Travels With Miranda

I finally made it to the Surrey Museum! It’s not a large museum, but it’s highly focused and is therefore one of the better museums I’ve visited in my cross-country journey. Its sole purpose is to explain the history of the city of Surrey and it does so with interesting exhibits that highlight the people, events, and businesses which have built this community.

Irony of all ironies, their special exhibit this spring is about Iroquois beading (tied in to the history of Surrey by comparing the artwork with that of local First Nations artists). Why is this ironical? The Iroquois are based in the Saint-Lawrence Lowlands… where I grew up!

I took lots of pictures, so you’ll find them on the Surrey Museum page. PLEASE NOTE that after a too brief period of workingness, the internet here has gone back to its usual suckiness and it has taken me three hours to upload the full size pictures and that after an average of six attempts per thumbnail, I have given up on them for the time being. You should be able to click on the incomplete thumbnails or placeholders to access the full sized picture. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I’ve really had it up to the proverbial here with the internet at Pacific Border and don’t feel like wasting another three hours on this. An update of this page will be made once I move to a park with 21st-century grade internet.

My friend Donna is in the GVR this week, so we made plans to see each other. Since she had her boys in tow, she suggested we meet at an indoor pool where they could splash about without being bored while she and I got in a good gab fest. I proposed the wave pool at the Newton Centre, in Surrey. I’d discovered this pool while riding the bus to work in January, but had never been since I have a pool here at the RV park.

I was most impressed with the facility which boasted a wave pool, several smaller splash pools, two water slides, a steam room, and more. They were barely a notch down from the similar ones at the West Edmonton Mall. It was the most amazing municipal pool complex I’ve ever visited. Entry for an adult is a mere 5.05$, and a family can pay 2.55$ per person.

Donna and I had a great time lounging in the splash pool, treading water in the wave pool, and riding down the water slides. As is par for the course for us, the afternoon flew by in a fury of gabbing while soaking until we were prunes. Ah, girl time, there’s nothing like it.

One of the things I found very difficult in my cross-country RV journey was figuring out which grocery stores to frequent. Grocery prices out here are a lot higher than they were in Gatineau/Ottawa and every grocery store I visited left me feeling rather ill with sticker shock. I learned very quickly that Safeway, a major chain out west, is the worst price offender and I now avoid it at all costs.

Oliver had two supermarkets, Supervalu which was neither super nor offered any value for the dollar, and Buy-Low, a discount store with decent prices (for a small town), if poor selection. It was in my infrequent trips to Penticton that I discovered Save-on-Foods. Their prices were also very high, but if you join their (free) discount club and shop wisely, you can get very, very good deals. Since I moved to south Surrey, I’ve been alternating between the nearest S-o-F and the Super Walmart, which has a huge grocery section. Walmart is the place to go to get basic groceries, but it’s at Save-on-Foods that I find the little luxury items that make grocery shopping so much fun:

Two of my favourite food groups in one (Guinness cheddar!!!)

On a recent shopping trip, the cashier took a moment to better explain the rewards program to me and let me know that there is a scanner near the door that prints out personalized coupons. The more you use your card and shop at Save-on-Foods, the better the coupon selector becomes at offering you bonuses you will use. Today, I got a handful of coupons for products I buy almost every week and which were on sale, offering me a double discount!

I like that the discount card can be used at other businesses, like Chevron gas.

Some RVers have written in their own blogs that one of the things they dislike about RVing is having to relearn how to grocery shop at every new town, but I find that half the fun of traveling is scoping out the local grocery store for products you don’t have ‘back home.’

Since moving to Surrey, there has been almost daily news about new gang-related violence and mayhem and more murders than I am accustomed to hearing about in a whole year!

I was warned before moving here that Surrey is renown for its crime rate. As I expected, the violence is pretty much localized to a particular part of town. I am glad that I made the decision to remain in the southernmost part of Surrey and do not believe I would feel quite as safe in a ‘mid-town’ RV park such as Peace Arch, but I don’t feel threatened. That said, I am very aware of where I travel and at what time, and I have to confess that one of the reasons why I’ve decided to stop taking public transit is that the Skytrain Station is located in gangland and waiting for a bus in the dark made me nervous. Petty crime is also a major problem all through the GVR, so I am doubly cautious when parking the car, taking the GPS with me and leaving the trunk cover (I have a hatchback) open to make it obvious that I’m not trying to ‘hide’ anything. A BC politician recently stashed all her personal gear (passport, Blackberry, wallet, etc.) in her trunk and lost it all, so I’m not being overly cautious!

What is sad is to listen to how hopeless people feel about the violence in their city. Neighbouring Abbotsford is facing a similar challenge the police have admitted their powerlessness to deal with this growing problem. There is also the concern that the perpetrators are getting younger and younger. A boy of 13 was arrested this week after stabbing a man on the Skytrain!

Despite all of this, I am getting less and less timid about this place that scared me so much. The next nice weekend (definitely not this one ), I am going to downtown Vancouver! I’ll just make sure I stay on the west side of Hastings!

We were treated to brilliant sunshine and BLUE sky  yesterday afternoon and this morning I was awoken by SUN. It doesn’t last, though. It’s started to rain again, but the weather is sooooo mild. It’s such a joy to be able to dash out to the laundry in just a sweater and slippers instead of having to throw on a heavy coat and boots!

Some parts of Surrey and the Fraser Valley are severely flooded right now, but I’m still safe and relatively dry where I am. I don’t see water pooling anywhere in the park. I am keeping watch on conditions in case there are evacuations, but it seems like this is a good place to ride out the inclement weather.

A lot of roads into this area are closed because of avalanche risks, including the road I took from Oliver. I really got out of there in the nick of time!