Fort Langley Trip

I didnt' want to stay at home for the Easter weekend, so I looked through the Vancouver travel guide and found this small town called Fort Langley. Oh well, it's a national historic site, so there we go. I went with Eddy since he would always be interested in going somewhere outside the City of Vancouver, haha. The bus trip is pretty long, two hours plus. I better write down the bus numbers and stuff, in case I'll go there again next time. Bus 41 from UBC to Joyce Station, and then Skytrain to Surrey Central Station, then Bus 502 to Langley Centre, finally C62 to 96 Ave & Glover Rd.
Fort Langley is such a small town that basically all the shops are located along the single street, Glover Rd. And from where I got off the bus to the bridge over the Fraser River, it's probably less than 500 metres. At the other side of the river, it's simply forest. It's said that the aboriginal ppl are still living there. So cool.
Amon the shops, most of them are gift shops, and the rest are restaurants as I can remember. They've got pretty cool stuff in the gift shops (definitely not key chains or mugs that I always see along Robson St). I bought two pretty weird collectors' spoons and a 1918 one-cent coin. The coin is amazingly much larger than what we have nowadays, and the material is also apparently better.
The main attraction of the small town is of course the 'Fort'. It's preserved as National Historic Site, so we had to pay for entrance fees, sighz... Actually we almost missed the 'Fort' because the entrance of the site is built like a museum which I'm not so interested in. It was until I took the picture at the flag pole that I realized that there's a 'Fort' behind the 'museum'.
The Fort is kinda cool, enclosed by wooden barricks. There are several buildings inside, all of which are made of wood. The explanation I heard is that metal was very expensive stuff back then and had to be shipped from England (Gosh!). So they wouldn't use metal unless absolutely necessary. Then there's this Big House. The British proclaimed British Columbia a British colony in the house pretty much in a rush because there was rumour of possible American take-over. Consequently, Fort Langley became the birth place of British Columbia. The narator girl told us that this Big House was kind of a men's club. Only men with social status high enough could stay there. But from the interior decoration and furniture in there, I'd say that the living standard was still far inferior to that I saw in a castle in Victoria.
The reason why I have been using quotation marks around the word Fort all the time is that I hardly saw any weapons there. The only one I saw was a small cannon exhibited in one of the houses. This fort probably had little millitary significance but merely a trade post (local business office in modern terms).
Overall, I would rate this place 4 Star for a one-day trip.