Quick update

I'm not done posting Vancouver pics, and will be updating them shortly as time and internet access allows.

On Saturday we took a bus (included with our rail passes) from Vancouver, B.C. to Seattle, Washington. The most impressive thing we found about WA was the Space Needle, a tower with rotating restaurant and an observation deck at 520 feet. But after going almost 3 times as high in the Sky Pod of the CN Tower in Toronto, and swaying in open air 230 feet above a canyon on the Capilano Suspension Bridge, the Space Needle seemed woefully inadequate! Watching WA from the train, we were fabulously underwhelmed. We felt that we could get the same weather but with prettier foliage, more stuff to do, more for vegetarians, and medical coverage by just staying north of the border! On a whim, we hopped a train the same night to Portland, Oregon. My apologies to any offended Washingtonians.

I got pics of a pretty little bridge (lined with lights, a la Golden Gate), the beautiful historic Seattle train station, and pretty downtown Portland and surrounding areas, but it appears that our camera was stolen either from the room or the taxi. Thank God, a thousand times, that I backed everything up to the laptop in Vancouver!! However, all the pics taken since are gone. Much as we hated to expend the money, I couldn't abide the idea of passing through the California redwoods and the Golden Gate bridge without a decent camera. Since the train goes far inland from Eugene, OR to San Francisco, CA, and we wanted to see the coast, we decided to rent a car and stop by Best Buy for a camera on our way westward. The new one seems to have way less problems with out-of-focus pics, which had become a sore point for me when we snapped about 7 closeups of elk in Jasper and every single one was blurry. Got some shots of greater Portland area and the coast that took our breath away, so already it's been well worth the purchase. Will post those asap.