Off To Canada (Again)

Holidays in Canada

Tag Archives: Grizzly


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Some Canadian memories

I am often asked why we have been to Canada so many times and why we continue to visit. So here’s the short (ish) reason.

In September 1988 Amanda and I boarded a Wardair flight to Vancouver. This was only the third time I’d flown at this point and certainly the furthest. The flights were an early wedding present from Amanda’s mum. We were getting married the following year but had the chance to have an ‘early honeymoon’ in Canada and it turned out to be a very wise decision but that’s another story. We were going to spend the next 5 weeks staying with Amanda’s cousin and her husband in Vancouver and were really looking forward to this incredible opportunity and adventure.

Personally I was incredibly excited about flying with Wardair. This mythical company offered higher quality service at pretty much economy prices, one of the reasons it went out of operation the following year maybe? Fillet steak served on proper china with metal cutlery and wine in real glasses. After only flying on a package holiday charter to Tunisia perviously this felt like we were flying first class believe me.

On arriving at Vancouver airport, after a brief stop in Edmonton, we disembarked feeling like we hadn’t slept in 2 days….. it was more like 26 hours at this point. Honestly I don’t remember much about the journey to Surrey from the airport but I do remember arriving at the house and I remember our hosts. A more welcoming and lovely couple I don’t think I’ve ever met. They opened up their home to us, shared their friends with us and introduced us to the most amazing country. This is something we’ve never forgotten and why we have returned 9 times. We’ve visited Vancouver, Victoria, Halifax, Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa and Toronto. We’ve taken a 13 hour ferry journey north up the BC coast and caught a train right across the country. I’ve been in a helicopter over Niagara Falls and driven roads so quiet that we didn’t see another car for over 3 hours. We’ve seen bald eagles, coyote, a BIG Grizzly bear, black bears, mountain sheep and elk, we’ve seen humpback whales and dolphins and orca and grey whales and sea otters. We’ve watched hockey in Vancouver, Toronto (Go Leafs Go), Montreal and Ottawa, Basketball and baseball in Toronto. We’ve stayed in lakeside lodges and five star hotels and historic chateau – like hotels and cheap motels. We’ve sweated in spring in Toronto and summer in Vancouver and frozen in Alberta in November. We’ve driven on highways and unpaved roads and frozen roads and through rain so hard you could barely SEE the road.

We are enchanted by Canada and hope that we will be able to continue to visit for many years to come. I still have ideas of trips I want to do and places I want to see. I want to visit the Northwest Territories and Yukon, I want to drive across country, coast to coast, I want to see more of Nova Scotia and visit, Newfoundland and New Brunswick, as well as explore Quebec and Ontario more, and we would still love to see polar bears in Churchill.

Canada and us still have unfinished business.

Brentwood Bay


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Yep, we’re off to Canada again…..not just yet though

Insomnia doesn’t strike me very often (thankfully) but at least when it does I do something useful….sort of….like write a blog post about something that’s almost 2 years away.

2017 is a big year for one member of this family…. and it’s not me or Elmo. Amanda will hit the big 50 and to celebrate I said we could go anywhere in the world for a big holiday. It’s no surprise that we’re going back to our favourite place and we’re hopeful that we can go for 3 weeks rather than 2. Things are bit up in the air at the moment as ideally we’d love our best friends to come with us. We’ve yet to discuss the practicalities of such a trip, such as the amount of time, the amount of money, whether they could stand being with us for 3 whole weeks anyway, but we’ll sort something out. It’d just be nice to share the places we love with the people we love.

So, in the interest of this not being just me writing, I wish, I wish, here is what I propose…..

  • We fly to Vancouver and collect the hire cars
  • Catch the ferry to Vancouver Island and stay in Brentwood Bay for 2 nights
  • Drive over to the West Coast and stay in the Tofino area for a few nights
  • Drive to Port Hardy in the North
  • Catch the ferry to Bella Coola
  • Go Grizzly watching
  • Drive to Williams Lake…..

I know, I know….this sounds a lot like our last trip doesn’t it? Well clever clogs, it’s so not…read on…..

  • Drive to Jasper and stay for a couple of nights
  • Drive to Lake Louise and stay for a couple of nights
  • Drive to Kamloops and stay for a night
  • Drive to Whistler and stay for a few nights
  • Finally onto to Vancouver for a few nights before flying home

How does that sound? Pretty nifty eh? Now this will probably change (a lot or slightly, who knows?) before the main event. After all it’s quite some distance away yet but things have to be planned so we can save up the money to go.

If (and we hope this is the case) they are coming with us and can only do 2 weeks then we can do a cut down version, but otherwise this is my ideal trip. I’ll do all the arranging and booking, all they have to do is agree and pay me some money along the way as things like flights, ferries and the like get paid in advance.

We’ve had some amazing holidays and this one could be the best of the lot.


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Bears….finally but not in the wild.

Yesterday we visited Grouse Mountain for the first time, Amanda was not impressed by the SkyRide cable car or the chair lift. The cable car was so full you could hardly move and each time it went over the pylons the whole car swung back and fourth, not good when you don’t like the things in the first place. We reached the top in one piece, just, then we saw a sign for a bear trail. They have two rescued Grizzly’s in a woodland area and we managed to see both of them, Coola rescued from Bella Coola as a cub weighing just 5 Kg’s and Grinder from B.C also weighing just 5 Kg’s. They were hiding in the  trees cwtched up trying to sleep. We were very happy to finally see bears but also a little sad that they weren’t wild, it’s a dilemma with wild animals but at least they are safe.

Whilst up the mountain we also decided to take in the lumber jack tourist show, we don’t usually do that sort of thing but Amanda needed to rest and this gave us the opportunity to do that. I have to say I would recommend it, the show was a bit cheesy in parts but those guys were amazing at climbing the 60ft tree trunk. Then it was time to take the chair lift up to the highest part of the mountain, a task Amanda couldn’t  hide her enthusiasm for. They kindly stopped the chair for us to get on and then the journey began. I wasn’t allowed to move a muscle but did manage to sneak a few pictures in, I’ll post them when we get home as I’ve packed all the camera kit away. To say Amanda didn’t enjoy it would be an under statement but she did it there and back which I am impressed at, she even managed to look out on the way down.

The views from the top were spectacular you can see all over Vancouver, there was one blight on the afternoon though bloody little midges, they were everywhere and we both got bit.

We did make a little miscalculation on our timing coming back from Grouse Mountain and we experienced proper rush hour traffic coming back into the city. It seemed to take ages to cross the Lions Gate Bridge, something I guess Vancouver dwellers have to do all the time

Rather than eat in the hotel again we went across the road on the waters edge to the Cactus Club Cafe. People were queuing outside when we arrived so we knew it was going to be decent food. We had about a 30 min wait before we were seated and had a local beer (for me) and watermelon margarita (for Amanda) while we chose our food. We had szechuan chicken lettuce wraps to start and we were both glad we chose to share as it was pretty big but delicious. Chicken in a sweet and spicy szechuan glaze, peanuts, wontons, korean chili sauce and spicy yogurt all wrapped in crispy iceberg lettuce leaves. For main course I had szechuan salmon, which was steelhead salmon, miso mustard, broccoli, edamame, red peppers, snap peas, daikon and pea shoot salad with sticky rice. Amanda went for thai red curry pacific lingcod – seared pacific lingcod in a thai red curry sauce, coconut almond rice, crispy wontons and micro coriander. All delicious and worth the wait and a perfect way to finish off our stay.

Now we’re heading home. Sad but happy that we had a great time and can’t wait to come back again.

 


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The Hill

One of the main reasons to come on this holiday or at least one of the things that got me working out the route we’d take was ‘The Hill’. I’ve mentioned it in previous posts but basically it’s a long stretch of Highway 20 going through the Tweedsmuir Provincial Park that is unpaved (packed gravel) and was the steepest in Canada (not sure what is now because this baby is STEEP) with sections at 18% gradient. You have two choices, go up or come down, depending on whether you’re going to Bella Coola or leaving Bella Coola. When I organised the trip I decided that I’d rather go up than come down, mainly after seeing some videos on YouTube. I’m going to say here and now that it was a good decision because after the amount of rain we’ve been having I really wouldn’t want to come down it. 

It starts off quite nicely and then things turn nasty quite quickly. Really sharp hairpin bends with a sheer drop on one side, or narrow sections that seem insanely steep and you hope that you don’t meet an 18 wheeler coming down as you’re going up. And yes, big trucks do go up and down, we met a driver at the lodge yesterday morning. He told us it’s much better now they expanded sections to one and a half lanes wide rather than one lane !!!! At this point I’d normally put some nice photos in to illustrate the road in question but as I was driving and Amanda spent most of the time saying “I can’t look” or “OH MY GOD” or ‘Please move away from the edge”, we don’t seem to have many photos. She did manage to point my iPhone vaguely in the direction of the car window so I’ll check those later and perhaps post a couple. I did stop the car at one point when I felt it was safe and as I turned back to the car to get back in I saw the mess that the road had made of what was a shiny new Jeep Cherokee. Then I noticed that the back of my jeans had the same mud caked to it which I’d gotten as I slid down from my seat. Afterwards I also noticed that the inside of the car was filthy too, my shoes were caked in that same brown stuff. I think I’ll have to get this cleaned when we get to Whistler more to protect our clothes than anything else. We were passed several times by what I can only assume were locals as they were driving at crazy speeds (over 10 mph). I was happy to let them on their way. I’m not sure but a might have been overtaken by a snail at one point.

I just viewed Amanda’s attempts at taking photos on my iPhone while I was driving. She took what we thought was a video clip of us going up a particularly steep hairpin bend. I’ll post the resulting 4 second masterpiece later. It consists of the dashboard and her asking how to turn it off.  The photos are almost as bad but I’ll put those up too. I warned her that we’d have to return and do it again so we can get some good photos. She’s still not woken up.

Once over the worst part, we stopped alongside a river where another couple had the same idea. They were German and were going in teh opposite direction ie down the hill. I warned them how steep it was but that Germanic stare soon established that I was merely an inefficient British person and that Teutonic driving skills would prevail. I’m sure they did fine.

After we left the nice German couple we thought we’d done the worst part and it was surely going to be a nice tarmac road from that point on. We were so very wrong. There was still hills, though not so steep, sheer drops and no sight of beautiful flat black tarmac roads for what seemed like a long long time. When we did reach civilised road surfaces it felt like you were driving on cushions, it was lovely. Never say a bad thing about British roads again. We saw a herd of wild(ish) horses on the road and some black tailed deer and some cows and some dogs. These don’t make up for not seeing bears however.

Finally we arrived at Nimpo Lake. The ‘resort’ is really an RV park with six motel rooms and a few cabins. I wish I’d booked a cabin as they look really nice, but the motel room is clean if basic, but it’s real selling point is the location. It sits right on the shore of the lake itself. We’re looking forward to sitting outside later and hopefully seeing a lot of stars as there’s nothing else around us. Of course that means that it’ll be cloudy and we’ll also hear that there was a lot of bears in Bella Coola just after we left.

Tomorrow, we were supposed to drive to Williams Lake and stay overnight. Amanda decided that we would be better off having a marathon driving day and go straight to Whistler and have an extra day there instead. So we made the relevant phonecalls using Skype (no working payphone and no mobile service) and tomorrow we embark on a 10 hour drive to Whistler. On a side note, when Amanda called the Four Seasons in Whistler we were told that the room rate had gone down since we booked and would we like to upgrade and keep the same price or have our room cheaper? As we’re staying an extra night we picked the cheaper option, but it was great to be asked. We’re not convinced that the Celtic Manor (other hotels are available) would even lower their prices let alone let you that they did of you booked in advance.

Right, where are those stars?

 


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Big secret revealed…there are NO bears

We rumbled the BC tourist boards little scam they’ve been running for years. They show pictures of bears, you see YouTube videos of bears but I’m quite sure that Peter Jackson is behind it all with some mo-cap magic just like he did when he created Gollum in Lord of the Rings. We spent a perfectly lovely morning drifting down the Anartko River looking for bears and saw precisely none. Not one. Zilch. Nada. Dim. Apparently there are lots of black bears that come out at night…yeah of course, when we’re asleep. The grizzlies will be here in numbers very soon, any day now in fact…just not today (or yesterday for a couple that went on the trip yesterday too).

Fraser, our guide, getting our boat readyThe other boat on the Anartko River

To be fair (and I was joking, honest) the bears are wild animals and are naturally wary of people. We saw a lot of (large) paw prints in the sand on the banks of the river and we also took a calculated risk in coming when we did as it’s right at the beginning of the bear season and the associated salmon run, but there you go. We did see bald eagles which I was happy about but that’s about it.

Bald eagle

Afterwards we grabbed a sandwich and headed out with some recommendations on what to do for the afternoon. The salmon spawning season is underway in the lower part of the river and we went to see. Actually you can smell it as you get out of the car. Hundreds of large fish rotting in the water as seagulls pick at them and alongside those, males fighting between themselves over who gets to fertilise the eggs just laid by the female. After that job is done they too change colour and die. All circle of life stuff but sad and interesting at the same time. It really really does stink though.

Next we went to see a waterfall that Amanda was told about and she was quite interested as there was very little walking involved.  It was pretty impressive and just across the road was the main part of the river and the sun came out as we reached it. This is a very beautiful part of the world and any photographs really don’t do it justice.

Clayton Falls Bella Coola river

Lastly before heading back, we went to see some old growth cedar in a place called Walker Island park. These are examples of the trees that covered the entire area before the European settlers arrived at the end of the 19th century. Huge things. Really huge and magnificent. It’s good that they’re protected in many places now but sad that most are gone.

Old growth cedar

Tomorrow we leave Bella Coola and drive to Nimpo Lake. It’s time for THAT drive up THAT hill. Looking forward to it. We have a great excuse to come back one day (later in the season) so we can finally get to see some Grizzly bears.

 

PS Amanda dropped her iPad on her toe. It was very funny (to me) and painful (for her).

PPS Jungle Formula 10hr protection against insect bites…… yeah right.

 


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Bear country…finally

Yesterday seemed to last about 34 hours rather than the normal 24. When we went to sleep it was raining quite hard but by the morning the sky was fairly clear and it looked like the rain had gone away for a while, yay. It came back, boooo. By the time we left Port Hardy it had started to rain lightly and for the whole trip we had rain showers, sometimes torrential, sometimes light and occasionally it actually was a bit sunny. To be fair the ferry journey was really good. It was one of the sections of the holiday that we were concerned about. Thirteen hours on a smallish boat could have been a bit of a nightmare but it really wasn’t. The seats were comfortable regardless of what Amanda says (hers was broken but we didn’t notice for a while, and me being the gentleman that I am refused to switch because I had the window seat), the food was nice and the scenery was incredible. The captain pointed out when whales were visible and everyone (almost) ran to be able to catch a glimpse in the distance of humpback whales breaching or diving or just cruising past. We also saw dolphins….lots of dolphins. They started off just surfing alongside the ferry and then we noticed a huge pod ahead of us fishing. We got to stay with them quite a while although they’re really hard to photograph, they’re just too damned quick.

Dolphins

At 11pm we reached Bella Coola and when we got off the boat a line of traffic travelled along the (only) road  and we thought ‘wouldn’t it be strange if someone we saw on the ferry was staying at the same place as us’. It turned out that they were…5 cars turned off into the carpark and by the time we parked up we had to join a queue to check in. The BC Mountain Lodge is in an incredible location, but only found that out this morning when it was light. Last night it was raining so hard and it was so late that all we wanted to do was get inside our room and get to sleep. I’ll admit that I have become accustomed to nicer hotels and there’s something to be said for 5 star accommodation but it’s clean, I slept really well and breakfast is included. Not too bad. 

Raining much? NOT our room View from our room

 

This morning it had stopped raining (for about 15 mins) and we saw how beautiful the Bella Coola valley is. Surrounded on both sides by impossibly high mountains and shrouded in mist. It wouldn’t look out of place in Lord of the Rings although I can’t see Amanda dressing as a hobbit, as her feet aren’t hairy enough.

After breakfast we drove into town via the tourist information office and a small park where there is a beaver pond. Make all the jokes you want but we were on a beaver hunt, but sadly we saw none. It was a beaver-free zone. Perhaps it was too wet for them. On the way we also stopped at the shop. I say ‘the’ shop as it sold everything and I mean everything. It sold cat litter, shovels, crossbow bolts, flights for darts, fishing rods, ammunition, apples, 8 inch nails, sausages and lots more. I could have spent a long time just looking at all the shelves but we had to go. We had lunch in town at a local restaurant where, while we were sat there, one guy past the window that was chatting to us on the ferry the night before, two motorcyclists that caught the ferry were on another table and then the woman from tourist info came in for her lunch too. Sensible people. Lunch was really nice (Philly beef bun for me with dipping gravy and fries and salmon salad sandwich and chicken noodle soup for Amanda). Even the Sheriff sat with his family behind us so I made sure Amanda behaved herself.

After we ate, we drove down to the marina where all the fishing boats are tied up. The water is a beautiful opaque green/blue and reminds you of an opal. The rain was back with a vengeance by now so we didn’t stop long.

Bella Coola Marina

 

Before heading back to the lodge, we took a drive further up the road and saw three deer. One bounced off across the road and the other two warily kept an eye on us as we crept closer to try and take a pic. The one I photographed squeezed under a fence and stared at us just in case we fancied venison tonight.

Oh deer

 

Tonight we’re eating at the lodge and we have an early start tomorrow for our bear watching trip. Breakfast is at 7am and we leave at 7:45am on the dot. Hopefully I’ll have bear pics tomorrow or you’ll be reading about two British tourists eaten by very very hungry Grizzly bears.


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North then North again

I realised something the other day. I might have to do some major re-jigging if BC Ferries change the schedule, as the one we want to catch only goes once a week and at the moment it’s on a Thursday. When the new schedule comes out at the end of the year I’m hoping to find that this ferry still goes on a Thursday. Let’s pretend it will for now, ok? The alternative doesn’t bear thinking about.

So, on Wednesday morning, bright and early we’ll be leaving Ucluelet and making our way back to the east coast of the island taking the Pacific Rim Highway to Port Alberni (where it becomes the Alberni Highway) and then to Qualicum Beach. We might stop for a break here or push on, taking the Inland Island Highway north. Seeing a place called Fanny Bay along the route really makes me want to pause but I think my wife will insist on driving past. Either way we’ll have to stop for provisions and loo breaks as it’s over 6 hours to Port Hardy (I do hope she wants to share the driving).

Everything I read about Port Hardy told me to book in advance as the hotels/motels get booked up quickly when the ferry is due to leave so I booked us in The Quarterdeck Inn for the night. It’s quite near the ferry terminal but after that long on the road I think all I’ll want is a couple of drinks in the pub and my bed.

The ferry (going by this years schedule) leaves 10:15am and you have to be there a couple of hours before departure apparently, but I’ll check that nearer the time. It takes about 13 hours to get to Bella Coola and you travel through some amazing scenery, so I think I’ll be spending a lot of time on deck  with my camera in my hand.

We arrive in Bella Coola at around 11pm and so will have to find our hotel in the dark. That should be fun. We’re staying at the BC Mountain Lodge which I have to say looks great. We’re booked for three nights as we wanted time there to do a bit of exploring and most importantly of all, go Grizzly Bear watching.

The Lodge organises this and this is the highlight of the holiday for us (you might say actually it’s the whole reason I arranged this trip). You go upstream from the bears and then float past them in a boat and from the looks of things I’m hoping to get some amazing photographs (although perhaps not like the one above).

The day after our Grizzly experience we hit the road again and begin heading back to Vancouver…..slowly.