Stanley Park - 15 July 2007

Stanley Park is a 1,000 acre park bordering downtown Vancouver. It is the largest city-owned park in Canada and the third largest in North America. The park attracts an estimated eight million visitors every year, including locals and tourists, who come for its recreational facilities and its natural attributes. An 8.8 kilometre (5.5 mile) seawall path circles the park, which is used by 2.5 million pedestrians, cyclists, and inline skaters every year. Much of the park remains forested with an estimated half million trees that can be as tall as 76 metres (250 feet) and hundreds of years old. There are approximately 200 km (125 miles) of trails and roads in the park, which are patrolled by the Vancouver Police Department's mounted squad. The Project for Public Spaces has ranked Stanley Park as the sixteenth best park in the world and sixth best in North America - thanks to Wikipedia for this lovely description :) If you want to see an aerial view of the Park have a look on Wikipedia. The park was hit by a huge storm in 2006 so unfortuantely 5kms of the seawall is closed due to extensive damage.

After battling trying to get the photos all in order I've given up so here they are. We had a great day here and must have walked about 15kms trying to see as much as possible. There is loads to do here and we only saw about half I reckon.

The trees are soo huge and soo old!
A guy builds these sculptures by balancing the stones on top of each other. It's great to watch and takes him ages to get it just right. Then the tide takes it all away and he starts again the next day.
This is Beaver Lake in the middle of the park. It's a beautiful contrast from sea which is only about 800m away.

This is the Hollow Tree - it's freaking huge inside there!
More of the rock sculptures.
This is the Inuit symbol on the beach.
Stanley Park has the most totem poles of anywhere in BC. They have a great history and tell some old stories of the First People.

Jesse at the lighthouse. You can just make out West Vancouver in the background.
The Girl in the Wetsuit.
You can see North Vancouver across the river behind The Girl in the Wetsuit.