Canada & USA Archives - 4corners7seas

Two Cool Oregon Road Trips

When I visited home last year I finally had the chance to scan the rest of my old pre-digital pics, resulting in a series of photo posts of travels past. Here’s a bunch of pics from two day-trips we took out of Portland, Oregon during our USA road trip (full story here, including the crazy hillbilly who freaked us out in the Rockies)

We stayed in Portland for a few days with our friend’s friends, while our other friend’s parents (whose van we were using for the trip) came to hang out with us and check out Portland’s craft beer and northwest Oregon’s scenery.

The first day drive we took was a loop out to Mt Hood and then back to the city along the Columbia River. The main stops were the Timberline Lodge high on Mt Hood, and Multnomah Falls in the Columbia River Gorge.

Timberline Lodge was used for the exterior shots of the hotel in The Shining, but its other claim to fame is having America’s only year-round ski resort thanks to the Palmer Glacier. It also commands sweeping views of the surrounding terrain (the photo at the top was from the Timberline car park)

From there we drove down to the Columbia River and followed it back to Portland, stopping for a quick hike at the spectacular Multnomah Falls. It’s a 2-tier waterfall with a combined height of 189m, we didn’t have time to hike right to the top but the shorter hike up to the bridge was nice. If you’re looking for a good day-trip out of Portland and you have wheels, a loop round Mt Hood and Multnomah Falls is a good call.

The other trip we took was to Astoria (also on the river but in the other direction, towards the ocean) and on to Cannon Beach on the coast. Astoria’s a pretty little town and the beach is a stunner, but the real motivation for this was 80s childhood movie geekery. Recognise this house?

It’s the legendary Goonies house which is in Astoria, just round the corner from this school:

…which was the school in Kindergarten Cop. A bunch of other movies were also filmed there, including another 80s classic Short Circuit and the American remake of Japanese horror The Ring.

Astoria’s a popular place with Hollywood producers, and to this day movie nerds visit the town because of the Goonies (you’re asked to keep a respectful distance from the house, but are welcome to go have a look and take pics from the road)

And if you recognised the house, you definitely recognise the beach:

That massive rock that lines up with the medallion at the end of the movie is Haystack Rock. But even if you don’t care about the Goonies, it’s a beautiful spot and worth visiting.

The driving time’s about 3.5 to 4 hours for each of these routes, so each one makes a pretty full day out with stops. I knew very little about Oregon before going there, but I’m glad we did!

Bryce Canyon hikes (Utah, USA)

Canada & USA

Bryce Canyon hikes pass through incredible scenery — Bryce Canyon

As well as Zion National Park, we also visited Bryce Canyon en route from the Grand Canyon to Las Vegas as part of our USA Road Trip. Bryce Canyon made for a fairly long detour on our drive from the Grand Canyon to Zion, but it was well worth the effort. From the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, it takes a couple of hours to drive to Zion, or slightly longer to drive to Bryce, and it takes a couple of hours to drive between Zion and Bryce. So with an early start it should be possible to leave the North Rim, drive to Bryce Canyon, fit in a short hike, and drive to Zion by the evening. That’s not quite what we did – we’d spent the morning at the Grand Canyon, then drove to Bryce in the afternoon and camped near (but not in) the park. Then we did one of the Bryce Canyon hikes the following morning before an afternoon drive to Zion where we arrived in time for an evening hike there too!

Bryce Canyon isn’t actually a canyon, technically speaking, but rather a set of large amphitheatres in which stand thousands of mysterious rock formations called hoodoos. Actually, they’re not all that mysterious – they are the product of well-understood geological processes – but they do have an enigmatic appearance, standing there in fantastic rows of pink and orange rock. There’s a wide choice of Bryce Canyon hikes you can do, ranging from quick one or two hour jobs up to multi-day affairs requiring hiking permits. There’s a well-maintained and paved rim trail that you can follow for a few miles with various spectacular viewpoints, and a number of trails descending from the rim and passing between the rock formations below. We only had a few hours at Bryce Canyon, so we took in the main viewpoints on the trail rim and then did the Navajo Loop trail. It’s a great little hike, and though it’s nothing too strenuous there is a steep climb back up to the rim via a series of switchbacks. For more info on the trails at Bryce, see here & here.

Bryce Canyon, Zion NP, southern Utah generally, and really the whole of the southwestern US are just incredible places. The scenery is nothing short of astonishing and it’s an incredible region to drive through. For the outdoor enthusiast there are so many options, from short hikes on maintained trails in the national parks to serious multi-day backcountry treks, a person could never exhaust the opportunities for adventure. And I have never seen the night sky so full of stars as I did in Utah – lying back in a camping chair with a cold beer after a pleasant hike and looking up at the tapestry above is pretty hard to beat!

Have you done any Bryce Canyon hikes? How were they? Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.

(This is an affiliate link i.e. if you use it to purchase insurance, 4corners7seas will receive a commission from World Nomads – this commission comes out of their profit margin at no extra cost to you. I’m recommending them because I know and trust them from personal use; thank you in advance should you choose to purchase a policy via my link!)

Hiking in Zion National Park

Canada & USA

During our road trip around the USA we visited several of that country’s incredible national parks, namely Rocky Mountains National Park, the Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon, Redwood National Park, Yellowstone, and Badlands National Park. Some of them we just drove through, stopping off for some pictures here and there, but we camped out in a few of them and managed to fit in a couple of short but beautiful hikes.

Zion National Park is located in the southern part of the southwestern state of Utah, a state famed for its geological wonders including Bryce Canyon, Arches, Canyonlands, and Monument Valley, to name just the more famous of them. Zion National Park is basically composed of two connected canyons named Zion Canyon and Kolob Canyon; Zion Canyon is the more often visited of the two, and that was where we camped for a couple of nights en route from the Grand Canyon to Vegas. On the first day we arrived quite late from Bryce, and after setting up camp just had time to walk the Emerald Pools trail as the sun was going down – the evening light looked spectacular as it struck the pink streaks which run through the sandstone strata of the canyon’s walls. It’s a nice short trail you can do in an hour or two, taking you a little up and then along the canyon wall to a few small pools, the waterfalls that feed them, and some fantastic views. You can take the shuttle from the Zion Canyon Visitor Center and get off at the Emerald Pools trailhead. A lovely little hike.

On our second (and only full) day in the park, we went further up Zion Canyon to hike the Narrows. This is a very narrow slot canyon with sheer rock walls towering over you as you wade up the river – this is a river hike, meaning that you are mostly walking in the river itself, and you are ankle-deep to waist-deep (or possibly even swimming) depending on the water level. Doing this in summer, we were generally only knee-deep so it wasn’t too tough, but you have to be careful with your footing as the water isn’t clear – be careful not to drop your camera! The full hike is 16 miles long, taking one long day or two more relaxed days, and requires a permit. However it is possible to hike the first section of the canyon without a permit, which is what we did; you just take the shuttle to the last stop and then proceed on foot into the canyon. You can hike up the river for a few miles before heading back to the car park. It’s slow going wading through the water, so this actually makes for a good few hours’ worth of hiking. The scenery is spectacular, and apparently it gets better and better if you do the full hike as the canyon gets narrower and narrower and the walls higher and higher. It was a real shame we didn’t have time to do the whole thing, and we turned back with regret; should I ever return to that part of the US, I’ll make it a top priority to do the full Narrows hike. Make sure you’re sensibly clothed for walking in a river (footwear especially) and pay heed to the warnings on the park website about flash floods – do not attempt this hike during or following periods of rain.

Zion National Park (and Utah generally) is an amazing place – highly recommended whether hiking or not!

Have you been to Zion? How was it? Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.

Also, make sure you have a good insurance policy. World Nomads offer flexible travel insurance you can buy even if already overseas – most travel insurance companies won’t cover you if you’ve already left your country, and this can be a crucial point as I once found out the hard way in Thailand. (This is an affiliate link i.e. if you use it to purchase insurance, 4corners7seas will receive a commission from World Nomads – this commission comes out of their profit margin at no extra cost to you. I’m recommending them because I know and trust them from personal use; thank you in advance should you choose to purchase a policy via my link!)

Hiking the Grouse Grind

Canada & USA

The Grouse Mountain ropeway — Halfway up the Grouse Grind

Canada is an enormous and beautiful country with many world class hiking trails through breathtaking landscapes of jagged peaks and glacier lakes… but unfortunately I never did any of them. I went to Canada primarily to snowboard, and I did a whole bunch of that and it was in Vancouver that I got my instructor’s licence and worked at Cypress Mountain. It’s a great city to live in if you want to combine city living with an outdoors lifestyle – the Vancouver / Whistler area also has great climbing and mountain biking, both of which I also sampled (the mountain biking in Whistler has to be seen to be believed). As for hiking, though, I only ever got around to doing one single trail – the city’s most famous, the Grouse Grind (plus the Stanley Park Seawall, if that counts as hiking!)

Grouse Mountain is one of Vancouver’s three ski areas, and the easiest to visit if you don’t have a vehicle – the mountain is accessed by cable car, and city buses take you right to the lower cable car station. It’s also open year-round as a sightseeing destination, so even if you don’t want to hike up it’s worth a visit to take in the city views from the top (where you can find restaurants, bars, bears (real ones), shops, and various activities on offer for kids).

The Grouse Grind hiking trail — My fellow Grinders taking a breather. It’s basically like climbing a great big staircase through the forest

The Grouse Grind is a short, steep hiking course from the car park at the lower cable car station up to the main building at the top. The trail is only 3km, yet the vertical gain is 853m – it’s basically a giant staircase, and takes most people 90 minutes to two hours. Some take much longer, while others pride themselves on doing it in some amazingly fast times – the record is a (pretty bloody impressive) 25 minutes. Make sure you have plenty of water if it’s hot, and there isn’t much that needs explaining in terms of logistics – head to Grouse, walk up the steps, enjoy an ice cold beer at the top – and, in most cases, take the cable car down! If you’re taking the bus, it’s number 236 from Lonsdale Quay (the Seabus runs between Waterfront station in central Vancouver and Lonsdale Quay on the North Shore). Oh, and one more thing – the Grind is closed from December to May, so if you’re in Van in winter forget the hike and grab your snowboard!

Grouse Grind isn’t a mind blowing hiking course or anything, but if you’re staying in Van for a while it’s something you should probably do at least once; if you’re only in town for a short time, Grouse Mountain is a good place to get a bird’s eye view of the city and the Grind is a good way to get up there.

Other well known hiking options around Vancouver include Mount Gardner and Killarney Lake on Bowen Island, the Baden Powell trail, the Chief (in Squamish, halfway to Whistler on the Sea to Sky Highway), and the Seawall around Stanley Park. (Stanley Park is right next to downtown Vancouver, very easy to reach, with a couple of decent beaches, and the Seawall only takes a couple of hours to walk around – with great views – so it’s a nice way to spend an afternoon, preferably followed by a bowl of ramen on nearby Robson Street)

Have you done the Grouse Grind? What was your time? Any questions? Leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.

Hospitality and Scorpions in Marble Canyon

Canada & USA, Overland travel, Travel tales

The Navajo Bridge spanning Marble Canyon, Arizona

We were two weeks into our epic road trip around the US, now driving through the incredible southwestern states of New Mexico and Arizona; we’d just spent two days in Albuquerque for the July 4 Independence Day celebrations (and also one of my companion’s birthdays), and the next point of call was the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon’s North Rim is known for having more spectacular views than the more oft-visited South Rim, and as we intended to continue north from the Grand Canyon to visit a couple of Utah’s stunning national parks (namely, Zion & Bryce Canyon) it made sense for us to visit the North Rim (the South Rim is the more-visited due to its closer proximity to Las Vegas, the starting point for many Grand Canyon visits).

The downside to aiming for the North Rim from Albuquerque was we’d have to drive an extra couple of hours to reach it, crossing the Colorado River upstream of the Grand Canyon via the Navajo Bridge in Marble Canyon, then coming back around to the North Rim. But it made sense with our overall route, so we went for it; it was an awesome day’s ride through some amazing scenery, especially after turning north at Flagstaff when the sunset brought brilliant shades of rose and lavender out of the vast desert landscapes. Then we drove on into the night with a few more hours on the road ahead of us, but ran into a string of terrific storms with absolutely torrential rain belting down, thunder & lightning, the full works, and we didn’t make good time.

So when we found ourselves approaching the small community of Marble Canyon late that night, we decided to ask at the gas station if there was anywhere we could pitch up to sleep. Pressing on seemed like a bad idea, and we figured it’d be safer to stop for the night and finish off the remaining two hours of the drive in the morning (well, as long as some psycho hillbillies didn’t come along in the night, we joked – little knowing that a few weeks later in the Rockies we would have a run in with precisely one of those, which really wasn’t funny at all).

As luck would have it there was a pair of guys sat outside the gas station drinking beers, one older chap, one around our age i.e. early 20s (…yes, this is quite an old story!). The older bloke gave us directions to somewhere we could camp, which sounded totally sketchy and exactly the sort of place a psycho could follow you and act out his horror movie fantasies; we ummed an ahh’d about that for a minute, and then the younger guy did us one of the most absolute solid bits of random kindness I’ve ever experienced from a stranger – he invited the four of us to crash on his cabin floor for the night, having only just met us, and then went out of his way to make us as comfortable as possible.

Turned out he was from Phoenix (in the south of Arizona), and was in Marble Canyon for the summer to get his fly fishing guide’s licence; his name was Zach and he had a cabin near the gas station, and with the four of us as guests plus himself it was a pretty tight fit.

But he made sure we had a bite to eat, and we hung out with a few beers and watched a DVD (Meet the Parents); he had to be up and out before dawn to go fishing, so said he’d leave us sleeping and told us to help ourselves to breakfast and to simply close the door behind us when we left. Not much need for locks out there, apparently.

But before we bedded down for the night, he took us out for a walk to the canyon. Marble Canyon the town is named for the geographical feature of the same name, a part of the Grand Canyon system; the Colorado River flows south through Marble Canyon and then when it cuts west it opens out to become the Grand Canyon. It’s a spectacular sight in its own right, nothing on the scale of what it becomes downriver but still a deep, dramatic gorge cut through the desert by an emerald green river. We couldn’t make out the brilliant colours by the light of the moon which now lit the landscape with the storms having passed, but it looked otherworldly bathed in that brilliant silver light as we walked over to the edge of the canyon and peered in; something I did again in the morning, when it was less mysterious but daylight revealed the beautiful hues of the Vermillion Cliffs and Echo Cliffs framing the valley to the west & east, respectively, and the deep green of the waters below. It really is an amazing spot.

Finally, retuning to the cabin, Zach said it was time for his nightly scorpion round – he’d been stung on the foot a month or so earlier and the resulting days of agonising pain had caused him to adopt a zero tolerance policy. I’d never previously been aware of the fact, but scorpions glow white under UV light due to the chemical secretions coating their exoskeletons (the same sort of glow a gin & tonic has under UV lights in a club). I accompanied him on a walk around the outside of the hut as he shined a UV bulb all over the exterior wall, picking out a number of scorpions hiding in the crevices. These he dispatched unceremoniously with a pair of scissors, though I recall one of them putting up an almighty struggle, gripping the scissors and rapidly stinging the metal with its tail in an impressive display of fighting spirit. To be honest I felt bad for these creatures, but Zach’s descriptions of the pain he’d endured explained this policy – scorpion venom acts on the nervous system with long-lasting and excruciatingly painful effects.

Scorpions weren’t the only critters living on the outside of his cabin though; we also found a black widow spider in its web in front of the window.

“Better get that too,” he said, going after it with the scissors but succeeding only in removing a single leg. The now 7-legged spider fled into a crack in the wall and out of harm’s way, and I figured it would only be karma if one of us was to cop a spider bite during the night…

That led me to ask what exactly would happen in such a situation, and he explained the nearest hospital was over a hundred miles away, but there was a 2-seat light plane and a small airstrip nearby, and one guy in town who could fly it.

“But what if he’s the victim?” was the obvious question. And the answer? He’d be up shit creek without a paddle, that’s what!

That concluded the evening; and what with the crazy storms, a random act of the warmest hospitality, a moonlit wander in the desert, and a grim but fascinating arachnid extermination spree, it was a pretty memorable one. We bunked down top to tail on the cabin floor, and when morning came our host was gone; I took a quick walk over to see the canyon by daylight, and we were soon on our way. There wasn’t any Facebook back then, no smartphones, but we made sure to note the address and sent him a postcard to say thank you.

Have you experienced any random acts of hospitality on your travels? Leave a comment below!

Being a Movie Extra in Vancouver (aka Hollywood North)

Canada & USA, Movies & TV

One winter’s day I emerged from the office building I was working in to the puzzling sight of a ‘genuine’ New York hot dog stand before me, a puzzle further compounded by the NYPD police car that came cruising past.

All of this would’ve been pretty self-explanatory were I actually in New York at the time – but I was 3,000 miles away from the Big Apple, in the Canadian city of Vancouver.

And the obvious explanation for this, as any Vancouverite can tell you, is Vancouver’s thriving movie industry – in the movie world, Vancouver is often referred to by the nickname ‘Hollywood North’ and has served as the filming location for a host of American movies and TV shows, usually playing the role of an American city rather than appearing as itself (see this great video for more on that, with loads of example footage). The New York stuff I saw that day was for the TV show Fringe, and there’s actually a photo on the Fringe Wikipedia page of them filming in December 2010 near my old workplace in Vancouver that I think must’ve been taken on the same day.

On another occasion while walking home at night along West Georgia street (one of the main thoroughfares in downtown Van), I happened across a movie shoot and joined the watching crowd for a while; an action scene, involving a stuntman clinging to the roof of a wildly swerving taxi as a bunch of police cars pulled around the corner ahead, lights flashing, to block the road. The production staff were tight-lipped about what they were shooting for (as I suppose they usually are), but I eventually spotted the shot in Tron: Legacy in the BASE jumping scene near the start of the movie.

Vancouver’s popularity with Hollywood film studios is down to a number of reasons – first and foremost being that the Canadian government offers generous tax breaks to American movie producers to attract their business north of the border. But it’s not just that – Vancouver is a beautiful city nestled between the mountains and the sea, with a downtown core of chic cafes and grimy alleyways running between a forest of sleek skyscrapers, and thus offers a plethora of filming locations which (perhaps with a little CGI from the digital makeup department) can easily be passed off as San Francisco (as it was in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes), New York (as it was in Fringe), or LA and various European cities (as it was in The A-Team; see below).

While I was living in Vancouver and working several part time jobs (and always in need of a little extra cash), I signed up with one of the various extras agencies in town. They get you in for some paperwork, take your measurements and a photo, and then contact you if they have any suitable gigs. The pay isn’t great, obviously, but it’s a way to make the odd extra bit of income if you have the free time.

I was asked to be an extra on Fringe several times but the shooting times never suited my schedule, and then finally a 1-day shoot came through that I was available for – to be an extra in The A-Team.

Yes, The A-Team. But the rubbish movie version. Specifically, this ‘humorous scene’ in which they get their fake passports muddled up while passing through immigration in disguise, but Murdoch saves the day with his unexpected mastery of Swahili:

If you watch that scene, I’m somewhere in the crowd in the background, though it’s totally impossible to make any individual person out in the back. I think the scene actually takes place in a Danish port, but on set they told us (if I remember correctly) it was a ferry terminal in Germany… and it was filmed in Vancouver’s Rocky Mountaineer railway station (a station which only handles a few trains per week, and only in summer, making it a pretty handy location if you’re shooting in winter and in need a station of some sort).

It’s impressive how much care goes into the detail on a set like that – the station had been decorated with signage and advertising in multiple European languages, even though none of that stuff can be made out in the footage, and we extras were instructed to dress like north Europeans.

Being a north European I simply went dressed as myself, wearing a fleece I’d actually bought in Helsinki – and was told I looked ‘too Vancouver’, and sent to the costume guys for a change of clothing! (none of which made any difference to anything)

If the attention to detail was interesting, the day itself was most definitely not. Working as an extra mostly means sitting around for hours, passing the time with books and idle chat and waiting until they need you; and this was Vancouver on a rainy day in winter, so that meant sitting around in a big tent trying to keep the feeling in your fingers. At least food and drink is provided – and if you’re lucky it’s decent! In Hollywood North it was so-so, but as it was laid out to help yourself at least I could stock up on some free calories – I was severely broke at that point. The one other time I’ve done this sort of thing, for a TV commercial in Japan, food was served at fixed meal times but consisted of good quality bento boxes which went down very well!

I didn’t get called onto the set itself until the final takes of the day, when all hands were required on deck. And even then, it was quite a bizarre experience – to make the crowd look natural, a lot of us were given little things to act out in each take. In my case, I was paired up with a girl my age and a middle-aged lady; they were to be my mother and sister come to meet me, and in every take we had to go back to our starting positions, seek each other out in the crowd, wave excitedly, and then have a joyful reunion hug – all in complete silence.

That was the weird thing really – all these people walking around looking for someone or something, shaking hands and hugging, waving and gesturing and pretending to talk, and all you could hear was the shuffling of feet and the voices of Liam Neeson and Bradley Cooper speaking their lines (though I was too far back to hear what was being said). The background noise you hear in the scene was added in later, and all the waving and hugging is reduced to blobs of vague background movement anyway. A remarkable effort really, to gather hundreds of people to be an airport crowd and then only have them as a couple of fuzzy blobs on screen!

So that was interesting to see, and it was easy money – but only if you find boredom to be easy. I’m glad I did it a couple of times, but I don’t think I could be bothered to do it again.

As to whether you can do it as a traveller to Vancouver, the answer is no, unless you have a working holiday visa. And to witness something being shot simply requires being in the right place at the right time – in my year-and-a-half in the city I just randomly saw those two scenes being filmed for Fringe and Tron: Legacy.

But what you can easily do, once you’re familiar with Vancouver, is feel the regular pangs of recognition when you’re watching a Hollywood movie set somewhere in America and you realise they filmed it in Hollywood North and you once had coffee in that shop in the background!

Here’s a list of movies filmed in Vancouver

And here are a few more memorable scenes filmed in Vancouver, the shooting locations of which are immediately recognisable to anyone familiar with the city:

Highway mutant fight in Deadpool:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U68kZxgqETM

The laughably gory bridge disaster in Final Destination 5:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QHBL7IjnhdU

And this one from NeverEnding Story shows that Vancouver’s been doing this for decades:

(This page contains affiliate links i.e. if you follow the links from this page to Amazon and purchase a movie, 4corners7seas will receive a commission from Amazon. This commission comes out of Amazon’s profit margin at no extra cost to you, and thank you in advance should you choose to do so!)