3 July 2012

We left our quaintly decorated campsite for the palatial digs of the big city, Vancouver.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  The drive south and west started off through undulating pasture land surrounded by old established glacial mountains, that eventually transitioned to the Northern Canadian Rockies.  This means that there were rounded tops with timber growth, so besides seeing livestock, we also had to be on the lookout for timber trucks.  Timber trucks consist of a semi cab with 3 log bearing trailers stacked to maximum height and fullness. 

We transitioned from moose and caribou country into bear and deer country.  Interesting that the bears continue to follow us south, and that Canada 99 has to post in several places “Do not stop to feed or view bears.”   Canada 99 closely follows the Fraiser River for over 100 miles.  This was tantamount to a slow and extremely long roller coaster ride, in the rain of course.  Hair pin curves were countless and the twisting curve signs were also numerous.  When we left the Fraiser River, we followed Cayoosh Creek for over 100 km too.  Along the way, we stopped at Fort Berens winery and tasted some Gold Medal winning wines.  I ended up buying a few bottles.  Roger is worried about going through US Customs, but I’m not because I didn’t buy that much.

The picture below is Duffey Lake, which is formed by a huge log jam that occurred years ago, and is now maintained by the annual flow of logs that fall and get moved downstream.  The Native term for the log jam is teq.

We stopped at Whistler hoping to get a nice walk in, while looking around the base of the slope in the summertime.  They locale is working hard to make Whistler a year round place.  From extreme sports activities, which included a skate board park, a bike BMX course, lots of mountain bike trails, to putt putt golf and bungee trapeze.  All with the goal to make money in the summertime. 

We then took off up one of the ski trails and about a mile out it started to rain.  So we turned around and got wet on the return trek.  On the way back to the RV, we came across the Squamish  Native Interpretative Center.  Out front a guy was just getting started on carving a totem pole. 

Our campsite for the evening is “swanky.”  It has individual hedges between each site pad.  Of course this comes with a location price.  But we are walking distance to the Vancouver metro and don’t have to move the RV and find a place to park in downtown Vancouver.  Tomorrow we’re headed downtown, I think, and then on Thursday we’ll be taking the ferry over to Victoria on Vancouver Island.