Friday I-Wish-I-Were-There (Vancouver, Canada)

Welcome to my Friday I-Wish-I-Were-There Blog.

Today I’m heading north to the city of Vancouver. Although when we visited this area we were dogged by cold, wet weather (which was understandable since it was winter) I would still love to go back and spend more time here. The scenery, even when besieged by rain, was still incredibly beautiful.

Highlights:
Sea to Sky Highway. We drove along this highway and spent a night in the outdoorsy town of Squamish. This highway claims to be one of the most beautiful in the world and I don’t doubt that if the rain and mist had lifted higher, this would be true. The next day we continued on to Whistler, but only drove through the town (and on one memorable occasion got spectacularly lost and drove off road across a non-plowed mush of ice and slush into a cross-country ski-lesson – don’t ask!) as there was no parking and it was raining pretty steadily.

Shannon Falls. Just off the Sea to Sky Highway is a free to see waterfall. The falls were impressive (probably helped by all the rain we’ve been having) and cascaded down from a massive rocky cliff, falling into a rapidly moving river surrounded by tall fir trees and forest. Posing by the waterfall I noticed an old guy with an 'All-Blacks’ tee-shirt on (New Zealand’s national rugby team) and I said to him as he walked past, "Are you a fellow kiwi?". The man chuckled and replied in a Canadian accent, “No, I wear this to annoy all the Australian’s that live up in Whistler.” What a crack up. I loved this guy!

Views of Vancouver from Cypress Mountain. Just spectacular. Not so impressed with the Cypress mountain ski area as after going all the way up there, you couldn’t get anywhere near the snow without having to fork out big bucks and the waiting lines to tube on the slops were not worth the dollars involved for the scant amount of time you got.

Capilano Suspension Bridge park. The park was beautiful and had some stunningly tall Douglas firs that had tree-walk bridges slung between them which were fun – and an interesting perspective being so high up amongst the trees and looking down. The suspension bridge itself had a 150 metre span,  was 80 metres above the raging river below and swayed so much as you hit the centre of it, that it was a wonder I made it over twice – well, okay, I had to make it over twice as there was only one way to get back to the car! There was also a cliff walk, which was like a theatre catwalk (narrow planks and handrails) had to walking right over another huge drop to the river below – but luckily it didn’t sway at all, so I was quite happy looking at the wonderful views.

Maple Leaves. One of my favorite things in Canada is these huge leaves. I love these two photos of my daughter, Kate, taken four years apart. Isn’t she gorgeous?!

Unfortunately we didn’t get to do much else in Vancouver and will have to add it to our Bucket list for another time.

Tracey.