizable with the gardens gone and the hedge transformed into high trees. My lovely home in Fort Langley, seen in this photo, is pretty much the same as when Donna and I sold it in January 1986 (for $99,000 – I expect about 1/6th of what it would cost to buy it back), but the trees overpower it now.
Ready for a bit of calm time, we drove out to the abandoned Fort Langley ferry dock. This is the view up the Fraser River.
Fort Langley is the only place in the Fraser Valley that I really do still have a soft spot for. We loved living there, and I put countless hours into the original downtown revitalization plan that has worked better than that small committee ever dreamed possible. One of our first completed projects was a pair of welcome signs, which still stand and still look great.
There’s been extensive development of Derby Reach Park, and it’s extremely popular now, with cyclists especially numerous. This was the original site of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Fort Langley.
The final stop for Saturday was the home of high school friends. Their daughter and her husband joined us for a barbecue. It’s wonderful to be able to pick up as though it had only been weeks since we’d seen each other, not years – one of the signs of real freindships, I think.
Dad and I got back to our hotel quite late on Saturday night, and on Sunday morning I was trying to think of someplace interesting to spend a day with a mediocre weather forecast (it was very foggy again in Richmond). I decided that Dad would enjoy seeing Whistler, a place he’d never been. The weather was very poor almost to Squamish, so he didn’t get to see most of the dramatic scenery along the Sea to Sky Highway. This was the view over Howe Sound from the parking lot for the Stawamus Chief.
And from the same spot, the view of The Chief itself. That is some impressive chunk of granite!
With perfect late-summer weather, Whistler was an extremely busy place. We circled around and around a massive parking lot and couldn’t find an empty space, then realized that a much smaller parking lot a block away was almost empty – it’s the one you have to pay to park at, which I was okay with 🙂 We had an excellent lunch, and headed back to Richmond, hitting rain and fog even further north than it had extended a few hours before.
I dropped Dad off at the hotel and then dropped our rental car off at Budget, and walked back to the hotel. Monday would be a calm morning before taking a taxi to Canada Place to board the Norwegian Sun.
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