Ell Alley: August 2014

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

British Columbia

We boarded the ferry from Anacortes WA at 3 on Thursday 8/7. The boat threaded its way through the beautiful San Juan Islands, where the Strait of Juan de Fuca meets the Strait of Georgia, near the Province of British Columbia. We arrived in Victoria, the capitol city of British Columbia on Vancouver Island, at 6. We liked our hotel, the century old James Bay Inn, located near the Inner Harbour, Parliament & central Victoria. We had dinner at a seafood restaurant, then walked around the historic district. We toured the area again on Friday morning 8/8.

Anacortes

San Juan Islands

Parliament

The Empress Hotel

Victoria BC

We drove to Butchart Gardens, the principal tourist attraction on Vancouver Island. It receives over 1 million visitors a years. It was tacky. The fact that it was a huge garden made it all the more difficult to bear. It was very crowded with tourists. And to top it off, it cost us more than $30 each. It was mostly filled with annual bedding plants in the style that was popular in the early 20th century. We had lunch there, then drove 3 hours north to Nanaimo.

Butchart Gardens

The 1970s modern Coast Bastion Inn in Nanaimo was lovely. We had a large room on the 8th floor with a stunning view of Nanaimo Harbour & the 2 islands that enclose it. We ate an excellent dinner in the hotel dining room, then walked along the harbour & main shopping street. We left early on Saturday morning 8/9 for the ferry from Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver, on the mainland. That trip was also beautiful. Although the waters of the Strait of Georgia are mostly open at that point, the mountains of mainland British Columbia loomed in the distance. In case you are unaware of the geography of the northwest Pacific coast, Vancouver Island is about the size of the State of Connecticut.

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Nanaimo Harbour

After arriving at Horseshoe Bay, we visited Capilano Provincial Park, where we walked across a suspension bridge 230 feet above the Capilano River, the main attraction. That freaked Jordan out a little & Rusty a lot. There were hundreds of people on the bridge & it was swaying under their weight. We were told the bridge could support 90 elephants, which was reassuring on an intellectual, but not really a gut level. Capilano is a bit of a natural amusement park. There is also the Cliff Walk cantilevered from the side of the cliff & quite sturdy. We all enjoyed that. The 3rd attraction is the Treetops Adventure, a series of 7 narrow suspension bridges attached to 8 huge Douglas-fir trees, at up to 100 feet above the forest floor. Rusty skipped that. Only Steve was comfortable with the main suspension bridge.

Near Horseshoe Bay on the BC ferry

The Cliff Walk

The Comfort Inn was a nice hotel very centrally located on Nelson Street at the corner of Granville Street, in or very near Yaletown. We had dinner with Jordan's friend Jack & his friend Larry that night. We met them at the PumpJack Pub in Davie Village, then walked to a Malaysian restaurant on Denman Street. The food was good & the conversation was pleasant.

Buildings near the Comfort Inn

On Sunday morning 8/10 we walked down Hornby Street to the aquabus & crossed to Granville Island. That was fun. A large complex of shops & restaurants in old industrial buildings is located under the Granville Bridge on the island. We had lunch there. That afternoon, we went to the University of British Columbia. Rusty & Steve went to Wreck Beach to lie naked in the sand. Jordan went to the UBC Botanical Garden & then the Nitobe Memorial Garden, both on the campus nearby. It was hot that afternoon. We had an excellent dinner that night in Yaletown.

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Nitobe Memorial Garden

UBC Botanical Garden

The Aquabus to Granville Island

The Roundhouse in Yaletown

On Monday 8/11 we went to the VanDusen Botanical Garden in another, more distant part of the city. It was a nice garden. But again the day was hot & sweaty. We stopped for lunch at a Chinese restaurant along the way back. We did some shopping in the South Granville Business District near the restaurant. Late that afternoon, Rusty & Steve went out walking while Jordan napped in the air conditioned hotel room. We met up in Gastown, the oldest part of Vancouver, where we had dinner in a Lebanese restaurant, did more shopping & took a cab back to the hotel.

VanDusen Botanical Garden

Gastown

We drove back to Seattle in the morning of Tuesday 8/12.

About Ell Alley

Ell Alley is the home of Jetta, Jordan, Kitty, Rusty, Steve & Toby. It is named for the alley beside & behind the house that forms an ell: the shape of the letter L. It is located in the Rainier Vista development, in the Rainier Valley of Seattle, which extends 7 miles southeast from Downtown Seattle to Rainier Beach, between Beacon Hill & the lakeside ridges of Mt Baker, Lakewood & Seward Park. Ell Alley is 4 miles from Downtown Seattle, 0.4 miles from the Columbia City Station & 0.7 miles from the center of the Columbia City Landmark District.

Rainier Valley History

The first settlers arrived in the 1850s, but settlement was slow until the forest was cut down & milled, as it was throughout the city. Developers bought logged-off land toward the end of the 19th century. They laid out the communities of Genesee, Columbia City, Hillman City, Brighton & Dunlap.

Cheap land in the valley, just outside the City of Seattle, attracted Italians of rural origins & they planted large, productive gardens. The north end of the Rainier Valley became known as Garlic Gulch. Japanese immigrants also had farms in the valley. The produce filled local markets including Pike Place.

The Rainier Avenue Electric Railway opened the valley to greater development, reaching Columbia City in 1891 & Renton in 1896. In 1907, the City of Seattle annexed most of southeast Seattle, including the Rainier Valley.

At the start of World War II, Japanese residents were forced into internment camps east of the mountains. Tens of thousands of war workers came to Seattle to work at the Boeing Company, the shipyards & the port. The US government constructed thousands of temporary housing units at Rainier Vista, Stadium Homes (now Mt Baker Village) & Holly Park in the Rainier Valley.

After the war, the temporary housing became public, low-income housing. Suburban development took many white residents away from the valley. Blacks moved into the Rainier Valley from the over-crowded, nearby Central Area. Interracial couples found acceptance here. Filipinos arrived in large numbers.

After the fall of Saigon in 1975, refugees came from southeast Asia: Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong, Lao & Mien peoples. Many settled in the Rainier Valley. Chinese continued to arrive, although most settled on nearby Beacon Hill. There was a small influx of Mexicans. Somali immigration began after US involvement in Somalia in 1992.

Work on new housing at NewHolly (formerly Holly Park) began in 1997 & continued for a decade, with 1400 units sold to private owners. The rebuilding of Rainier Vista began in 2003 & still continues. Columbia City rapidly gentrified starting in the late 1990s. Many units of new housing were built in the form of townhouses, condos & apartments.

The current population of the Rainier Valley is about 41,000. The racial breakdown is 34.1% Asian, 26.9% Caucasian, 26% African American, 1.6% Pacific Islander, 6.5% Mixed Race, 1% Native American and 3.4% from other races. Hispanic or Latino of any race are 7.2% of the population.

Our Land & Climate

The city of Seattle rests between 2 bodies of water: Puget Sound & Lake Washington. Puget Sound is a substantial part of the Salish Sea & a very small part of the Pacific Ocean. The Salish Sea is set apart from the Pacific by the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington & Vancouver Island in the province of British Columbia. The dense, wet clouds of the Pacific Ocean travel as far as the Cascade Mountains, near the Salish Sea & not very far from the ocean. East of the Cascades lies the desert of the Columbia Basin. The moist, temperate climate of Seattle extends south to northern California & north to southeastern Alaska. The Pacific Northwest Coast from San Francisco Bay to Cook Inlet shares a flora dominated by evergreen coniferous forest. The central portion, west of the Cascade Mountains, is called Cascadia. The climate is cool & wet from fall to spring, warm & dry in summer. The Olympic Mountains block Seattle from much of the Pacific rainfall. Seattle is drier than the Atlantic coast of North America & northern Europe, cooler in summer & warmer in winter. It lies near the latitude of Paris & Quebec City.

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Wednesday, August 20, 2014

British Columbia