Man, what a great weekend, and what a great area to spend it in. I have lived on the North Shore all my life, and I will have to admit to being a little long in the tooth. I love this place but I guess I spent a lot of time complaining about it. I think though, that I complain more about what has changed than what always was. What always was is absolutely stunning.

The weather here has been typical good Vancouver weather. Beautiful blue skies with the occasional small puffy cloud that makes you notice it. Greatest town in the world for ambitious lazy people like the ones around my house. So we started at the top.

You can drive most of the way up Cypress Mountain. Trust me, this saves a lot of time. Iíve walked up there, and youíve got to have the right drugs for that. We drove up to the cross country skiing area (second to last parking lot ), and parked the car. It now costs $1 for an hour, or $5 for all day. What you do from here is walk up under the powerlines. Itís an easy walk, if a bit steep at times, but the view and the flora and fauna are more than worth it. I didnít pay so much attention to the plants when I was younger. I almost wish I had now. Almost. Fortunately I have a plant expert with me. When she talks about plants you canít help but be interested. Sheís so cute she could make Canadian history interesting.

Once up a sot of medium sized hill, the going gets easier. At this point you can open those beers you just hiked up the hill, safe in the knowledge that thereís an outhouse nearby. Watch the combustibles though, itís very dry up there this time of year.

There are several small lakes in that general area to check out. The dragonflies are huge and come to check you out. If youíre lucky one will hover in front of you long enough to get a good look at it. We also saw deer tracks and bear poo.

It only takes about an hour to get up to the little lakes and back if youíre not dawdling too badly, but you could easily spend a whole day up there... bring a lunch, like we didnít.

So down the hill for food. There must be 100 places to eat on Lonsdale. Just trying to decide what to have takes up an hour every day. We chose the Sushi Station. Yum.

Then we cleaned off the little boat, strapped it to the car and headed for Deep Cove. We hadnít used it in quite a while but it worked wonderfully. My dad built it in the 60ís. Ten feet of tippy terror. The boat is a little hard to move around in without being tossed in the water, but goes like hell under sail. Today we were rowing, and drinking. Rowing is quite a bit of work. I guess it really has been a long time. Long story short, it was kind of romantic. Try that in Toronto.