My Dad arrived to stay just over a week ago, and last weekend we hired a car and did a drive around some of British Columbia. We were lucky to get gorgeous weather for both days which made the sightseeing all the more enjoyable.
We started off on Saturday morning, and drove along the Sea-To-Sky Highway to Whistler. There we stopped for the night. I was hoping to take my Dad up to the top of Whistler for the view, and I'd even checked online to make sure it was available. However, sadly I missed the small print that said "from June 28th", so it wasn't yet open. Poo! As a backup plan, we did some walking around the Lost Lake Park which was lovely in the sunshine. The area around the lake looks very different in the summer - there were lots of people hanging out on the grass, and even one brave swimmer.
In the evening we had a great meal at Ric's Grill in Whistler Village (highly recommended) and stayed the night at the Holiday Inn Sunspree, which I'd also recommend except for the rowdy youngsters that kept us awake outside from 1am to 3am (not the hotel's fault though). If I stayed in Whistler again in the summertime, I'd pick a place out of the village that ought to be quieter!
On the Sunday we did a loooong drive from Whistler, through Pemberton, Lillooet, Lytton, Boston Bar, Hope, and back to Vancouver. This is a route I've done once before not long after we arrived in Canada (with Steph and her friend), and I very much enjoyed it then. This trip was great too. We stopped for a late lunch at the Hell's Gate Airtram which I've also been to twice before but which is always enjoyable. This time the water was fairly high, and the river was spectacular to watch from this vantage point.
We covered 600km in two days (with 460km on the Sunday), and saw a lot of trees, lakes and valleys. Brilliant.
Whilst I was doing that, Steph was on a kayaking and camping weekend with 13 other friends! She'd been organizing this one for ages. They started from Deep Cove and kayaked up to Granite Falls where they camped overnight. Everything they needed had to be squeezed into and onto the kayaks - no mean feat! It was apparently an excellent weekend (the lovely weather helped, after forecasts of rain earlier in the week). The journey back was arduous however because of strong currents and a headwind, which made paddling tough work, and if you stopped you started floating backwards. Despite being exhausted by the end of it, some of them are already thinking about next time :)
Steph recently sorted out her photos, and uploaded them to Flickr. I'll hopefully upload some of my Dad's too in the near future.
