Another damp and misty day. This morning we travelled close to islands and in the afternoon, it was mostly open sea travel. The seas are relatively smooth with only the occasional swell. We went to a lecture conducted by a marine ecologist Bruce Bauerle who included a slide show about whales, orca and dolphins. He said we should see whales tomorrow night and later on in near Juneau. We had a game of shuffleboard this afternoon, Maur’s form was good in the warm up and got better at gametime defeating me reasonably easily. Met our remaining dinner table guests tonight, George [View Full Entry]

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Today’s priority was to find a replacement camera after the on/off button jammed permanently off late yesterday and absolutely refused to come back on whilst we were in Victoria on Vancouver Island. As fate would have it, only 50m away from our motel was a Staples store (like OfficeWorks) and within minutes the manager sold us an updated model of the one we had, less 25% and to boot, it accepted our existing batteries and 1 gig memory card (saving more money). We drove just up the road to the Capilano Dam and walked out onto the wall and experienced [View Full Entry]

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This day was long..... alarm woke us at 7am and up and off to Vancouver Island via the BC ferry. Straight to Butchart Gardens. We were blown away. This surely, is one of the best man made wonders of the world. from an old limestone quarry was born maybe 15 acres of planted gardens, landscapes, designs you name it. We arrived ion spring so had tulips every which way, long and short interspersed with smaller flowers; myriads of colours, pastels and shades, all done beautifully. Even the apple trees were majestic. Most flowering trees were trimmed below leaving only the [View Full Entry]

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Hot, hot, hot...... 32c We had a full day in Vancouver today, it was a short drive over the Lion Bridge from our hotel in Nth Vancouver to Stanley Park. Which is situated in the city area. We purchased a "hop on, hop off" ticket for the trolley tram. We became real tourists for the day, we enjoyed the city, finding it spacious with lovely colourful gardens around every corner. We managed to do a lot of walking.... especially through the wooded area and waters edge of Stanley park and the city streets....16,500 steps.... Geoff says that's about 13ks !!! Pretty [View Full Entry]

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Today we had a very unexpected train ride..... We called down to the Kamloops rail station and found the heritage rail group, had a special first day of summer run for their 1912 steam engine and had invited the local church groups for a ride..... we joined them !!! We fitted in pretty well.... we were a little younger than most. We had a great one and a half hour trip....... lots of fun ! We left Kamloops at about 12.30 expecting a 4 hour trip to Vancouver..... boy.... were we wrong ! all went well ....until 50ks out of [View Full Entry]

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A very long drive today…. Yesterday we had snow…. Today we had 30c heat !.....can you believe it ?? We spent a little time in Jasper this morning, before leaving about 10am, we knew we had a long drive ahead, but we didn’t know, how hot it would be….. a real shock to the system. As we drove south along highway 5 we followed the Nth Thompson river, the scenery changed from snow covered mountains to open farmland. Pine trees disappeared and were replaced by forests of silver birch and maples. Kamloops is in a semi arid zone, now the [View Full Entry]

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Today was the day…….. we found a bear !!!! A black bear. All rugged up for the cold we left Lake Louise early….. we were on a mission…. To see as much of Yoho, Banff and Jasper National parks. It would be an understatement to say, we have travelled down the most amazing and scenic roads today… we even had light snow fall. The Columbia Icefield in Jasper National park, was awe inspiring, this is the largest glacier in Nth America. Along the way we found wild life, longhorn sheep, mule deer, elk and of course BEAR. We have lost [View Full Entry]

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An overcast sky today, but the clouds were high and we could see the top of every mountain….just beautiful…. Snow white snow …. On the ground, along the rivers,and covering the mountain tops. We drove along the Trans Canada Highway No 1, to Lake Louise, it was only about a 50k drive, so we arrived early. Lake Louise is frozen over, a site to see ! We took a walk along the lakes edge, a great 5k walk, along the way the path was quite wet with snow and ice. The Fairmont Hotel was framed beautifully with the mountains and [View Full Entry]

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It wasn’t far out of Calgary on the way to Banff…. we saw our first snow! Just beside the road… and then everywhere. The scenery got more beautiful the closer we got to the mountains. The first stop was at Canmore, a pretty little town at the base of the Rockies, we stopped for a coffee and sat in the sun, the air was cool, but the sun was shinning brightly. Banff was only a short drive on from there. Spectacular Banff… a real tourist town, we took a gondola ride up to the top of Sulphur Mountain…. It was [View Full Entry]

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Up 6am this morning… we didn’t want to miss our flight. It was miserable outside, rain, rain and more rain….. terrible day in Chicago. We dropped the car back at Hertz, we were very pleased with our Chevy Cobalt we did 2328 miles. We checked the luggage in OK, but we both were taken aside for security checks, our hand luggage also got the once over…. My shaker boxes made it through !! We arrived in Calgary after a three and a half hour flight. Collected our hire car, this time a Toyota Yaris…. Tiny….My turn to drive…. So I’m happy [View Full Entry]

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