A Bit Different from Caravanning

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An odd year… and we are overseas again

We are here in Canada, but not before we made a slight detour to Chicago. The main reason for trip is to do the Rockies and later the Inside Passage by ship. So off we went on early Friday morning to start the first leg to Auckland and, after a 5 ½ hour delay there, on to Vancouver arriving late on Friday afternoon. The connection to Chicago was better made the following morning so we made an overnight stop there, Marg calculated that we had taken 31 hours from the time we left home to the time we arrived at our hotel near the Vancouver airport. We did have time there to catch up with the latest figures on Chicago where they had only had 146 deaths by shooting (year to date) which was down by about 30 % on last year, but to their credit, they added another 7 over the weekend while we were there. It is a cheap shot (no pun intended) but I had to do it.

We did have a wonderful time in Chicago helped somewhat by the weather, and Geoff had a long anticipated chance to catch up with his old friends from his GNX (eSourcing ) days. One made the trip from Cincinnati by road which was a great effort and the other very generously shouted us lunch and a trip by boat on the Chicago River where the history of the city and buildings was explained. In all it was a great time and we enjoyed our time in this huge city.

So back to Vancouver and straight onto the ferry to get us to Victoria on Vancouver Island. The travel had been fairly taxing and we opted for drugs to give us a good night’s sleep – it worked. We had a look around the small city centre and quickly worked out the layout of the city. We had been advised that the very lovely Fairmont Empress served “afternoon tea”, so we called in… Fortunately there was a lady in front of us when we found the ‘tea room’ and we heard the server ”we have just got a new menu madam, (Can) $59.95” Marg felt a sudden push in the middle of her back and we soon found ourselves outside again. To be fair it is very much in the same style as Tea at the Windsor – Melburnians will understand.

It is now Wednesday, and we started the tour (with an introductory dinner)and we also met up with our neighbours Rob and Brenda who had taken a different route to get to Victoria. The group we will be travelling with is 40 strong, with 36 coming from Oz (all East coasters) and 4 unfortunate Poms. Several in the group had already done a 7 day tour of the (Canadian East coast as part of their tour). It soon became evident that we were going to have a fun time as we all seemed to have something in common – the love of a good time!

Day 2 Hang on a minute, where did day one go? Oh, yes dinner in the evening… gee, how time flies. Ok, having got over that, we started very early, loading onto the coach and headed North back up Vancouver Island to the Butchart Gardens for breakfast. The gardens were at their (almost) best and a really wonderful experience with many, many photo opportunities in the very extensive gardens. Mrs Butchart used the hole left from the family limestone quarrying business to develop many areas dedicated to various gardening styles, and the result was truly stunning.

The afternoon was for our “freedom of choice” excursions, however the salmon fishing was cancelled due to bad weatherand the whale watching was delayed for the same reason. Marg was not prepared to wait for the whales, so she joined the float plane trip. Now, Rob pointed out the incongruity of flying being the only tour available in the bad weather, but… they know what they are doing, right? We bounced around the sky, flew sideways and did not get a lot of photos because of the rain, but it was all good and a great experience, made all the better by living to tell the tale.

Friday and now we start the days of ‘wake-up call at xx o’clock, bags out at xx + o’clock and on the coach at xx + 2 o’clock’ routine. This touring is very complicated and even though we are now 10 days into our travels we have still have not got our suitcases under control... Geoff puts it down to Marg packing everything a week before we were due to leave. (Marg puts it down to Geoff not knowing where he has packed things!) Nonetheless, we were off to the snow resort town of Whistler, and while it didn’t affect us, the floatplane option was cancelled due to poor visibility on the mountain…hmmm. It’s supposed to summer isn’t it? The first leg was back up the island and onto the ferry to Vancouver. On the ferry trip we saw some Orca (Killer) whales right beside us. Finally we were headed for the mountains and we were looking forward to having the resort to ourselves. (Quieter than winter, you know).

How wrong could we have been? The tour director did give a bit of a hint when he referred to the traffic heading in the same direction, but nothing prepared us for sharing the mountain with 20,000 Tough Mudders, not to mention thousands of mountain bikers! The village was as crowded as I have seen it in winter; however it is the nature of the place that the crowds seem to melt into the surroundings, and they did not get in our way. Our include activity was the Peak to Peak gondola ride; some thought that this would test Geoff as he has a great fear of heights and the gondola does cross the valley between Whistler and Blackcomb mountains at a very great height. Fortunately there was a lot of low cloud and by the time we got to the point where it was 365 mts above the valley it was too late to change your mind!! One victory to Geoff – and yes we did come back the same way! For the skiing readers, yes there was skiable snow on the very upper peaks; however it was very much like Australian spring snow – soft and wet. It did not deter the desperates, however and there were a few skiers and boarders getting in that ‘last run’.

Whistler is lovely, but we were on a mission (tour) so ‘bags out at 8.00 am’ and we were on our way into/through the Rockies proper. The next stop was Sun Peaks, an interesting little ski village that was originally called Tod Mountain, until the dearth of tourists led the local folk to establish that Tod means ‘death’ in German. Now I feel like that at the end of a day’s skiing, but I can see that it would not be attractive to a lot of Europeans. Sun Peaks reminds me a lot of Mt. Baw Baw in Victoria, short beginner to intermediate slopes although the village is quite enchanting and a lot bigger than Baw Baw. The route actually took us across part of the area we will do when we are on the Rocky Mountaineer train.

Having Rob and Brenda as travelling companions has been great, but equally the initial impression of the other tourists/travellers has not been wrong, and I am sure that we will many new friends by the time we part ways.

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Comments

[Eug]

Brilliant!!
Great blog !!