Long time ago that we wrote our last message, to busy traveling!!
But here will follow a good update with some pictures of the last 1,5 month of traveling.
Back to the 8th of April when we started our first road trip to Bragg Creek, Edmonton and Jasper back to Sun Peaks.
On the way we past Revelstoke and Golden and left these mountains for our next winter in Canada. Past through the Rogers Pass, very impressive mountain after mountain.
Our first stop was Invermere, were we stayed with some friends that immigrated to Canada a couple of years ago to build up their future in Invermere.
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| Panorama Village |
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| Olympic Inuit inukshuk at Lake Windermere |
The next day we skied in Panorama were we spotted the first paragliders of the season.
From Panorama we continued via Radium Hot Springs and the National Park to Banff, beautiful little town surrounded by mountains! From Banff it is only a good hour to Bragg Creek, that is located in the Foothills of the Rockies. We signed our contracts for the summer season, and quickly left wintery Bragg Creek again. At that time there was still about half a meter of snow on the camp site. Today we arrived back, and the campsite is almost snow free, still a couple of the shadowy corners have snow!
On the road to Edmonton to visit Don Vinge, the interim director were Angela worked with in Weimar. We had a wonderful stay and Don spoiled us a lot. We had a mixed program with sight seeing the city of Edmonton, some shopping, the first school building.
Couple of culturell things, visit to the Edmonton Art Gallery (www.youraga.ca) with art from Emily Carr, Haida (native arts) and some very modern arts from Brian Jungen, with plastic garden chairs.
Don also took us to the Opera “Tosca”, a great experience!
Don would not really wanted to let us go and kept suggesting nice activities we could go do with him. After a snowy Thursday (14 cm of new snow) we did leave Edmonton on Friday and drove to Jasper. Entering the National Park the weather positively changed and we had some great mountain views. Just before town we saw different wildlife next to the road and had a beautiful view later at night.
After a good breakfast in the local “Bearclaw” cafe in Jasper we drove to the ski hill, Marmot Basin. Again winter, snowing and very cold weather conditions. But later in the day the sky opened up and our last runs were supported with some sunshine and a better view of the mountain. The “Aloha-Cup” was on for that day, supposed to be one of the SPRING skiing activities?!
Nach einem kurzen Zwischenstopp in Sun Peaks fuhren wir weiter Richtung Vancouver um dort mit Freunden Ostern zu feiern. Auf dem Weg besuchten wir Donna, eine ehemalige Arbeitskollegin, auf ihrer kleinen Ranch.
Umwimmelt von vier Hunden konnten wir beim Füttern und Medikamente spritzen der Pferde helfen.
Angekommen in Vancouver trafen wir uns mit Courtenay, Thomas, Sharon und Tom welche wir aus Weimar kennen. Eine gemeinsame Wanderung und anschließenden Essen war eine klasse Abwechslung.
Am Osterfreitag nahm uns Jim, der Eigentümer unserer Mietwohnung in Sun Peaks, mit in die Lüfte. Wir flogen über Vancouver, Whistler, Pemberton, Harrison Lake und das Fraser Tal. ... ein spektakulärer Flug über die Coastel Mountains ... Danke Danke Danke Jim!
Eine Stadtrundfahrt stand am Ostersamstag mit Courtenay, Thomas, Meg, Taryn und Gerrit an.
Wir besuchten unter anderem die Hängebrücke in Capilano, die Totems im Stanleypark, ...
... bevor wir am Abend mit Courtenay ihren Geburtstag feierten.
Am Ostersonntag folgten wir der Einladung von Robyn, Jim und Mittchel. Der kanadische Osterbraten war eine Delikatesse.
Nach den ereignisreichen Osterfeiertagen brachen wir erneut nach Sun Peaks auf um unsere letzten Sachen zu holen und mit nach Bragg Creek zu nehmen.
On our final roadtrip, the last 2,5 weeks, we also had lots of new adventures.
This time we drove in direction South from Bragg Creek, via Highway 22, also known as the Cowboy Trail in Alberta. We passed lots of ranches with horses and cows and made our first stop at the Lundbreck Falls.
Here we had a small picknick and a nice hike and decided to stay for the night on one of the provincial campgrounds that just opened that weekend.
The Crowsnest Pass is known for its mining, but most of them are closed at this time. We passed all the small towns and made a stop in Frank. In Frank there happened this huge rock slide in 1903 were a big part of the mountain (90 million tonnes, 30 million cubic metres of limestone) covered part of the town and burried approximately 90 people. They cleaned up the railroad and the highway but the rest of the slide is still there and we walked through this impressive landscape of big rocks.
From Frank we drove over the border to B.C. and saw the biggest truck in Sparwood, the Titan. We will have to look up some details but an amazing truck, see Norman standing at the right!
In Fernie we saw our first moose on one of the trails. Angela almost run into the animal, because they hide and stand really still in the bushes.
Hard to believe, but in B.C. there are still a couple of Ferries running for Free! So we drove up to Kootenay Bay, very scenic drive past very many beautiful bays.
A little slide on the road slowed us down on 20 minutes, but as we are traveling we are not in a rush!
We took the second ferry the next morning at 9 am and continued our drive to Nelson.
Nelson is a pretty steep town, lots of hippies and musicians around, that makes the atmosphere in town very easy going.
Via Osoyoos and Oliver past all the vineyards we arrived in Penticton. This city is located in between two lakes and is based on lots of tourism in the summer time. There are about 70 wineries in the valley, and most of the wine produced is drunk by the tourists and the Canadians living there. We although came to climb in the Skaha Bluffs.
Our first outdoor climbing for this season so we enjoyed our days on the rocks a lot. Four days we did some brilliant leading and met lots of new people. The weather changed a bit on day 5, but we anyway planned to travel on. In Crawston, very close to Keremeos, we met with Nadja, a colleague were we worked the winter with in the Sun Peaks Lodge.
A day on the organic farm, very interesting to see all the seeds growing into little vegetables. We had very nice organic salad for dinner. The next morning we helped out a couple of hours with pruning the apricots. That means to take off the fruit that is too much. In only another 5 to 6 weeks they will harvest the apricots!
Our last destination was Waterton. The weather forecast did not look to good but we had suprisingly good weather on Saturday to do some hiking. Most of the hikes were although still covered under snow so that made us turn around on some of the trails.
In Waterton there is lots of wildlife to see, a big herd of mountain goats live in town and lots of dear walking and grazing around.
We will probably come back in sommer time to explore some more hikes and do some backcountry camping. It is also mainly based on tourism, and it is only a very short season, from May to mid October. In Waterton there is this famous hotel, the Prince Wales Hotel. Their season only runs from mid June to October, but they have lots of weddings and very famous for there British afternoon tea. A lovely building and we heard that all the employees wear their traditional clothing.
On our way back to Bragg Creek we followed again the Cowboy Trail (Highway 22) and passed Black Diamond and Turner Valley. Lots of little oilfields, and the landscape is marked by all the small oil pumps.
We took some time for another hike but the weather made us turn around and luckily on time, because we drove through some heavy rainstorms just a couple of kilometers before the Camp Horizon.
Enjoy the nice pictures and keep on following us though Canada!!
