It promised to be a wet old day in Vancouver today, so I packed accordingly, determined not to let the over-saturated atmosphere impede my explorations in any way. At daybreak, I headed back to Granville Island to bag the few geocaches that I had missed the day before. I spotted a mermaid during my travels:

She didn’t mind the rain, nor did the wind-activated swimming staue that I spotted at Kitsilano Beach:

This heron wasn’t so please. As I passed the marina, he untucked his head, cast a baleful glare in my general direction and then went back to sleep. Can’t as I blame him.

Along the seawall near Kitsilano I spotted a coyote, who seemed unfazed by the weather and disappointed that I didn’t bring him a burger:

Flat Katherine and I saw some odd sculptures and took our photo in one:

This is what the sculpture looks like:

It is very weird. It rather looks like it’s depicting water in a zero-gravity situation (which it may well be, since the sculpture is outside the space centre).

Near the Maritime Museum, we spotted a replica viking ship, all tucked away for the winter:

And just when we thought we couldn’t get any wetter, we happened upon this testimony to the pervasiveness and significance of rain in Vancouver’s culture:

Outside the space centre, we spotted a giant, water-spewing crab. It looks like this:

Flat Katherine couldn’t resist getting a closer look:

Inside the space centre, Flat Katherine climbed into an astronaut suit and goofed around. Some grade three students from a nearby school helped out. They were there on a field trip and Flat Katherine (who is also in grade three) was made most welcome by the teachers and kids.

Then we walked back the seawall to False Creek and made our way to the Olympic Village (for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games). For reasons passing understanding, there were two giant sparrows in the village. Flat Katherine climbed on board one, but could not get it to fly:

There were also some interesting west coast indian designs in nearby sculptures. Flat Katherine is hiding in these photos:

The she spotted the Science Centre and absolutely insisted that we go in!

I’m not sure why, but she wanted to have her picture taken with this frog. Maybe the real Katherine knows what she was thinking?

The she played around with the static electricity ball:

Her absolute favourite part were the dinosaurs. In the Science Centre, there were 19 full-size animatronic models of various dinosaurs.

Some moved when prompted by motion sensors, while others could be controlled by anyone who wanted to push the buttons.

The T Rex was quite impressive. He was the full height of the room and very loud. Several young children were startled when he started to move and roar, and ran out of the room shrieking. A couple of adults looked like they were considering it as well.

The eyes even moved on many.

They did a rather good job on the exhibit. There were other sections (eggs, fossils, skeletons, and lots of information). For a sense of scale, Flat Katherine stood next to the dino chart. She felt rather small.

But next to that T Rex, so did I.