ICEFIELDS PARKWAY We had a good journey from Jasper to Lake Louise, along the Icefields Parkway - known as the most beautiful road in the world. It was certainly one of them with its towering rugged mountain peaks, huge deep blue and white glaciers, stunning azure lakes and dark green pine trees - all surrounded by meadows full of colourful wildflowers in pinks, reds and yellows - what more could one ask for from a vista, and this went on for 150 gorgeous miles. SO MANY GLACIERS Glaciers are formed when more snow falls from the sky than actually melts on the ground - we had never seen so many in one area as there were along the Icefields Parkway road. The Canadian Rockies comprise the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains - all ... read more

WHISTLER On leaving Vancouver we stopped at Brandywine Falls to have a picnic lunch. This scenic waterfall with a drop of 227 feet is situated near to the town of Squamish and was perfectly situated for a break where a short walk took us to an overlook of the falls. The trail started from the parking lot, crossed a wooden bridge over the river and crossed the railway track to a small platform overlooking the gorge. What a magnificent view of the waterfall we had from here, the sun was shining and at the bottom was a perfect rainbow - a good start to our next journey. Later that day we thought we had arrived in Switzerland - but actually we were in Whistler but the mountains and area was so like some of the resorts ... read more

This is a very long blog but covers our entire Cruise from Seward to Vancouver and all our ports of call. We left Seward behind and boarded our cruise boat which was an Holland America Line ship, the MS Statendam. It was not a huge ship but still had 1500 passengers however we were to see lot of ships twice this size on our journey. We have never been on a large cruise boat before and were a little concerned that we would not like it. However our friends Bob and Elaine had done a similar cruise in Alaska and enjoyed it so we hoped we would to. The main reason we decided to take the cruise was that it was one of the easiest and cheapest ways to get into Canada from the States, our ... read more

ANCHORAGE We picked up a hotel shuttle bus at the airport and gave the driver our hotel details - we were a little concerned when he said he had not heard of it! He did get us there though and it was actually really easy to find being right next to the Railway Station. We had planned this as our next journey would be by train and not plane. Before that though we had a few days in the largest city in Alaska. It was July and we were told that this was the best time to visit with good weather which it proved to be. As you would expect in the high northern latitudes, the longest days come around the summer solstice, 21 June, and they get quite short around the winter solstice, 21 December. ... read more

First of all I would like to correct the bird's name in our last blog which I incorrectly named as an Osprey when in fact it was a Peregrine Falcon - thanks SC for pointing this out and thanks for your email to - glad that you are still enjoying our blogs after all this time. I know you particularly like the bird photos but I am afraid there have not been too many recently as most of them seem to have flown the nest! It was sad to leave the Lower 48 and our ‘Eyeball van home’ but it was time to set off on yet another adventure, so we flew from San Francisco to Juneau in Alaska with a brief touch down in Seattle. Alaska only became the 49th state of the USA after ... read more