The Washington State Hiking Podcast
Welcome to the The Washington State Hiking Podcast with your host, Jennie Thwing Flaming. Along with part time co-host and guidebook author Craig Romano, she provides practical and timely seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers of all skill and ability levels that is practical, accurate, fun and inclusive. We cover hikes near Seattle and Tacoma as well as hikes all across Washington from the rain forests of the Olympic Peninsula to the Shrub Steppe of Eastern Washington.
Jennie is a middle aged, plus sized, frequently solo slow hiker and a born and raised Washingtonian and has enjoyed Washington's trails her entire life. Craig is a trail runner and ultra marathoner who also loves the mellow walk close to home. Originally from New Hampshire, he has made his home in Washington for more than 30 years. He the author of more than 20 guidebooks covering trails across Washington State and beyond.
The Washington State Hiking Podcast
Best Hikes in Vancouver, British Columbia
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Jennie interviews Craig about his brand new book - Urban Hiking Vancouver BC! We talk about the many wonderful hikes that are transit accessible and provide a beautiful oasis in nature within and around the city.
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Craig’s hiking guidebooks - NEW Urban Hiking Vancouver BC!
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Jennie, welcome to the Washington State hiking podcast. I'm your host. Jennie Thwing Flaming,
Craig Romano:and I'm your co host. Craig Romano
Jennie Flaming:Craig and I are happy to have you here. We provide practical and timely, seasonal hiking advice for hikers, trail runners and potential hikers and trail runners of all skill and ability levels that is helpful, accurate, fun and inclusive. Hey, everyone. Before we start the show today, I wanted to give a shout out to our sponsor for the month of April, and that is Snohomish County tourism. And Craig and I are so excited about this collaboration. We were recently guests on their podcast, which is excellent, and called Snohomish County place makers. And next week, we'll be hearing from the hosts of that show, Richard and Nick throughout the month of April, we'll be hearing more all the wonderful hiking opportunities that are in Snohomish County. So we'll be starting that series next week for three weeks, and we are so excited about all of this. It's a wonderful place to hike, and they've been wonderful to work with. So thank you Snohomish County tourism. And today we are going to be going just a bit north of Snohomish County up to Vancouver, British Columbia. Well, Craig, we are here today to talk about your new book. So this will be a little bit of a different format. I mean, I know I ask you questions on here all the time, but today we're going to be talking about that. So congratulations on getting your Vancouver book published. That's super exciting. Thanks.
Craig Romano:Yes, it is a big deal, and I'm very excited about, I say this about all my books, but I'm extremely excited about this book. It is my, my first book, pretty much outside of why, outside the country?
Jennie Flaming:Yeah, you know, it's fun, because knowing you, and like several other authors that I know because, like, I haven't written books, you know, I've done lots of writing online. But one thing that's so interesting from all the different guidebook authors that I know now, including you, is, like, how long it takes to bring a book like this to print. Like, when we started our podcast over a year ago, you were, you were working on finishing up the manuscript, and now it's like, it's here. So that's cool, and,
Craig Romano:you know? And I always like to joke, for me, this is the closest thing I will ever experience to giving birth. It's an incredibly long, long gestation period. Yes, it's extremely painful. And once it's delivered, it's beautiful. It's my baby, you know, yeah, so and then, yeah, although, you know, I do have a son, I didn't deliver. But yeah, the one and it was a one and done. I wish I had thought the same thing with my books.
Jennie Flaming:Yeah. But here you are, 27 books later. 27 in Yeah. Ah, that's so cool. Okay, so listeners this book that Craig wrote, one of the many, but this one has just come out within the last week. It kind of trickles out like it's supposed to be right now, but like some people put it up a little sooner, whatever. So it is in your urban hiking series, and we've talked about those books before, great series of books about hikes near and in cities across Washington and now British Columbia. So this book is about hiking in Vancouver, British Columbia, so up to our northern neighbor in Canada. So Craig, I would you know a lot of people, especially since the pandemic, because during the pandemic, the border was closed, and then there was that long period of time where you had to jump through a lot of hoops to cross the border. And even though there's a lot of tension between our countries right now, it is pretty easy to cross the border. So I feel like I need to say that before we dive into this. Now, of course, for people who are undocumented or are in different levels of the immigration process, it is not as easy to cross the border as it is for you and I, who are US citizens. So I want to just acknowledge that, but I want to tell all of you listening that you know both living here, but also the work I do in Alaska, where we often take tours into the Yukon. It's, really, it's not a huge deal to to cross the border right now. It's like it was in the 90s and 2000s and, you know, it's, it's totally worth the effort. So Craig. Tell us a little bit about like, maybe, to start off with, what types of hikes are typical in Vancouver, and then we can talk about some specifics I would
Craig Romano:definitely do. I just want to get back reiterating what you just said earlier. Jennie, first of all, a lot of people think Vancouver is far You know, I live in Mount Vernon, Skagit County. It's actually closer for me to get to Langley BC than it is for me to get to Seattle, and it takes me a lot less time. Yep. Um, it seems like this. This barrier Vancouver is so close to us here. Yeah. And then the other thing, as you're mentioning, and I have this all in my book, because I wrote my book specifically for people who don't live in Vancouver. So if you're traveling so anybody in the English speaking world, this is the book, um, you you passport will definitely have you don't need a passport if you have an enhanced driver's license. Yeah, okay. Washington is one of seven states has. That's all you need to get over an enhanced driver's license. And if you know, I bring my kid over all the time, we bring his his birth certificate, that's all we need to get him over. The other thing, we have several crossings too. Peace Arch is one of the most busiest in the country. But you don't have to use that one. There's other ways, and even that there's there's tricks, and when to go, um, you could get a Nexus pass to get you over quickly, but I'll tell you,
Jennie Flaming:I have a Nexus pass, and it's awesome. I'm
Craig Romano:still waiting to get my interview, and with everything the way it is now, who knows when it's going to
Jennie Flaming:happen? I've had mine for 10 years, so I I've had it a long time smart, but yeah, it's great.
Craig Romano:So yeah, those are also, don't, don't let that. And the other thing. Right now, the US dollar is incredibly strong against the Canadian dollar, so you're going to be getting a 30% discount when you're up there. And that's so your dollar goes far right now, yep, oh, and what? And you can take a train. There's always all kinds of ways to go, all right, what makes Vancouver BC a great place like, first of all, if you've never been there, it is absolutely one of the most beautiful cities. I'd say North America, for sure, probably the world. Yeah, it is. It's an incredible it's very cosmopolitan. To me. It has a very Asian feeling. I mean, it's got a very large Asian population from all over Asia. And just even the way it's designed, if you've been over on the other side of the Pacific, the architecture things might remind you of that area. But the city, it's very compact. It's one of the most densely populated cities, so more like New York City than than say La, which is, which is spread out. And so saying that being compact, it has an incredibly excellent public transportation system. So it's one of the few play. It's one of the one of the few books that I wrote in the urban trail series that almost every hike I have 55 destinations you can, you can assess almost all of them via public transportation. Yeah.
Jennie Flaming:So, and I want to, I want to just break in here and say that that is awesome, period. But also, if you're a visitor, this means that you can get to most of these hikes if you took the train or the bus to Vancouver and didn't drive, or if you don't have a car, or if you drive there and then you're like, I'm done with driving. I'm just parking my car. So I just want to reiterate how great that is. Absolutely.
Craig Romano:You just, yeah, so if you take the Amtrak up the downtown Vancouver, then we can get you all these. So what's in my book? Obviously, Vancouver itself, the big city, but also the entire Greater van. Sorry, I always keep saying greater used to be known as greater. It's Metro, Metro Vancouver regional area. So it's the entire so what is a regional it's the equivalent to a county, so saying, like King County. So within that Metro regional area, that's what I've covered. So it's got British Columbia's largest cities. So you're dealing you've got Vancouver, Surrey. Surrey is almost as large as Vancouver. It's larger in area and almost as large in population. Richmond, Langley, the North Shore, which is amazing, and Bowen Island. So it's all in my book, and it's primarily an urban trail site, but because North the North Vancouver area, North Vancouver, West Vancouver, so right across broad inlet, right on the other side of the Lions Gate Bridge, you've got this incredible urban area a couple minutes from downtown that's right up against the mountains. I mean, it's, you know, even in Seattle, you have to go, you know, you still got to get in your car and drive 35 miles where you hit the mountains, yep. But in Vancouver, they're right there, yep. So you have this amazing interface of of urban and wild, I mean, wilderness. So my book covers a lot of the the North Shore. So we don't get into the back country stuff, but, but, boy, I'll tell you, even some of those ones, you're hiking right out of North van, West van, you're his back country. So that's what, that's what's in the book. And then, of course, I have hikes around boundary bay that you can walk and hikes on the Fraser River. You know, there's a lot of even though you're bottom of the mountains, you're on, you're on the Fraser River Delta, so a lot of the city areas is actually flat, so there's some wonderfully like Richmond. Richmond is pretty much at sea level. You're you're hiking on dikes and incredible trail system. So it's open to all, all ages, all abilities. And again, you'll. In places that you're going to swear you're out and out in the middle of the wilderness and in other places, amazing vibe. Most people, when they go to Vancouver, they go to Stanley Park, and it's an absolute must, and they do the seawall, but they only do the seawall in Stanley Park. I have the entire seawall in the book. That seawall goes for over 20 kilometers, yeah, 14, which also I should make in my book, everything is in miles, in kilometers. Everything's in meters, in feet. So that you know, if you're not familiar with it, the signs up there are going to be in it, you'll be able to easily see what, what, what, what the distances are. So again, I wrote it for visitors, but also, because you're going to be there, I want you to be able to be well versed and feel comfortable in the area with with everything. So that seawall is one of the one of the longest continuous sea walls of any urban area in the world. So it's amazing. And a great thing is, because it has such a great public transportation system, you could do a one way, do a nice 14 mile one way run or hike on this thing, get into hit some great little noodle shop and then get on the bus or the or the or the sky train, which is the light rail back to where you're going. Other things I love about Vancouver, first of all, is, for a large city, it's an incredibly clean and incredibly safe city, it's going to be one of the safest, largest cities I've ever been in. Obviously, like any urban area, there's going to be areas and problems. I'm not sending it in those places. So again, it is a place that you're going to feel very, very comfortable. It's dynamic. It's very, very cosmopolitan, not only all the different ethnic groups that live there, but you're going to meet people from all over the world visiting there. So again, it's just got such a different vibe than Seattle. Sometimes we kind of look at it as Seattle. It's more like San Francisco than then, then, then Seattle. It's just an amazing place. Culturally, it's an amazing place. I'm going to send you on some of these, these urban walks and hikes into, into some of the different neighborhoods. You know, you're going to get a crash history on, on, on, BC you're going to learn things like crazy, like some of these parks and trails were designed when British Columbia, as a colony, was so worried about an American invasion. And you can laugh about that now, because there's been a lot of chatter.
Jennie Flaming:I think that's a lot less funny than it was, like two years ago, right? So you're reading
Craig Romano:this stuff like, wow, they're preparing for an American invasion. It doesn't sound that far off, does it? Yeah, so I'm gonna give it a lot, because my background is in history, and I'm I'm fascinated, and again, so much of the history of British Columbia is really intertwined with the Washington history, the Northwest history. So I think that's important to kind of kind of know that too.
Jennie Flaming:Our sponsor for the month of April is Snohomish County tourism. Snohomish County Washington offers 2000 square miles of majestic mountains, flowing rivers, bustling cities and towns and sweeping coastlines, not to mention great access to hikes only minutes from Seattle, whether you're into short one hour hikes, full day treks or overnight excursions. Hikers of all skill levels are invited to experience the vast terrains and breathtaking high mountain scenery of Snohomish County. It also makes a great base camp for day trips to America's most stunning national parks, including North Cascades, Mt Rainier and Olympic speaking of which the national parks, forests and public lands in and around Snohomish County are some of the most beautiful places to explore, and they need our care for more information on how you can recreate responsibly, Leave No Trace and protect our natural resources. Visit Seattle North country.com you can also follow Seattle North Country on social media at Seattle, North Country, that's one word with no punctuation. You can also tag at Seattle north country or use the hashtag visit snow co to get your snow co adventures featured on their social accounts. Thank you so much. Snohomish County tourism for sponsoring us for the month of April. I agree with you, Craig that like Stanley Park is an absolute must do for any Vancouver visitor. It's just amazing. I also wanted to give a plug for some of the trails that go within, like not around the sea wall, but across the middle of the park, because similar to Seward Park in Seattle, if you go up into the interior of that park, not only are you away from the majority of people, but there are some huge old growth trees in there too, which I didn't know about for years. You know, same thing at Seward Park in Seattle. So, yeah, make sure to check that out too. Exactly,
Craig Romano:big, big trees. There's wetlands, little lakes. It's incredible. And again, once you get off the sea wall, yeah, you're going to be, there's many areas you're going to be by yourself. And even in this big city, I've. It in the summer,
Jennie Flaming:even on a Sunday in July, exactly
Craig Romano:so again. And have a lot of these places too, that you're going to be amazed. And I'm always constant that even in these incredibly, you know, urban areas with millions of people, there's places where you can get away from the crowds. It's just, it's, it's amazing. One of the the bigger Park, everyone knows Stanley Park, that's not, that's not the largest park in Vancouver. Pacific spirit Park is the largest, and pretty much that's over on in West, not in West Vancouver, the city, but in West Vancouver, towards UBC, Columbia, the West Park, yeah, that's beyond West Vancouver. West Vancouver is a city, but the western part of Vancouver that to confuse you the neighborhoods of Kitsilano and Jericho Beach, those are which are absolutely beautiful. Some of the most beautiful beach walks in the area too are, again, are in this urban area where you're going to be below the bluffs and looking out at just islands and mountains over on Vancouver Island, and not see a skyscraper or building or anything behind you or near you. So that Pacific spirit park that I was telling you about, those were university endowment lands when they put the UBC so previously surround the University of British Columbia, and you've got 50 miles of trails, trails there. So it's amazing. You can just been all day long without running into too many people. There's other parks like that too, over in Langley, right over the border, not very far the Campbell Valley Regional Park, spectacular Park, same thing. It's about, you know, 30 miles of trails and wetlands and in fields in a store. I mean, just over the border, yeah. Surrey has the same Surrey has some, some wonderful parks as well, including one of the, the last one of the only spots along the Fraser River that has not been diked and altered. So you get to see what actual alluvial forest and floodplain and big, giant cottonwood. I mean, we think of these giant evergreens, we should see the size of some of these black cottonwoods. They're incredible, the size of these trees. So, so again, you gotta see that in PCs, you know, in Surrey, that has 600,000 people. I mean, you have these areas that are that are gonna feel like being out in the middle of nowhere,
Jennie Flaming:yeah, that's really, that is really true, you know, like it that's a really cool thing about Vancouver. Okay, oh, one other thing I'll just add about the UBC campus is the Museum of Anthropology. There is a really while you're there, great place to learn, especially about First Nations culture in British Columbia. So I just want to it's a really cool place, and it has a big outside area too. It's awesome.
Craig Romano:Okay, it's a fantastic museum. And I actually have one of my suggested walks along the beach where you do a loop, you go right by it, and you can integrate and as well on UBC itself, the Botanical Gardens are incredible there, if you want to learn about about native vegetation. And they have a tree walk where you can go up and walk in the canopy. So really cool, really cool stuff.
Jennie Flaming:Okay, Craig, I know that this is a very difficult question, but I'm gonna ask you anyway, because we don't want to give away your entire book in this episode, but I would love to know if you had to pick three urban hikes in Vancouver. Will we, I think that we can leave Pacific spirit and sea wall kind of, you know, Stanley Park, like, in their own category. So those are, like, you gotta do those, right? So we won't include those. So I guess it's really top five, and maybe bonus points for ones that people might be like, really, there's a hike there. Anyway. That's tough. I tell you, you can do it. I believe in you. It's amazing.
Craig Romano:When I was working on on this book, and incident, I should back up. I have been wanting to write this book for years, and I finally got my approval to do this with through my publisher back in 2019 and when I was ready to start in February of 2020, something called COVID.
Jennie Flaming:Yeah. And then we for like two years, yeah. So that was that. Put that one on ice for a while.
Craig Romano:Once I got working, I'll tell you again, I absolutely love the city. I can't believe how much I enjoyed doing an urban book as much as I did. I was spending a couple trips a month up there. Really got to know the city, the vibe, it is just, it's just an amazing place. And I continue to go there, you know, all the time, just again, I'm an hour from the border. So there's just so many great places to go to. So I have to say, all these places, some of my favorites in here and there, so many. And going through my book, I'll say right now, only three, alright,
Jennie Flaming:besides the two that we already talked so
Craig Romano:one of my favorite, favorites is Deer Park, and that's in Burnaby. And Burnaby is wonderful. Burnaby is one of the. I think it's the fourth largest city in BC. It's on the east side of Vancouver. That's pretty much where I stayed when, when I was staying working in Vancouver, I stayed in Burnaby. It's got a great, vibrant culture there. Um, fascinated. So deer. Deer Lake is this big lake. It's totally undeveloped, big trees, miles and miles of of trails in here. It's hilly. And what's so cool about this again, is you're surrounded by this huge urban area. You can see the skyscrapers of as they're called, Metro town, just up on the ridge. But when you look north, you just see nothing but the North Shore peaks, these big snow cap peaks most of the year over the Frayser. It's just the main but this area used to be out in the boonies 100 years ago, between Vancouver, when it was kind of a rough port logging town in New Westminster, which was the capital of British Columbia for a while, and the government road would come through here. And a lot of well to do. People built their little estates out in this area. And there were these beautiful English country homes, gigantic. So you've got that so you're hiking this area with these beautiful English estates. So it looks like you're out in the Lake District of England, but you're in this, obviously, this Northwest landscape. It's just an incredible place. And because it's not on the radar of a lot of people who don't live in Burnaby, in the areas it does not get you're not going to see that the hordes of German speaking and Japanese speaking tourists that you will in at Stanley Park. So you'll have German and Japanese Canadians out there. Yeah. So that's the other thing too. When you're in when you're in Vancouver, if you speak multiple languages, great, because there's not a time when I'm hiking where I don't recognize
Jennie Flaming:lots and many different languages going all over the world. Yeah, it's really cool, both people who are Canadians, who speak other languages, and visitors. It's a very world, worldy city. It's very cool. One other fun fact about Deer Lake for fans of the TV show, Virgin River, which I feel like that's not your jam, Craig,
Craig Romano:but Burnaby is where all the Burnaby is next to sec, third to Atlanta and LA for film.
Jennie Flaming:So the whole Vancouver area is full of stuff that's been in movies and TV. But Virgin River specifically has a lot of scenes that are filmed in Deer Lake Park. So if you watch the show and you go there, you'll be like, oh, yeah, I feel like I've been here.
Craig Romano:I did not notice it, because I do mention in my book where a lot of things are filmed, you will recognize because so much is being done as being filmed up there. Matter of fact, when I was staying in Burnaby, I'd go into the restaurant, people started recognizing me, and people would ask me if I worked for the film industry. That's because American doing up here, right, right, right, right. Unfortunately, I'm a lowly guidebook author,
Jennie Flaming:alright. So number two, alright.
Craig Romano:So on the North Shore, this is hard, hard to say, because there's so many great places. It's people will have to get your book. They're going to have to go. So I'll just pick Cyprus Provincial Park. Is a great one. And this is over in West Vancouver and and first of all, the Cypress George Vancouver, named the Alaska yellow cedars. It is actually in the Cypress room, but there's no Cypress if you're thinking like down in Georgia and Florida. So that's what the Cypress is. And this is, again, one of those areas you're right on the periphery. But when you're hiking on these peaks, you're several 1000 feet above, you know, above the water, above the inlet and the sound and everything on there, and you're looking right out over Vancouver skyline. It is just incredible. You could see the harbor and Lionsgate bridge and Stanley parking lot and all the skyscrapers. And on a clear day, always south, you could see Baker, the San Juans. Here's the thing that's interesting, too, man, I think when you're in Vancouver, the San Juan Islands are south of you, because you're jutting out and you're directly south. And when you look to the west, you're going to be seeing the Gulf Islands in Vancouver Island. So you're gonna be looking at all these you always see Orcas Island. It's very, very prominent right to the south. So there's so many great hikes you can do in Cyprus. And because it is on that wild periphery, you're going to see wild animals there. I've seen quite a few bears there. It's, it's a great, great place to for, for trail running, too. There's a lot of it was developed many, many decades ago. For for skiing, and that's actually the Vancouver Olympics had some of their their events there. So they have a wonderful cross country skiing network, so definitely, but you can run or hike or bike those trails during the non skiing time, but the fuse, I
Jennie Flaming:was going to mention how awesome it is for cross country skiing, but you already did that you got,
Craig Romano:yeah, so, so Cypress is amazing place, alright. So I gotta still tell you some more of my other favorites in yourself, you've
Jennie Flaming:only got one more. Oh, I have one
Craig Romano:more. It's so difficult. I know. Well, you know, boundary Bay has always been one of my favorite, yeah, boundary Bay Regional Park. And so boundary Bay as the name to know it's right, it's where it's right on the international boundary. So when you cross over white rocks over there, and that's all semi amo Bay, boundary Bay. I. Um, point Roberts, which, which is our little enclave, that that's part of Washington that you can only get through British Columbia to get to. I actually have that in this book because, because most, most people who live there are Canadian, and in the summertime. It's all Canadians that are using the beaches there. But it is Whatcom County it enters in a beautiful Whatcom County park there that you absolutely have to see some of the highest bluffs in the area. That's, that's the lily point marine park. So that whole boundary Bay, though you can go from mud Bay in Surrey all the way to to swaston Regional Park. It is 11 kilometers, or 11 miles, I'm sorry, 11 miles on a dike, and you want to do it during the winter in the bird migration, because you are going to see 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of sandpipers and dunlins and the bald eagles are just incredible there. Yeah. And again, you're looking right out at Mount Baker across the bay. It is an amazing view. I absolutely love going up there in the way down. And I should mention that that whole area, that whole Delta, there's other I have other places in in city of delta, on the Delta, that if you are a birder, it's some of the best bird watching in North America. Just right. It's right it's right in that Pacific Flyway, and they're coming in there, and again, right in the urban area. But here's the other thing I should I should mention these big cities, Delta, Surrey Langley, in many spot, they have nearly a half or more of the of the percent of their land base is in agriculture or open space, because they have so much more, um, higher density there. Instead of that spread, you know, in America, we just spread out. Just spread out, like Seattle, the suburbs just spread out forever. But, but there, everything's really compact. And so they're able to, because that Fraser Delta, most of British Columbia, look at a map, it's mountainous. So that Fraser delta is also their bread basket. And so trying to where all the people live and your farming. So it's a really interesting, again, combination. It's going to remind you more of Europe in that respect. Yeah,
Jennie Flaming:well, Craig, I mean, I'm inspired to I already love Vancouver, and I'm ready to go back and try these hikes. So pick up Craig's book wherever you get your books, and we'll put a link to it in the show notes. Yeah, well, thanks for sharing this,
Craig Romano:Craig, yeah, you bet it's, you know, Amazon, village books, Powells, you know the deal I'm also currently doing book talks. So please check my website and hope, I hope to get to meet you in person. We can talk more about some of my favorite destinations.
Jennie Flaming:Yeah, and we always have Craig's website and my website in the show notes, so you can look in there and follow along for upcoming book talks. All right, we'll see you next time. Everybody. Bye.
