Vancouver

Here we are in Vancouver for the weekend, it's about 450km from Big White and what's weird is when you look at a map there are only two towns in between!  This means no petrol stations, no roadside help and no food which is scary enough but add in The Coquilla Pass, a notoriously treacherous bit of highway at 1244 metres where the weather closes in in minutes, and it becomes quite an adventure.  Our faithful old people carrier made it through though and we had a fantastic weekend.

We started at the aquarium in the middle of Stanley Park which is a huge peninsula that sits at the end of the city jutting out into the harbour.  The creature behind Charlie in the picture is a Beluga Whale, the only ones in the world in captivity.  We then went on a tour of the Park, looking a Lions Gate Bridge and the amazing Totem Poles before heading back to the city for a trip on a sea plane.  This was absolutely breathtaking, Charlie got to sit up front with the pilot and with the rest of us in the back the plane was full! We took off in the harbour and did a tour up the estuary before circling around and headed up the coast following the Sea to Sky highway following the spectacular mountains on our right and the islands on our left. We landed back in the harbour after only 20 minutes but with memories for a lifetime.

The next day we went to Capilano Park.  It absolutely poured the whole time we were there but not discouraged by a bit of rain (we are used to it after all!) we braved the bridge. After paying we realised that to explore the Park you have to go over the suspension bridge and this is when our family of five became four as Jamie's vertigo set in!  He's obviously not the first as the policy of the park is that if you can't get over the bridge in 15 minutes they give you a refund!  So back to the ticket office he went while the four of us battled on!  The bridge sits over a gorge which is a hell of a long way down, I didn't hang around to look too closely, i just wanted to get across, needless to say the children weren't remotely bothered about the height and were messing around trying to get the bridge to sway and bounce which caused a bit of a sense of humour failure on my part!  The other side is rain forest and it's full of trails and lookouts over the gorge, treetop bridges and paths to explore, it was an amazing place but the weather got to us finally.  Soaking wet and with squelching feet we headed back to our trusty Dodge to start our journey home.