Road Trip Snacks of the day: Runts, Aussie licorice and Jones Cream
Soda.
Road Trip Music of the Day: John Denver
We will be arriving in Calgary around 7:30pm and we will meet up with
one of Francis' friends tonight.
Good times.
(and air conditioning)
We are at Pogue Mahone's and tasting their 3$ home brew. The verdict:
a cross between Bohemian and Coors light. 4 stars out of 5.
(ps: Check out Francis' awesome tshirt that his awesome fiancée got
him in awesome Tofino!)
In other news, Francis tried a Big Turk (one of my favourite chocolate
bars) and liked it. Yay!
Other than that not much to report. We watched Knowing on the laptop
last night in full surround. :) Not a bad movie!
Now we feel refreshed and cool.
Vancouver is a great city and I now understand why they have an
overpopulation problem. The downtown core is very compressed and all
the bridges make it hard to get around. There's glass buildings
everywhere so now I know why Douglas Coupland's book was called City
of Glass. Locals are, as far as I can tell, quite friendly and laid
back. We both wish we could have stayed another night to continue
exploring downtown and the rich nighlife.
I know I can't bitch because it's been raining since we left back home
but it's 32 (feels like 35) here and man is it ever gross. We were
lucky the RV park had a pool so we went for a dip while waiting on a
load of laundry to finish. We slept OK though, thanks to all the
screens in Lucy.
We are currently sweating in Vancouver traffic finding our way to
Highway 1 EAST (!!!) for the first time since we took off. We will try
to make it to Kamloops today.
Sorry in advance to everyone back home but we didn't get a chance to
souvenir shop as much as we thought... :(
It's 30 out so the breeze from the boat is a big welcome.
Ferry trip went well. We saw some seals on the way in. Another ferry
tommorow morning and then off to Vancouver!
Good night!
Mmmmmmm
One thing is for sure, we want to come back. Honeymoon perhaps??? :)
Now we are off to Cathedral Grove to see the monster trees. I'll
probably hug one. Won't be able to resist. There's someting magical
about trees that old.
Anyhow, holy crap we have a gorgeous country. I mean I knew that
before leaving but actually seeing it is intense. I love how wherever
we go, there is a commonality however dramatic the landscape changes.
We saw kids playing road hockey in Winnipeg and Victoria. We saw the
annoying strip malls with the same stores from Northern Ontario to
Nanaimo. ( I hate those. I mean really I didnt drive 5000 kms to go
shop at a Moores. We need to do something about that and support the
independant shops). We saw rocks and trees and lakes everywhere along
the way. This country's culture revolves around its landscape and wow
is it ever an impressive one.
I've always been a tree hugger but now more than ever I see how
without those clean lakes and clear skies and thick forests, Canada
would lose its soul.
Hang Loose.
The lakes and mountains around here are similar to the Rockies. Clear
waters, fresh air.... no wonder the license plate says Beautiful
British Columbia! The road to Tofino is really fun (for me anyway,
Francis is annoyed with the 30 km/h winding road) with lots of scenery
along the way. We are excited to get to the most western destination
of our trip! After this, it's all Eastbound... Boohoohoo :(
No cel reception here but I'll keep posting so you have something to
read tomorrow at work!
Ok back to driving to Tofino!
Tomorrow we will drive to Nanaimo and Tofino. A few asked us where we
ended up staying. We are at Bamberton Provincial Park.
Some locals dropped by our site last night because they heard Francis
playing guitar. They gave us s few tips of places we could go and
spent the evening with us. They really liked Lucy so we gave them the
grand tour.
Hope the weekend is going well for everyone. Happy birthday to
Francis' awesome Mom and Happy Aniversary to my just as awesome
parents :)
Too bad because it's really nice here. The trees are huge, the sites
are private and the facilities are plentiful and clean! :)
It is supposed to be sunny on the island until late next week
according to the forecast so we will be able to visit outdoor stuff
without a hitch.
We are off to take advantage of the showers in case we can't find
another campsite who has them.
The park was full but they let us stay in the overflow area for the
night which is basically a tiny parking lot between two sites. It's
nicer than some of the parks we have stayed in previously so we can't
complain :) We will go back to the office tomorrow morning to see if
some sites have opened up for Friday night. If so we will stay here
another night so we can visit Victoria tomorrow without having to
worry about accomodations.
The ferry ride is quite nice and is about 2 hours long. We stayed
outside on the upper level for most of the ride to enjoy the view. The
max height to get the "normal car" rate is 7 feet so we had to empty
our roof bag to save some cash. We took the Circle Route deal which is
basically 4 ferry rides for 160$.
Oh and we almost hit two deers on the way in. Lots of wildlife here too!
Oh and Pauline, you will be invited to the wedding. No worries. Haha.
Off to Tsawwassen!
The wheel bearings are all OK as well so no more worrying about
whether we will make it back to Ottawa in time.
The mechanic and staff are extremely nice and I wouldn't hesitate to
recommend them to anyone looking for help in the area. They even gave
us a pen and license plate frame as a souvenir. Great folks.
In other news we witnessed a camper on fire on Highway 3 so we called
911 the minute we had cel reception. The guy was was waving for us to
do so when we drove by. The front end was on fire and I hope the
firefighters got to them before they lost the contents of the motorhome.
We saw a deer a few minutes ago but I wasn't fast enough to take a
picture.
There are a lot of VW vans here! Much more than any other province we
visited. Most are the vanagons (1980+) but they still wave us down
when they see us. :)
I'll let everyone know what the verdict is for Lucy when we leave the
mechanic's shop in Chiliwack.
There's also a very nice view nearby (picture) to make up for the
crappy sites. Our neighbours speak French so that's fun too.
Oh man I can't get enough of these fresh fruits! I ate three apricots
while writing this... Mmmm. It makes me look forward to come back to
Ottawa for blueberry season.
It's going to be a low of 17 tonight so I think it will be a screens-
open-no-sleeping-bag night. Such a dramatic change from the 6 degres
in the Rockies...
We will head to Chilliwack in the morning to go see a VW specialist.
Hopefully he can pinpoint our backfire problem and assure us she can
take us back home :)
The campsite we are at kinda sucks. It's not private. However, there
are showers and laundry facilities so that's the plan for tonight. We
are running out of clothes!
Can't wait to taste the local fruits!
We will go through Glacier National Park and Revelstoke National Park
today. It's yet another gorgeous afternoon. I can't believe our luck!
We washed the car today because the bugs were pretty bad and we saw
the chips in the front end again. Francis says it's pretty bad and
can't be patched up. :( Poor Lucy.
It's cold at night here. Around 6 degrees tonight. Good thing we
brought that extra blanket! I think it will be a movie night again
since there is no firepit here.
There's no reception here but I'll update more tomorrow.
After packing we went to grab a coffee and met a couple with a green
73 van. They are the original owners and told us about their travels
and suggested a few pit stops in Yoho National Park . We then headed
on the Bow Valley parkway, pit stopped at Johnston Canyon and now here
we are, nearing Banff after having outrun Hank the Sheep. It's around
28 and sunny here but somehow my legs are still pasty white :P
More updates later. Ring still very shiny! Haha.
We went on the Banff Gobdola and took a dip in Radium Hotsprings
today. The water was at 39 degrees and it was quite nice to breathe
fresh mountain air while relaxing our sore muscles from all the hiking.
We didn't get a chance to walk around Banff yet so we will do that
tomorrow.
The gondola made Francis dream of snowboarding around here. Maybe for
another trip???
Off to Banff...
Stephanie says the ring is too shiny but I think she'll get used to it.
I love her very much and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life
with her.
By the way I also wanted to thank everyone for all the nice emails and
comments. Steph reads them to me while we are on the road and it makes
us feel like you are right here with us.
Francis
Lake Louise was beautiful but it wasn't rustic enough for me with the
chateau and all the tourists. In my eyes, Payto and Bow lake were much
more majestic even if all we could do was admire them from a distance.
Jiffy Pop and movie in Lucy tonight!
There are lots of rocks here! :)
Can't wait for an even better view of the lake!
It rained last night but it's sunny again this morning. Our last trek
of the day yesterday was to see Payto Lake. We were all alone at the
lookout point because of rolling thunder and strong winds but boy was
it ever nice.
Lucy had quite a challenge at Bow Pass (6849 feet above sea level) but
got us all the way up! We were in second gear at one point but she is
one tough cookie!
Back to looking for animal crossings!
Kinda funny story: On the way here there was a deer near the road so
Francis takes his foot off the accelerator to slow down. Well, Lucy
still has that backfire on deceleration issue so she lets out a loud
gunshot bang and the deer ran for his life :( I felt bad. Francis
thought it was hilarious.
Good old Lucy.
Oh yeah one thing we need to learn is how to portion our meals. We
decided to make macaroni yesterday but kind of forgot we have leftover
for days when we make it at home. Now we are trying to figure out what
the best way to reheat leftovers is with only a grill and a Naphta
stove :P
Maltesers are melting in the van!
Back on the road for the next pitstop!
Hopefully we can go for a hike later this afternoon.
More updates later!
The view from the top was stunning. It's too bad I couldn't get it all
on camera. We saw more animals on the way back. So far we have seen
cariboos, bighorn sheep and a white tail deer. It's a bit creepy how
unafraid of humans they are.
We saw some weird birds too. I think they were Clark's nutcrackers and
stellar's jay. We also saw some black billed magpies. Oh and the
squirrels around here are different too. They look a bit like baby
groundhogs but with a tail. :) They are called Columbia Ground
Squirrels.
Anyhow We finished the hike in 3.5 hours which is pretty good. We are
absolutely starving and looking forward to relax around the campfire
tonight.
Have a good weekend everyone!
We saw longhorn sheep and an elk on the way in. We stopped to take
pictures. They were less than 30 feet away from us. Quite amazing. The
water in the picture is perfectly clear and absolutely freezing!
We booked the campsite for 2 nights and will take a day trip tomorrow
to visit the Jasper area. Possibly find a good day hike.
It's hard to imagine how much distance is between here and Ottawa.
5000 kms or so! Lucy is a trooper to have driven us this far. :)
So Jasper is more rugged and wild than Banff. It's as beautiful if not
more because of it we were told.
Mountain pictures to come...
We would like to go back to the waterpark and the skating rink because
we didn't have a chance to go today.
We still haven't seen Rexall Place either so that's a must on our list.
Francis bought a backpack for when we go hiking. I pulled a typical me
and didn't buy anything except a DVD with an HMV certificate my uncle
Dan gave me for my birthday. I picked the movie One Week just because
it's so appropriate for the trip.
We ate Crepes for lunch and Went to the Old Spaghetti Factory for
dinner. There's around 3 food courts at the mall and a whole area
dedicated to sit-down restaurants. There's something for everyone
that's for sure. Jena I thought of you because there were TWO Lids
stores in there!
Oh on another note we saw a Fritou on the way. I had NO clue it was
anywhere but in our region. I wonder how they pronounce it here?
Anyhow we are now back at our site sitting around the campfire still
amazed at how bright it is out here even though it's 10pm. It set
around 11 last night.
No clue what the plan is for tomorrow. Hurray routine-free holidays!
We got a special request to post a picture of both of us so here it
is. We are not at our best but that is what camping is about!
It's 10pm here and still really bright out as you can see in the
picture. It's weird to think about going to bed before the sun sets.
Hmmm
Thinking of you all. Xoxo
