After 60-something days on the road, we finally made it to the West Coast of the continent this afternoon! Vancouver is home to about 600,000 and is located on the southwest corner of Canada. Consistently ranked as one of the top five worldwide cities for livability and quality of life, Vancouver is well known for its natural beauty with ample green space, water, and a huge mountainous backdrop. After fighting our way through the city's outrageous traffic (which is saying something some from New York), we dumped our stuff at the hotel and spent the afternoon wandering along False Creek here - a short inlet in the heart of the city.

Good place to own a boat.

Canadians seem to have an obsession with balancing rocks I've noticed (or building cairns).

They even balance boulders and take selfies in front of them hehe.

Vancouver in particular seems to like tall apartment buildings featuring lots of glass. I noticed this last time I was here and noticed it in Toronto as well.

Vancouver has several large beaches, but this is hardly the Caribbean and very few people are hardy enough to get in the water. I know I wouldn't!

Not a bad way to spend an afternoon :)

Overlooking False Creek at sunset with Downtown on the right, Granville Island in the foreground on the left, and the city's suburban core in the distance.

The view looking north over Burrard Inlet towards North Vancouver (a separate city) and the southern peaks of the North Shore Mountains. Vancouver's Stanley Park is off to the left, where we headed today.

We started following the coastal seawall path towards the park, passing under more of these concrete and glass apartment buildings the Vancouverites love so much. We also discussed which of these boats we could afford to own. The answer, of course, is none of them ;)

Stanley Park is 1,001 acres in size, much of it densely forested with trees up to 249 feet tall (76m) and hundreds of years old. As you can see, it's bloody nice in here! In fact, in June 2014, Stanley Park was named 'top park in the entire world' by TripAdvisor. I like New York's Central Park better, but that's just me :)

His eyes look like mine first thing in the morning.

After lunch Kristina spotted a hair salon and decided to get some maintenance taken care of, so I wandered over to Gastown - Vancouver's original downtown core in the late 1800's. Today the area is a mix of boutique shops, tourist-oriented businesses, restaurants, nightclubs, and poverty - a lot of poverty if you look hard enough.

Spot the clock on the right.

This is the iconic Gastown Steam Clock, the world's first steam powered clock built in 1977, put here to solve the issue of a steam vent in a popular sidewalk of the now-renovated Gastown. The steam comes from a centralised steam heating system that serves a portion of downtown Vancouver. A steam engine within the body of the clock is used to lift weighted balls which in turn drive the clock mechanism itself as gravity pulls them back down. Simplistic yet complicated stuff - more info here.

Next door to Gastown is Chinatown - the second largest Chinatown in North America, but frankly I wouldn't suggest venturing in here. It's a shit hole and it's full of drug addicts, one of which demanded I take her (yes, her) photo while I was trying to get this shot of the Millennium Gate. Presuming she would in turn demand money, I refused, and she then got distracted by another tourist with a camera hehe.

Meanwhile, autumn is very much heading this way. Good time to start heading south, which we are.

The view of downtown Vancouver from our hotel.

Nice quiet day today to finish off our time in Canada. We headed to Granville Island (actually a peninsula) to peruse its shops, galleries, and public market. Tomorrow we cross back into the US and start the long trek down the west coast, and slowly back towards more summer-like weather.

Thanks.

Our first stop on the west coast of the US is Seattle, Washington - nicknamed the "Emerald City" in reference to the lush evergreen forests of the area. It's also known as "Rain City" for its frequent cloudy, rainy, shitty weather. We seemed to have brought the sun with us though, which is nice.

The Seattle skyline's most recognisable feature is the Space Needle here - an observation tower standing 605 feet (184m) high. It's not cheap to go up there though, so I'm not sure we'll bother (we've been up plenty of city towers).

If there's one thing the city's population of 700,000 loves, it's coffee.

There are coffee shops absolutely bloody everywhere, and in fact Seattle is the home of Starbucks. The largest coffeehouse company in the world opened its first store in 1971 just a couple blocks from where I'm standing here. That store subsequently relocated here in 1976, and the rest is history. The store has kept its early appearance over time and is subject to design guidelines due to its historic significance. As you can see, the joint has become quite the tourist attraction, and it was bloody nuts inside!

Right across the street is Pike Place Market - a public market along Seattle's waterfront. The Market opened in 1907, making it one of the oldest continuously operated public farmers' markets in the country. As you can see again - it's chaos. With more than 10 million visitors annually, the market is Seattle's most popular tourist destination. We got the hell out of there pretty quickly hehe.

We started the day with a wander through the oldest part of Seattle - Pioneer Square. This neighbourhood was once the centre of the city when the original founders settled here in 1852. The early structures in the neighborhood were mostly wooden, and nearly all of them burned to the ground in the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 which destroyed the entire central business district.

Pioneer Square was quickly rebuilt after the fire, with many of those buildings still here today.

The Pioneer Square Totem Pole. In 1899, a group of businessmen stole a totem pole from a Native American tribe and plonked it here hehe. That pole was later destroyed by arson, and the tribe was nice enough to carve a new one as a gift to the city (after first being paid for the one that was stolen). Good story.

This is a common sight throughout Seattle - homeless folk everywhere, most of who look to be completely drug-fucked. We passed one guy dancing and singing as though he was at a rock concert on the side of a busy road hahaha! At least they're entertaining when they're not bugging us for spare change.

Then we went to check out Seattle's Central Library - another architecturally interesting one like the one we saw in Salt Lake City, Utah. This 11-storey mess of glass and steel opened in 2004, and can hold about 1.45 million books and other materials.

Several people have tried to throw themselves off Salt Lake City's library since that first opened around the same time as this one, but I can't find any record of anyone doing that here hehe. These Seattleites must be a happier bunch :)

After a gloomy start to the day (typical for this part of the country), the sun finally broke through as we continued following our nose through the city, and getting asked for our spare change.

I mentioned yesterday this is the original Starbucks store, opened in 1971, and we wandered back here again today to see whether I could get some more photos (it was an utter mad house when we were here yesterday and I gave up).

By the way, notice the original Starbucks logo is still used here, with the mermaid bare-breasted. They should have stuck with this one :)

Not so busy today, but this store must do a roaring trade!

And just down the street from Starbucks is this mob - stinking the place out with marijuana. Like Colorado, weed has been decriminalised here in Washington, and I assume it's how a lot of that spare change we keep getting asked for is being spent.

From there we took a tram ride out to Lake Union, a freshwater lake contained entirely within the city limits. Apart from a couple sightseeing planes landing on the water, there wasn't much else going on.

The skyline at sunset. While there are certainly some nice parts of the city, on the whole Seattle didn't really turn me on.

In the distance there is Mount Rainier which is our next destination for a couple days, after we take the car in for its 10,000-mile service tomorrow.

Got any spare change?

The car hit 10,000 miles on the odometer last week (9,000 of which are from this road trip), so it went in for its maiden service this morning.

With fresh new oil coursing through its veins, we hit the road this afternoon and passed through more of middle-of-nowhere America. This particular town in Washington fits entirely in this one photo hehe.

Shortly thereafter, all civilisation disappeared and so too did our cell phone coverage.

Welcome, not to Jurassic Park (despite the oversized gate), but to Mount Rainier National Park.

There are no dinosaurs in here, but there is close to 250,000 acres of forests, meadows, lakes, rivers, and hiking trails, all centred on the spectacular cone of Mount Rainier - a massive active stratovolcano standing 14,410 feet (4,392m) high.

With daylight burning fast, we threw our campsite together and hit the trails. This is the Pinnacle Peak Trail; it was just as steep as the name suggests, but right away the autumn views were awesome!

Mount Rainier is the highest peak in the Cascade Range, a major mountain range of western North America which we'll be spending a bit of time in over the next several days. Stunning though it is, Rainier is actually considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, and could potentially wreak havoc over a huge area (including Seattle) if it was to blow its top. It last erupted in the 1800s, but there is currently no evidence of an imminent eruption.

Dangerous or not, it makes for a good selfie ;) Incidentally, these are the sort of views we should have had of the Teton Range back in Grand Teton National Park. The wildfire smoke that ruined our scenery there has since completely dissipated from this area, much to our relief!

This is part of the trail by the way. Like I said: steep.

Anyway, we got a front-row seat to the sunset, then enjoyed the steep descent back down.

Not a bad sight to wake up to! Most of what you can see here is glacial ice; 26 major glaciers cover the mountain. I mentioned yesterday that Mount Rainier is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world, and those glaciers are partly why (glaciers plus volcanic eruption equals lahars).

We set out nice and early to further explore the park, and further punish my camera.

Christine Falls here isn't the most impressive waterfall in the park, but is one of the park's most photographed locations. Tick.

From waterfalls to lakes and rivers, and endless vistas of trees and rolling hills.

By the way, if you're keen (or stupid), Rainier is circumnavigated by a 93-mile (150km) trail that takes 10 to 12 days to tackle. We opted for some shorter trails instead ;)

The park contains some amazing examples of subalpine meadows, which are looking particularly photogenic right now with the changing of the seasons.

A hoary marmot enjoying the sunshine while he can. This part of the country has a reputation for gloomy weather but, as per these photos, we never saw a single cloud in the sky.

We eventually left the park late this afternoon, and made a quick detour here en route to our next destination. This is the Cedar Creek Grist Mill, a restored mill operating nowadays as a museum.

While checking out the mill I noticed a big "Do not enter" sign round the back, at the head of a trail following the river. Well I'm a curious soul, and I can't read, so enter I did ;) I later realised they just don't want people around the mill's flume, and there's actually a trail on the other side of the river, but whatever. Notice the moss all over the trees, a testament to how wet the weather typically is in these parts.