Tag Archives: reflections

August 28th: A long hike and a long drive.

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We’ve now started to leave the Rockies, heading towards the coast on the Yellowhead highway. The first stop was just back into BC, in the Mt. Robson park. We visited the visitor centre (I mean, center), from where we could see the summit of Mt. Robson, covered in snow. Apparently, it’s not that common to see the whole peak; as it’s so often cloud covered. Then we did a the longest hike so far, 4.5 km alongside the Robson River as far as Kinney lake (and back again!). The views were stunning along the way.

The second stop was an area of old growth rain forest; it’s not common to have rainforest so far from the coast, but the geography of the area leads to a lot of rain, luckily not while we were there!

August 26th: Icefields Parkway

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A fabulous day! We started out by nipping back to Lake Louise – the crowds were much diminished at 8am, and wonderfully clear weather gave us some great reflections. Then, headed North. The Icefields Parkway more or less follows the Great Divide – running roughly due North from Banff to Jasper, for some 230 km. The Parkway (aka Highway 93) is stunning. It’s in the National Parks so HGVs are banned. We made several stops as we headed North, starting with lakes full of reflections, distant glaciers, wonderful views etc. Unfortunately, there were no bears crossing the road as others we met told us about. Roughly the mid point is where the main visitor centre is, and, more to the point, where the Columbia Icefield is near enough to the road for people to get to and walk on, without major hiking. We, however, missed that, going instead for the Glacier Skywalk. I’d thought that it went over the glacier, it didn’t, but it did give a great view, and made the glass floor of the Spinnaker Tower seem fairly tame. By the time we’d done that, it was getting late – and the cloud was building up, so we just headed for Jasper, only stopping just outside the town, for a final photo. We found a rather splendid restaurant, the Raven Bistro, which had a good range of both veggie & non-veggie dishes.

21st August: On the road!

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As usual, there was a bit of a wait to pick up the car, but not too bad, really. The car itself was a Fiat 500, though luckily somewhat larger than a UK Fiat 500 … it really wasn’t too bad leaving Vancouver, the roads are fairly empty, and then headed up the Trans Canada to Hope. It was only the first day of driving, but we discovered that it’s not easy to get lunch enroute … ended up with a rather dodgy pasta salad. However, the views made up for it! There were two options from Hope, one was the Crowsnest highway – a scenic route, the other a multilane highway. No prizes for guessing which we picked. Just before Penticton, our destination, we’d decided to detour to Okanagan Falls. Shame that the falls were all of 3” high …

There were multitudinous fruit stalls by the roadside, as well as wineries, but time and weather confined us to the inside of the car. Penticton itself was partially closed, due to an Iron Man (and woman) contest, which was headquartered in our hotel. There was a great view of the lake from the room.

After an evening pottering round town, finding somewhere to eat, seeing a little of the band playing in the central park, (perhaps the rather small crowds were indicative of the fact that that your average Ironman athlete would actually want to party all night before the event), we returned to the hotel … and discovered someone had damaged the front of the car. Whoops. Luckily, the guy who’d done it admitted responsibility – turned out to be a very nice guy (albeit one with a temperamental boat trailer)

20th August: Downtown Vancouver

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After a typically (well, in my experience) North American breakfast (bagels & coffee), we headed downtown. Luckily, as our hotel was more or less there, it didn’t take long to get to the area round the art gallery (not that we went in, though we did see a new interactive feature … )

Then it was down to the waterfront, where, among other things, a large open air yoga class was just starting, though we headed on towards Gastown, one of the oldest bits of town (via a bookshop that seemed almost as old).

Next to Stanley park, where by now the sun had come out, so a gentle potter before heading back to the hotel, then experiencing the bus system (very efficient!) to get to English bay, for a lovely stroll.