Alaska Adventures: Day 16--July 4 HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!!

Sun. July 4: How strange to spend Independence Day close to but not in the USA! We just missed Canada Day on July 1 by being in Alaska and now we miss July 4^th celebrations by being in Canada. There was no sign of the holiday at any point. On Matt McCoy’s recommendation we went, not to the expensive 200 meter high expansion bridge at Capilano Canyon, but to Lynn Canyon, just a bit farther away, where the park is free. We got there just after it opened at 10:00 and were pleased to find very few people. We stopped on our way in at the Ecology Centre and chatted with the two young women working, who showed us the notebook full of videos they could put in for us to watch. We chose not to see any now, preferring to get started on their hiking trails. First we crossed their 50 meter high expansion bridge and went left, ascending high above Lynn Creek and then circling around and descending nearly 300 steps to “30 foot pool”. There were a few people there and we took lots of pictures before climbing back up and crossing the bridge again. That trail had taken us about an hour and fifteen minutes. We enjoyed the picnic lunch we had brought, noting that the small café there was very expensive and that there were many more people around. Without realizing it in the morning, we had walked in a paved drive which now had a steady parade of cars driving to the extra parking behind the café. Back we trooped over the bridge again and this time we turned left and went up and down to Twin Falls bridge overlooking the two lower falls and “90 foot pool”, which is as far as the salmon swim to spawn. There were even more stairs to climb out of there to return to where we had started and the crowds had grown significantly. Back at the Ecology Centre around 2:00 we were told that the crowds would get even bigger later in the afternoon and that on warm days the area around 30 foot pool would have 200 people enjoying the crystal clear water It was hard to imagine! We watched the end of a video on Orcas and a homemade video by an area carpenter showing the flooding in the canyon in November of 1995 when they had a month of steady rain. It was pretty impressive! By then we were happy to give up our spot to a long string of cars waiting to park. On our way back we stopped at a Dairy Queen to enjoy the Blizzards we felt we had earned for our hiking. After Shelby napped and the rest of us did some computing, we headed back to Matt and Denise’s house for dinner. The sun came in and out as we sat on the back deck enjoying salmon candy, veggies and dip, and olives while Matt grilled fantastic, Texas sized hamburgers in honor of the Fourth of July. With grilled onions and asparagus and a fruit salad we were all stuffed by the end. We sat at the table and chatted until the Coleton, Jackson, and Emma were ready for bed so we headed back to 2400 to learn a new card game before calling it a day.