After leaving the Lake Louise area, we had a beautiful drive through the Canadian Rockies, stopping for an overnight in Kamloops, pretty much the ugliest part of our trip thus far- dried out mountains, not much vegetation. We opted to stay in North Vancouver, as prices were more reasonable, and the local transit system is excellent and cheap. On the advice of the Visitor Center guy (who was very informative) we purchased a day pass, allowing us on any city transit venue we wanted, including the Seabus. The Seabus crosses the Burrell Sound to Vancouvcr proper on a regular basis.
On arriving in Vancouver, we walked to the historic Gaslight section, all old brick buildings now renovated into shops. There were a lot of Olympic momentos on sale, as Vancouver will be the site of the 2010 Winter Olympics. It should be a great location for the Olympics, but we were told that accommodations may be a problem. Not much new hotel building occurring with the recession. Another walk (we could have taken the bus...) took us over toward Stanley Park. Stanley Park has been in existence since the late 1800's, when the "founding fathers" realized that green space would need to be available to the residents of Vancouver. As a result, the entire peninsula where Stanley Park is located was protected. On the way, we had lunch at an outdoor restaurant, overlooking the sound, the seaplane terminal, and the children's water park. The park itself had beautiful gardens, along with lots of different areas for sports. Those founding fathers had lots of foresight!
We had several days left after touring Vancouver before our ship left for Alaska. We decided to spend our time in the Seattle area, but realized that North Cascades National Park was on our way. After crossing the Canadian border, we drove east on the Cascade River Road. This park was the least developed of the parks we have visited thus far. It has only one road that traverses it, and another that allows you to take a 45 mile round trip to the base of Johannesburg Mountain. Most of the folks we ran into in the Visitor Center were there for overnight hikes.
Since we had only about 1/2 day, we opted to take the round trip drive. More than half the drive is over dirt roads, and the last several miles are not recommended for RV's or trailers. The drive up did not have many viewpoints, but the forest was beautiful, with huge moss covered trees along the way. Cascades was named for all the small waterfalls resulting from snow melt- we saw a number of them on our drive. Once we reached elevation, the trees opened up to reveal a beautiful view of distant snow-covered mountains. Johannesburg Mountain towered over us, and we could spot more waterfalls coming from the snow above. We ran into one of the park workers doing a project up there- he told us that this spot was one of the least-visited, but in his opinion, the most beautiful in the park. A great way to spend an afternoon!
Tomorrow, it is on to Seattle.
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