After the long weekend we drove straight to Vancouver, where we stayed with our friend Fish (Tom is his real name! He used to work with us at the Peaks) at his amazing penthouse apartment in Kitsilano - a neighbourhood in Vancouver that is right on the ocean. Our friend Mia, who also worked at the Peaks, is now a flight attendant and she flew out to hang out with us all for the day. It was an amazing Peaks reunion that involved the beach, the ocean, beers, burgers, water balloons, and a whole lot of fun on Fish's rooftop patio. The next morning Mia flew out and we had a nice relaxing day checking out Vancouver.
Then - completely opposite to anything we've been doing lately - Katie actually flew to Boston the next day for a few days to celebrate her brother in law's 40th birthday, and catch up with that side of the family. During that time Chris got to stay with Fish, who showed him around the adventure side of Vancouver - he longboarded, climbed Grouse mountain, frisbeed, and had lots of adventure.
After our solo adventures we were so excited to be back on the road, and we explored Kamloops and the area. We were defeated a couple of times by the Forestry Service Campgrounds that we had fallen so in love with, because many of them are really backcountry and we can't tell on the map whether they will be easy roads or intense switchback rock roads. The Mazda is so weighed down from all of the stuff we have in it, so a couple of times we had to give up on finding the campsites in order to save the bottom of the car from being ripped apart. In fact, for our night in Kamloops, we spent so much time going to Forestry campgrounds and turning around halfway there, that finally at 10:30 we had to call it quits and we set up at Paul Lake Provincial Park in the dark. Gone are the days when we are watching the sun set at 11 pm ... now by 9:30 we're in the dark!
The next day, we headed northwest to Cottonwood Creek Campground, after checking out Lillooet and (of course) getting rejected by some very severe logging roads that did not get along with the Mazda. It was a beautiful campsite on the river, and we indulged in a delicious steak dinner with green beans, bbq-ed zucchini, and peppers.
We headed into Pemberton the next afternoon, which was a great small town that we explored for a while. We stayed at another awesome Forestry site that night, which felt like it was in the middle of the jungle it was so lush, and the trees around us were huge! Quite the difference from the dry landscape of Kamloops area we had been in only a few days before.
The next day we packed up and headed to Squamish, where we got some groceries and had coffees at an awesome little local cafe (The Cup), and then we headed to our first night of camping in a privately owned campground with Katie's "Labour Day Family" friend Stephanie Furlong and her boyfriend Ryan. It was awesome! You just set your tent up on the beach along the river and call it your site. We had a great dinner and met the people in the site next to us, who turned out to be around our age and from Owen Sound! We had a blast with all of them ... we even had a big bocci ball tournament. It was an amazing night.
We left Squamish very groggily the next morning and headed into Whistler, where Katie's friend Darcey lives. It was the last day of a week long international mountain biking competition (Crankworx)on Whistler Mountain, so it was crazy busy but so fun to watch the finals of the freestyle part of the competition - who knew that there was downhill mountain biking freestyle! These guys were doing double back flips off of 80 foot dirt jumps ... it was wild. We ate dinner at the restaurant Darcey works at after touring around the village and having a blast people watching and taking it all in. After she finished work, we spent the night meeting a ton of really nice people who called Whistler home, who all were very intent on convincing us that Whistler was definitely better than any other place to live. Hmmmmm!
Today we had such a great relaxing day - we took air mattresses to the nearby lake and floated around, surviving the 34 degree cloudless heat by hopping off into the water whenever it got too unbearable. We're about to have a big farmer's market dinner of bison sausage with corn, peppers, salad and fresh bread. Delicious!
On to Vancouver Island tomorrow to keep on exploring ... we hear it's beautiful and are really excited to look around.
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