Dr Sun Yet-Sen Classical Chinese Garden

I found out that Vancouver has the world's best city garden according to National Geographic. So on my last morning I walked to it.

It is located in Chinatown, which has a different pair of lions at its gate (but these are not from a sister city).

I was there when they were feeding the koi.

The water is not dirty, it is deliberately jade green.

They were having an exhibition of the first artists to exhibit there, which included some painted rocks.

The city of Vancouver built a complimentary garden next door.

It really is a stunning garden!

Then I went back to the hotel, stopping at the library which was opposite.

Definitely the Last Totem Poles

As the market here is supposed to be one of the best in the world, I decided to catch the ferry in False Creek, and visit Granville island on the first leg of today's mamouth journey. The boats looked just like the pickle boats in Victoria, and evidently the person who designed them also designed these.

The market had a good range of raw food, cooked food and other items, but it was a bit squashed as it was Saturday, and raining. It rained or poured all day.

Then I caught the ferry on to the Museum of Vancouver, which recounts the history of Vancouver from the first people to the 1970s. It was really interesting, especially the Asian history, including the anti-Chinese and Indian laws in the early 1900s and the Japanese internment during and after the Second World War.

Then I walked to the bus, and caught it to the Museum of Anthropology at the university of British Columbia. This had been recommended to me by various people, including Ginnie, and it was very good - so good that it closed before I had finished looking at its displays, even though I had been there for three hours.

On the walk through UBC I saw the rose garden, and several couples getting wedding photos in it.

I caught a different bus and returned to the hotel, damp but satisfied.

Vancouver

Well, there was sunshine this morning on the ferry.

I misread the timetable again, and thought we were leaving the ferry two hours after we were, but that was easily solved, as the PA announced our arrival in an hour, and the purser knocked on my door...

The train to Vancouver was nice, but every time I took a picture, trees got in the way.

It was a nice walk to the hotel via the stadium and the sea wall. I really like Vancouver. The hotel has lots of eateries around it, a free breakfast, and really cheap laundry facilities as well as being an enormous suite! I wandered around the streets for a while, but didn't see much.

Well, maybe not...

I didn't realise we were stopping in Ketchikan when I wrote the last post, and Ketchikan prides itself on being the totem pole capital.

To get into town, I had to catch the bus.

They have several collections of totem poles, apart from the ones scattered randomly throughout the town. Saxman native village (south 5 miles from the ferry) has a thriving totem pole culture, as well as some original poles.  Totem Bright state park (north 7.5 miles from the ferry) has a long house and some totem poles, but no carvers. The Totem Heritage Centre (north 2.5 miles from the ferry, near downtown) has really old poles that were rescued from several villages in the Ketchikan area, remade versions and an interpretive centre. Obviously, that was the one I visited. It was small and crowded (two cruise ships were in), but very good. There were guides to answer any question you had about totem poles, and they were excellent.

I walked along the creek (married men's trail goes to the original red light district), had lunch there and walked all the way back to the ferry. 

Then I went to the museum.

There were a number of totem poles around the town, especially Chiefs totem poles.

The land is very steep, and houses have multiple steps to their front doors.

To get to the airport, people need to take a ferry, which stopped working while I was there.i came back a the lift in my ferry is going to be out for the rest of the trip.

Rain

The inner passage is nice. The constant rain made it interesting in a misty way. We saw a large school of porpoises, but I didn't photograph them.

Last Glacier, Last Totem Pole

Well, this is it. Tonight, very late, I leave Wrangell on the ferry bound for Bellingham. No more Alaska for me.

Today I visited the Sitkine River and the Shake glacier. Everything around here is called after Chief Shake, and that wasn't his original name. Evidently he defeated another chief who wasn't even a Tlingit. The other chief needed to go home rather than to be a slave, so he gave his name to the Tlingit chief who had defeated him.

You see the lake before you see the glacier, and the icebergs in the lake are enormous - several times the size of the boat. I was amazed by the rocks that were carried on top of the iceberg.

Then the glacier. We couldn't go too close because the glacier continues underwater and pieces erupt from the water.

We stopped at the waterfall near the glacier, and I saw a frog.

On the way home we saw seals lying on a sunken sandbar in the middle of the straight.

Wrangell.

Then I found the Totem Pole park.

Wrangell

The ferry was interesting, as it was full of people who had gone to Celebrate 2016, so there were people drumming and singing, people beading... So it was good even though it ranged from solid rain to light rain, with the occasional patch of no rain. The decks all had about an inch of water to slop through in places.

First we went to Kake, and I managed to locate the enormous totem pole and photograph it.

Then was Peterberg

And the very narrow passage between the islands.

And finally, Wrangell.

This is the ferry and where I'm staying.

My view was better after the cruise ship left

I visited Chief Shake's island and clan house (it's a replica originally built in the 1940s, and rebuilt in 2000).

Then I found the petroglyphs on the beach.