Vancouver is great.
But before we get to that, let's backtrack slightly to tell those of you who have been reading about nearly a week of fun.
The last time I updated, I was in Calgary. As you can tell from our video blogs and our photos, our time in Calgary was pretty animal related. On our way into the city, we went to Drumheller - about an hour and a half outside of Calgary - to see the dinosaur museum and the badlands. we climbed inside the world's tallest fake dinosaur. my calves hurt for 3 days after.
We stayed with our good friend Kate in Calgary, and on the first night we went out for some good ol' Alberta steaks. They were pretty tasty. The next day, Nicole and I spent the day at the Calgary Zoo - checking out tons and tons of animals. It was cold in Calgary when we were there - cold enough that there were a few brief periods of flurries - but not cold enough that we couldn't walk around a zoo for an entire day without seeing any animals. We saw tons. From elephants, giraffes, monkeys, lions, leopards, tigers - you name it. Again, there's lots of good footage in the last installment of the video blog.
That night, I made a big pasta supper for Kate, her sister Alison, her boyfriend James and Nicole and myself. And we turned in pretty early. Walking around a zoo for 3 and a half hours can tire a feller (and a lady) out.
The next day, we hit the road for Edmonton to spend a couple days with my friend Sarah - or, ol' Hoyles as I lovingly call her. Her folks were more than accommodating to us weary travelers, and we had a wonderful supper with them and with Sarah's sister, brother-in-law and nephew. It's nice to visit friends all around the country, but it's nice to have a family around you from time to time too when you're on the road. Makes you feel a little less homesick.
Our first night in E-Town was pretty low-key. After supper, Nicole and I took a trip out to the West Edmonton Mall. Ok, sure, the mall has a huge waterpark in it, an amusement park, and a rink - but in the end, it's just a big mall. Like, really big. Almost too big. We didn't spend a whole lot of time there. If you've seen one store, you've seen em all.
The next day was adventurous. Sarah took us on an excursion all over the city of Edmonton via the Light Rail Transit trains (think Subways, but less speed). We got to see a statue of Wayne Gretzky, some of the downtown, the legislature building, some of the University of Alberta campus, Whyte Ave which is a cool shopping district, etc etc.
That night, after another wonderful supper at the hands of Mom and Dad Hoyles, we went downtown for a bit to have a beer and I met up with my friend Chris - whom I met while traveling with Sleepless Nights in Cornerbrook, Newfoundland last spring. Awesome guy. Glad we got to hang out for a bit.
Saturday morning, we packed up the Suaveo, said our goodbyes and hit the road for Jasper, AB where we would be camping with my cousin Marcel and his girlfriend Jennifer. Now, you have to realize, that Jasper is probably one of the most beautiful places in the whole world. The town is just a tiny touristy type deal, but it's so quaint and perfect - outlined of course by the stupifying magnificence of the rocky mountains. So, we had a lot of things going for us - hanging out with my cousin whom (until last fall) I hadn't seen in many years, camping in the mountains amongst gorgeous scenery and atmosphere, and the ability for many adventures to take place.
And many adventures took place.
On our first night, we took a tramway (sort of like a gondola) up to the top of a mountain where we had a beer and overlooked the town of Jasper and the plethora of mountains that surround it. It was an amazing sight, considering we did this about two hours after we set up our tent.
On our way into Jasper, we had seen some caribou and some elk, so we went for a little drive to see if we could spot any more wildlife, and sure enough, we saw a whole bunch of elk eating their supper. That night, we had a BBQ - pork chops and buffalo steaks (!!) - made a meager attempt at starting a fire, then went to bed.
OK, you know all the things I said that were awesome about camping in the mountains? Well the one thing that isn't so awesome is the evening temperatures. The temperature drops about ten degrees at night - which we were only sort of prepared for on the first night. Let's just say, on the second night, we had a bunch more sweaters handy.
Sunday morning, we got up and went into the town of Jasper for breakfast then we hit the road to see the Columbia Icefield. The Ice Fields are part of a series of enormous glaciers (eight) between Jasper and Banff. Glaciers are not icebergs. Glaciers are years and years of snow and ice that actually form on top of mountains and act as bigger mountains. Because they're on top, they can move. This is what causes things like mountains and valleys to be formed during the ice age, etc. The Columbia Icefield is so big that it is the only set of glaciers that feeds into three oceans - the arctic, the atlantic and the pacific.
Moral of the story is, we actually go up into the Icefields and onto one of the glaciers. We took these immense snow-equipped passenger vehicles and booted it up onto the Icefields. We were told we were standing on years and years of compressed snow which - to put it in perspective - would bury the Eiffel Tower. It was a pretty cool adventure. It was even cooler to think that we were only on something like 4% of the Icefield - the other 96% was hidden behind the mountains. Can you imagine?
On our way back from the Icefields, we saw some Bighorn Sheep and some Mountain Goats just hanging around on the mountains, eating away at the grass and licking away at the minerals. We made a substantially better fire than the night before when we got back, had a few brewskies and roasted a whole feed of hot dogs before calling it a night.
Monday morning, I made an attempt at re-packing the car in the interest of saving room because we've been picking up some things here and there, we said our goodbyes to Marcel and Jen, and hit the road for Kelowna.
Driving from Jasper to Kelowna brought three things: First, we finally crossed the border into BC; second, we finally hit the last time zone change in Canada; and third, we saw probably some of the most beautiful scenery we have seen on our trip to date.
Like I said, Jasper - again - was amazing. I would like to live there for a summer or something. Could be fun - and beautiful. But as awe-inspiring and jaw-dropping as the Rockies are, the foothills are perhaps more beautiful. The foothills aren't really mountains per-say, they're not as big as the Rockies or anything. They are the greener-type of hills at the base of the mountains. So, driving from Jasper to Kelowna, we got to drive through the foothills, through the valleys and quasi-mountains of greenery, trees, etc. To drive to Kelowna, you have to drive through the Okanagan Valley. Pictures and videos to come, but it was by far the nicest scenery we've seen to date.
We arrived in Kelowna around supper time, and spent the night at our friend Grant's house. He cooked us amazing barbecued chicken that night and awesome eggs benedict the next morning. The guy can cook. And he's a great host - always good to see him.
That brings us up to yesterday. We continued the drive through the foothills to get to Vancouver. When we got here, we came downtown to see my cousin Amanda. She's a load of fun, and so so nice. She's letting us stay at her apartment for a couple days while she's out of town at a conference in Moncton (she's a lawyer), so it was nice that we could hook up for an evening of fun before she had to leave.
We went out for supper last night, had some great burgers and beers down by the water, and made it back home in time to watch Jon Stewart for the first time in what feels like weeks.
Yesterday we celebrated the 3-week mark of our trip. We have about a week to spend in between Vancouver and Vancouver Island, and then everything from there on in is trekking towards the East Coast.
We've made a few changes to our trip in the interest of saving money - the most important change is that we've decided we can't really afford to go to Newfoundland. It's kind of a bummer, but we'll be able to save a bit of cash this way and spend a little more time exploring the Maritimes on the way home.
But that's all in the future. The next couple of days are all about exploring the West Coast. Vancouver, bring it on!
you guys know how to pack 3 weeks full of pavement, wildlife, music, camping, big breakfasts & scenery. i am jealous with a capital J
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