In the mood for a slow-paced, relaxing vacation, my husband and I this time opted for Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada, a place we had heard much about, but had never visited. We like to travel during the swing seasons to avoid crowds and enjoy temperate weather, and so planned our trip for the first two weeks in October, not really understanding (or choosing to believe perhaps) that Vancouver's rainy season starts right about the time we were there.

Out of the two weeks we were in Vancouver, we had maybe six sunny days. The rest were either very cloudy or downright rainy. The Vancouverites seemed to take all the rain in stride, going about their activities regardless of the weather, but we live in a mostly sunny place and tended to feel a bit down when we ran into a patch of wet weather that lasted for more than a few days at a time. We mostly didn't let it get to us though—we donned rain gear and headed out each day to explore. This travelog is a study on how one couple negotiated Vancouver for a couple of weeks during the rainy season.

Friday, October 1
...the inevitable travel day, which we anticipated to be long and grueling due to the distance we needed to go. The day did not disappoint. After 45 minutes of stuffing passengers onto a west-bound, packed-to-capacity jet, United off-loaded everyone due to mechanical failure. We spent the next several hours participating in the mad scramble to figure out another way to get where we wanted to go. We finally landed a spot on a United puddle hopper headed for Toronto. Our luggage was going to take a different route through Denver and meet us in Vancouver. Depending on who we talked to, this would be likely or unlikely to happen. We took the gamble. So instead of waiting around the Denver airport for 5 hours as originally planned, we waited around Dulles and Toronto for much longer and ended up in Vancouver an hour and a half later than we would have if we had been able to stick to the original schedule. Our luggage beat us there and was waiting patiently in the baggage claim area when we arrived. Truly amazing and an auspicous start to our journey.