I never enjoyed autumn as much as this year. October is usually a cold, miserable time for Vancouver, and it has been flooding all over the city. Good thing I escaped to the East coast (R might say it’s the Central US, but I still think it’s close enough…). We visited Minnehaha Falls after a tough day of hustling, and before dinner. Nature in the city, more beautiful than Central Park, and better than Stanley Park! It’s even got a friggin’ waterfall:

Work hard, play harder. We had a tough day, and now, it was time to find some good grub. We went to Broder’s Pasta Bar, not to be confused with Broder’s Cucina Italiana (the cafe version of the pasta bar), where after a 5-10 minute wait, we landed a seat at the bar. I had the Dragon’s Milk (cut off in glass above plate) and the Papperdelle with Veal ragu:

I think this is the Canneloni, which RK ordered:

I should have eat first before food blogging next time, because thinking back to this meal is making my stomach grumble. The pasta was done perfectly, just enough sauce so coat everything with delicious flavour. It tastes as good as it looks, let me assure you. The beer might also have helped to enhance the taste. If anybody finds Dragon’s Milk here, drop me a message.

Hornblower Niagara Cruises

Journey Behind the Falls

We greatly enjoyed getting wet and exploring the waterfalls area, but let’s talk about the food. The Groupon previously mentioned includes $15 off for breakfast at IHOP at the Best Western. Perfectly poached egg, with teeny tiny pieces of bacon and sausage. I always get the blueberry pancakes at IHOP, and these did not disappoint. The perfectly poached eggs did take a bit longer to make and we had to wait for maybe 5 minutes more, but they were poached to a perfect medium. I still wouldn’t come back, not for the life of me, not for how much they charge at this location.

Back to the present – I planted my first aloe plant baby, separated from a huge plant that my father has been growing for 4 years. Let’s see how long it survives!

Breakfast at Milo City Cafe:

Top plate: Salmon hash with sourdough and scrambled eggs

Bottom plate: Sourdough, Italian sausage, scrambled eggs, hashbrowns

In the middle of it all: COFFEE

Extremely friendly service and loads of comfort food. Go if you’re staying at the Hilton.

We started early so we could go farther. We were out of Portland before 9AM. I had so many hopes for the outdoors scene in this hood, but wet weather and lack of vehicle hat can drive over everything dampened my hopes just a bit. I wanted to visit either Lost Lake or Mirror Lake, but we made it to neither lakes… We drove through part of Mount Hood National Park, made it to Government Camp, but we really didn’t go too far because of forest service roads that my poor baby wouldn’t be able to handle. We stopped here:

Parked close to this view, where there were a few trailheads. H and I stood around, trying to decide which path to take, until 2 girls came out of the bush. They were super friendly and helpful, so we ended up going along what I believe is Buck Peak Trail. We
saw this:



Not sure if that was supposed to be the end point with the “good views of the mountain” that the girls told us about (I don’t think it was), but it was also getting dark and we still had a ways to go to get to Mt Hood. Back to the car.



No lakes today. Instead, we found the waterfalls along the Columbia Gorge!

Multnomah

 Horse Tail

Would’ve been more breathtaking if we were not already exhausted from the day’s travels and if there weren’t busloads of tourists roaming around. It’s all about perspective.

CLICK HERE TO GO BACK TO DAY 1

It’s only been 10 days, but it feels like forever already. Where did these 10 days go? I have too much time on my hands now to think about what I really want to do. I think I really just want to bike around and do nothing.

 

 

Heading to Whistler this weekend, and it’ll be March when we get back.

And grandma is in the hospital…

When it shits, it diarrheas.

Where the snow at? It was barely 0°C.

On the left, is Clearwater Springs Ranch, which is the fabulous luxury wilderness lodge/bed and breakfast we stayed at. It’s owned by Tanya and Kurt, who gave us advice on where to go around the park and really welcomed us into Clearwater. They offer a $45 gourmet dinner, which is totally worth the price. We had cranberry chicken with the most perfect fried potatoes:

More food pix & lodge pix:

Another view of the lodge:

Bonny, the resident watch dog, said goodbye to us as we left for Wells Gray Park:

But really, WHERE THE SNOW AT? The cone around the waterfall had collapsed a while ago, and the walls of the canyon were bare… I was slightly disappointed by this, but with all that’s been going on in my life, this didn’t faze me one bit. I’ll come back next year.

View from the back of Clearwater Springs Ranch:

View from the observation deck: