September 7th

This is it - the last post!  We have just returned from nine wonderful days on Vancouver Island and have just one day left in Vancouver before starting the trip home tonight.

Between arriving back from the Rockies and leaving for the Vancouver Island adventure, we continued visiting attractions such as the Capilano Suspension Bridge (after which we went and had coffee with Ann and Jean-Pierre, a lovely couple we met on the ship who live nearby), the Museum of Anthropology (what a magnificent place, so thanks for the tip Andy and Kim ) in which we saw the magnificent Bill Reid cedar sculpture below, the beautiful totem poles in Stanley Park and Grantville Island (again!).

Kippers has organised great weather for us and our sight-seeing has barely been disrupted by rain, hail or pestilence and he has very generously ferried us all over Vancouver.  Also met up with the Vancouver Heather Goddard, who Glenn Pyman had inadvertantly 'met' by attempting to send me an email which was wrongly addressed - how amazing!

The afore-mentioned and ever-reliable Kippers delivered us to the bus station at 6.15 the Sunday morning beforelast so we could catch the bus to Tsawassen and the BC Ferry to Swartz Bay and then Victoria on Vancouver Island. The ferry ride was very picturesque, as half of the route is through the Gulf Islands and it was a fine, but chilly, morning. Once we were deposited safely in Victoria, we picked up the hire car and had a wander through the Inner Harbour and checked out the beautiful Legislative Buildings (Victoria is the capital of British Columbia) and other lovely heritage buildings close by, before heading north.

We travelled up to Qualicum Beach, calling in to visit the charming village of Cowichan Bay with its buildings on stilts over the water's edge, Chemainus and its many murals and Nanaimo's harbour on the way up.





Arrived in Qualicum Beach in time to dump our stuff at the B and B (discovering in doing so that our lovely hostess, Karen, knows yet another Heather Goddard - an artist who comes and stays with her regularly!!). Spent some time walking on the beach, which was just lovely, although challengingly rocky for my dodgy legs!  Managed to gobble some more local fish - wild salmon and halibut, for tea at the Fish Tales restaurant.  Farmed Atlantic Salmon is going to be much less appealing when we get home!

The journey west started bright and early Monday morning. Travelled through Port Alberni, which sits at the tip of the 35 kilometre Alberni Inlet and then the Cathedral Grove, a rainforest of western red cedars and  800 year old Douglas Firs. The word (or words?) awe-inspiring leapt constantly into our minds as we drove along Highway 4 to Ucluelet, on the Pacific coast. Wilderness areas, sheer rock walls, magnificent lakes and rivers with the clearest water imaginable - such as the Ellis River pictured here, surrounded us.  Kennedy Lake, below, was also a picture!

Spent two wonderful nights in Ucluelet in a B and B in The Rainforest (literally) and enjoyed a two and a half hour sea-kayaking trip around the harbour area late on Monday afternoon, during which we saw a Black Bear fossicking on the shores of a bay for food (when we got close enough for the photo opportunity though, it was busy under a huge tree, the branches of which came right down to the ground - we could however, hear it turning rocks and snorting!), a couple of curious Harbour Seals, some Bald Eagles and a Belted Kingfisher. Astoundingly, we didn't capsize and even by the end we almost had our paddelling in synch, despite being distracted by salmon continually jumping around us. The salmon are all gathering at the river mouths waiting for enough water in the rivers to enable them to run up to breed and as it has been a very dry summer they have been waiting for weeks now as have the bears!

Tuesday was the day for visiting nearby Tofino and the Pacific Rim National Park, although the rain and subsequent cloud limited, but didn't ruin, our walking opportunities. Our first rainforest walk was hilarious - one of the tracks was closed because of  'a bear in the area' and the adjoining noticeboard featured signs warning of wolf and cougar activity in the area!!!! Luckily the advice if encountering any of these animals is not to run - I would be in serious bother if the solution was to run for my life!

 

The next walk was magic - Wickaninnish Beach, at the start of Long Beach, with its tonnes and tonnes of huge driftwood piled up all along the beach. It was truly remarkable, made even more so by the 'shelters' built from the timber (should say 'lumber' I suppose) by other beach-goers. The mist and rain seemed to enhance the colours and textures of the driftwood, so lots more photos were required! We ended up enjoying tea (cedar-planked maple salmon, which we had been dying to try) at the restaurant too and the cloud cleared just enough for a view of the sunset.  More time in Ucluelet would have been wonderful and Murray would, I am sure, be able to spend even longer at the harbour chatting to fishermen and other unwary passers-by!

From here we travelled back to the east coast of the island, spending a night at Campbell River, before driving on to Port Hardy, which is at the end of the road north.  We had a fantastic two nights here, despite Murray not being able to dive, which had been one of the main reasons for going there.  The B and B we stayed in, the Orange Tabby, was the best of our whole trip!  How else could you rate a place where the host, James, greets you at the door as you arrive, asking if you are ready for a glass of wine and then sends Murray off to the river fishing with all necessary gear and me, the avowed non-fisherperson, with a 'glass' of wine!

Murray went on a fishing trip on Friday and came back like an excited kid!  He had caught two Halibut, a couple of Coho Salmon, a Sockeye Salmon and assorted rockfish.  Susan at the B and B went out for tea that night, but handed over the kitchen so we could cook some fish for our tea. We ended up having a wonderful night, sharing fish and a bottle of Oyster Bay with Susan's sister-in-law and her husband who had just retunrnd from a trek around Cape Scott, at the very tip of the island.

On Saturday we travelled a mere 45 minutes to Telegraph Cove, a tiny 'resort' (winter population of 4!) which was originally a remote telegraph community established around a small cove.  We stayed in an old cabin on the boardwalk, which is built on stilts around the cove - rather lovely. Went on a whale watching trip in the afternoon to try and spot some Killer Whales (which we discovered are not whales at all - they are a type of porpoise). We did see the two males and one female of one of the family groups, although they didn't come very close.  Murray was feeling very superior about the fact that when he had been out fishing the day before, one of these same males had come right up to the boat and had sprayed them with misty air and vapour.  Smart alec!  Again, I was glad of the efficacy of the Sea Bands, as the sea was pretty lumpy and without them I would have been feeling more than a little sea sick.

On Sunday we set off on an expedition across to Grants Bay on the west coast. On our way up to Port Hardy to head west, we were absolutely astounded to spot a Black Bear sow and her two cubs on the roadside eating clover flowers.  Many tens of photos were taken of course!

We made Grants Bay after a ninety minute drive over gravel roads and logging roads.  It was an absolutely beautiful beach and the rainforest through which we walked to reach it was gorgeous, with huge old trees, ferns and many, many nurse logs on which young trees were growing.

That evening we went for a fascinating four hour trip around the Port Hardy area with Larry Woodall, a local guide to whom we were introduced by our new friends at the Orange Tabby, who has been taking a variety of hiking, canoeing and bear viewing trips for the past 33 years. Sadly we only saw one bear, a young male looking for food on the foreshore, but we saw an active bear den, a beaver lodge, some cougar poo (very exciting!) and learnt so much about Black and Grizzly Beas and their habits. We also learnt things we would rather not know about the hunting of bears!!!!  Hunters can shoot two bears a year in BC and they are legally able to shoot bears (or any other game animals) that are at a greater distance than 15 metres from the yellow line down the middle of the roads. Sadly, this has left a very disturbing image in our minds!

On Monday we travelled down to Nanaimo.  It rained all the way, which meant that we weren't tempted to stop and do any sight-seeing as the sights were well and truly obscured!  Caught the BC Ferry back to Vancouver, where Kippers and Liette kindly picked us up and off we went back to their apartment.  Had a lovely meal at the Chinese restaurant where they met.  Tuesday was spent enjoying the lovely weather on Granville Island (a favourite Vancouver spot, especially for our last day) and just mucking about and organising our ever-increasing luggage.  Cooked the last of the Halibut for tea - what absolutely beautiful fish!

So now it is time to go home!  We have had an absolutely marvellous time - met some wonderful people, seen some unbelievably beautiful places and best of all, have spent lots of special time with Kate and Derek and Kippers and Liette.  The memories will last a very long time - as long as our memories last anyway!

August 27th

. . . and we have had the most wonderful time!

So, here we are back in Vancouver with yet another 'block' of our grand tour completed and what a fantastic trip it has been. The word awesome, in its original and 'proper' sense kept leaping into our heads as we encountered time and again the almost unbelievable beauty created by the forces of nature. I know that sounds completely manufactured and over the top, but it is so true!

We finished our last post as we arrived in Jasper, which we discovered was a very pleasant town - another example of a tourist destination which had not become tacky. Unfortunately, smoke from the BC fires continued to be a problem and after checking the weather forecast the night we arrived, we decided to change our plans completely. Friday the 20th therefore saw us heading down the Icefields Parkway towards Lake Louise instead of prowling around Jasper, as the forecast was for rain on Saturday, the day on which we were to travel down to Banff along the Parkway. As the Icefields Parkway is one of Canada's iconic highways, it would have been very sad for the scenery for which it is so famous to have been obscured by cloud and rain,so we made the decision to drive down and back so if it the weather was no good on Saturday we wouldn't be sad.

Our first stop at the Athabasca Falls set the scene for the journey - the Athabasca River thunders through a narrow gorge cut through the rock over milennia.

As we continued the smoke was less thick so we were able to see more and more of the rugged peaks which dominate the drive. We are not going to try and describe every wonderful sight as this blog would go on far too long! Suffice to say that every bend in the Icefields Parkway revealed a view more stunning than the last. By the time we reached Lake Louise we had seen it all - towering mountain peaks, huge rushing rivers, wide meandering rivers, plunging waterfalls, massive glaciers flowing over the edges of mountains, wildlife (we saw a Black Bear feeding on berries by the side of the road) and lakes the colour of which is breathtaking because of the 'rock flour' from glacial action suspended in the water. For visitors from a dry, ancient land like ours this was scenery to take the breath away.

We reached Lake Louise at the southern end of the Parkway and it is as beautiful as the tourist brochures say - a huge lake, teal coloured in the sunlight. There were, however, way too many people for us so we took yet more photos, grabbed a coffee and started the 230kms back to Jasper, happy with our decision as we had been rewarded with a largely sunny day.

Friday's sightseeing in Jasper was seriously compromised by smoke and as our B and B host Connie said to us 'it was a day for looking down, not up'. We did therefore enjoy Maligne Canyon, claimed to be one of the most spectacular gorges in the Canadian Rockies, but the other much-lauded sights were fairly well obscured. We did, however, see some wonderful wild animals as we drove around - another Black Bear, a male Mule Deer, female and young Elk and a family of Loons feeding on a lake.

Saturday we travelled back down the Parkway and as we got further south the smoke was less and less. We took Kim and Andy's advice and travelled up to Bow Summit to see Peyto Lake and talk about a scene too good to be true! This photo, which is an 'autostitch' of three separate photos, looks as if we have tampered with the colour of the water.

 

Decided we should visit Moraine Lake, which is near Lake Louise, despite the hordes we knew would be there and what an inspired decision - a Grizzly Bear crossed the road in front of us, climbed up the bank and proceeded to eat berries! How lucky were we? Murray keeps insisting that it is good timing and planning - nothing to do with luck!

We had the next two nights in Banff and we enjoyed this far more than we thought we would. The mountains around here are quite different - huge, grey, imposing limestone peaks with much less vegetation. Weather was a bit varied, but there were plenty of sightseeing opportunites between showers and we saw . . . yes, more wild animals! Male, female and young Big Horn Sheep, a huge male Elk with massive antlers and a White-tailed Deer.

We also encountered the Black-billed Magpie, a lovely bird which reminded us more of Choughs than our magpies. Also saw a couple of Loons (very far away!) and a Blue Heron. We have been constantly disappointed by the few birds we have spied though, even though we have been in extensive forest areas and checked out heaps of wetlands. Maybe the water is too cold up here for the macro-invertebrates the wetland birds need? We need to have a Gordon or a Brian Thomas travelling with us to answer the constant questions which arise!

We left Banff last Sunday and travelled back to Lake Louise via the Bow Valley Parkway, stopping off at the amazing Johnston Canyon. From here we turned west on the Trans Canada Highway and after initially thinking that we were in 'gentler' terrain, we found ourselves crossing from Alberta back into British Columbia and the Kootenay National Park (don't you just love that name!). By the time we had descended the Kicking Horse Pass (if you are into trains google the Spiral Tunnels and read about how they solved the problem of bringing trains across this pass) and were in the Yoho National Park.

From here we passed through Glacier National Park, with its 430 glaciers and then into Revelstoke National Park. What a surfeit of glorious scenery and incredible mountain travel - it is certainly more exciting than the Icefields Parkway in that respect. Walked through a magnificent area of old growth Western Red Cedar temperate rainforest (unusual because it is so far from the coast) and were once again horrified that people can bring their dogs into national parks in this country. Horror of horrors, we even saw a cat tethered to a huge RV in a camping area along the Icefields Parkway, which is in the Jasper and Banff National Parks!

On to Revelstoke, a lovely little mountain town where we stayed the night and enjoyed one of the best nights of music ever (Balnarring Musos' Nights excluded of course). A Vancouver band called Blackberry Wood played in the Grizzly Plaza from 7 - 10 and what a fantastically exciting band they were. Murray appointed himself their publicist for the night and flogged their CD to the crowd - don't know how he could go about organising an Australian tour, but it would be a great idea!

Next morning we got ourselves up the Meadows in the Sky Parkway on Mt Revelstoke before any other pesky tourists, drove up to the car park (seeing a gorgeous Hoary Marmot on the way) and then walked the 1km up to the summit (I didn't care what damage I did to knees, ankles etc - I just wasn't missing out!). What a magic time - 360 degrees of the stunning Columbian Mountains all around, many with snow and glaciers and the wildflower meadows were a sight to behold. The quietness was divine - no noisy tourists with no sense of place to spoil things and to upset the little chipmunks which were darting amongst the undergrowth collecting food.

From here we headed back into Revelstoke to visit the Railway Museum - we are still trying to impress Gordon and Scott with our commitment to trains (a vitally important part of the development of Canada as a nation) and then took off south into the Okanagan Valley, a major area of orchards and vineyards. It seemed to be one long lake - so much water, yet the hills all around looked incredibly dry. We made it to our destination Osoyoos, which is at the southern end of the valley and Canada's only desert. Stayed the night in a wonderful B and B and then the next morning we had a fascinating walk around the Osoyoos Desert Centre and were very lucky (more good planning says Murray!) to see a Gopher Snake crossing the road as we drove in.

Then embarked on the drive back to Vancouver - more mountains, rivers and lakes and arrived back at Kippers and Liette's about 5pm. This has been an amazing part of our trip and because of that I have to apologise for going on and on about it!!!
Today I saw a quote by Emily Carr, one of Canada's foremost landscape artists and it just sums it up perfectly:

There is something bigger than fact:

the underlying spirit,

all it stands for,

the mood, the vastness,

the wildness.

It is unbelievable that we have been here for almost seven weeks and only have our few days in Vancouver and our time on Vancouver Island to go! Will do a final update from there before we head for home on the 8th.

Friday 20 August

Now we have more affordable internet (comes with the accomodation as is usually the case, so we have no excuse!) we will try for more regular updates so we don't have to write so much and our lovely friends don't have to read so much.

On Tuesday morning, after three glorious days in Vancouver, the ever-reliable Kippers delivered us to the station to catch the Rocky Mountaineer train to Jasper, although it turned out to be the wrong station! Fortunately the station we wanted was only five minutes away and we had plenty of time, so we have not sacked him as chauffeur, accomodation-provider, chef and all-around good bloke.


The first day's travel took us to Kamloops at a rather leisurely pace due to a combination of the track continually changing direction, freight trains in front of us and stops at sidings for other freight trains to pass. Of course this leisurely pace all contributed to us taking what now seems like 5,000 photos, most of them duplicates, as we both had our cameras clicking away at the same time. But, first things first - this is meant to be a chronological account of our journey so here we go . . .

On leaving Vancouver, behind three huge deisel locos, we crossed the Fraser River and then proceeded to follow it into the Cascade Mountains. There are two tracks, built by competing companies, from Vancouver right through to Jasper, often side-by-side, but where there was insufficient space, the other company had to take the more difficult route on the opposite side. Although the tracks are still owned by different companies, both now use each other's tracks - one for easterly journeys and one for westerly ones. Engineering out of the way, let's get to the trip!

As we travelled east, the Fraser River became more of a canyon and the line was perched on the edge of Hell's Gate, a narrow gorge through which more water rushes per minute than goes over Niagara Falls.

 From here we travelled on to Cisco Crossing and the bridge over the Jaws of Death Gorge. The very names of these places invoke images of the sort of magnificent scenery we were enjoying, as well as admiration for the engineering expertise of those who planned and built these lines, bridges and tunnels in the late 1800s.

From here we turned east, following the Thomson River and entered an area of semi-arid desert in the rain shadow of the Coastal Mountains. We were not expecting this type of landscape - plateaux rather than mountains, with very little vegetation and native Ponderosa Pines, which had been absolutely devastated by the Pine-beetle, which has ravaged British Columbia's pines since the early 1990s. This landscape was the order of the day right into Kamloops, which was the destination of our first day's travel of some 300 miles.

We did manage some serious wildlife spotting here and many hours were spent hanging out the 'windows' of the platform between carriages. We saw many Osprey (and their wonderful stick nests) and Bald Eagles, both flying and perched in dead pines along the river, a couple of groups of Big Horn Sheep, one Black Bear ambling across a hillside and some Loons (Heff's currently favourite birds) swimming in Lake Kamloops.This is a huge lake, officially regarded as 'bottomless'.

Spent the night in a hotel in Kamloops, a town we won't be rushing back to and boarded the train again at 8am the next morning, ready for another day's adventure. We were extremely lucky to have a wonderfully well-informed and entertaining attendant on our carriage, who fed us and more importantly, shared with us lots and lots of fascinating information about the areas through which we were travelling, the history of those areas and the railways, the flora and fauna and all sorts of lovely trivia.

We travelled north along the North Thomson River valley and saw huge areas which had been burnt out  in a fire four years ago. It seemed to us that the native forests here have much more limited regenerative powers than our native bush at home, as they were still starkly bare. The vegetation and landscape had changed fairly dramatically from the semi-arid desert of the day before and we were seeing lots of swampy areas along the valley and we were back to lots of pines and beech trees on the higher ground, although we were constantly disappointed by the lack of birdlife and our inability to spot any moose, as these are the conditions they enjoy. We were also a bit sad about the fact that the smoke from the almost 300 fires now burning across northern British Columbia was obscuring all but the nearest highlands and mountains.

Travelling through the Caribou Mountains, the last of the Pacific Plate mountains before we reached the much younger Rocky Mountains, we passed by the beautiful Pyramid Falls.

As we waited in a siding for a freight train to pass, we learnt from Tim that freight trains can now be 200 carriages (or 2 miles) long and the longest he has seen was 216 carriages! No wonder they took so damn long to go by!!!!! We also found out why there are pairs of propane cylinders along the tracks. They are not for barbeques for passing train crews, but are linked electronically to 'central control' and are used to heat the points and switches in the winter - stuff you don''t even think about! Ignore the fact that this photo of a passing freight train was taken much earlier in the 'dry' country!

On we went, unable to see exciting things like the Albreda Glacier and Mt. Robson (highest point in the Canadian Rockies) because of the smoke and came to the Rocky Mountain Trench, where the two tectonic plates meet. Here we again ran alongside the Fraser River and discovered that the Chinook Salmon travel from the Pacific Ocean 800 miles to this area to spawn - how amazing is that? We were also amazed that we had seen the Fraser River here at its headwaters in Moose Lake and also where it enters the ocean at Vancouver.

As we crossed the Continental Divide at the highest point of our journey - about 3,200 feet (note how we have regressed to imperial measurements here in North America!), we left British Columbia and entered Alberta. We had expected that we would do a bit more climbing on this trip, but much of the journey was along river valleys (which makes perfect sense if you are a railway or roads' engineer), unlike our trip through the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains on the Californian Zephyr, which reached heights of 9,000 feet and was, therefore, much more spectacular in many respects.
Arrived in Jasper at 6pm after a very enjoyable two days  - it is much more relaxing to travel long distances on a train than to drive, especially if you are being fed, watered and entertained and as a huge bonus, you get to meet lots of interesting people.

Our kind bed and breakfast host Ken came and picked us up from the station, so we settled ourselves into the Hummingbird Crossing B & B (what a great name!) and set off to explore Jasper, which sounds like a great place to spend the next two days.
The next part of our adventure, the Rocky Mountains, deserves its own blog entry so until next time . . .