back in Calgary

more driving... more mountains, lakes, rivers and one black bear....

We camped in Revelstoke Tuesday night at the Williamson Lake CG - tenting allowed on the lakeside, but no "big rigs", so we are away from the water a bit. Not too many campers and a warm and sunny afternoon/evening.

More driving the next day - stopped at Golden and ate our homemade hummus and pitas by the river, then onward. We stopped in Yoho National Park - the only campground open had no hookups, not even water for tenters and it was close to both Highway 1 and the train tracks - so our least luxurious campsite, but if the sun is shining, who cares??

To reward me for living without luxuries for one night, Owen bought us breakfast at Melissas in Banff - my Roadtrek pancakes are better!

Back in Calgary now, and Owen is jockeying the RT around the front street every 2 hours so we don't get a parking ticket. Dinner and a play with Dick and Bernice tonight, then home tomorrow.

We've had fun!

I have been remiss

We have had wonderful visits with Len and Yvonne and Clarence and Karen and, while internet was more easily accessible, we were having way too much fun to update the blog!

We left Tofino Friday morning - and again enjoyed the winding, hilly drive back to the east side of the island. Stopped in Cathedral Grove - a forest with some 800 year old trees and many 300 yea

r old ones. Learned that a "Qualicum" is a wind so strong that it can uproot trees and throw them through the air, which most recently happened in 1997.

Caught the 3:15PM ferry from Comox to Powell River, and Len was waiting at the dock to lead us to their home. We were greeted by Yvonne and their new golden retriever, Zoe, a beautiful dog they got from the rescue place in January. Had a few beverages and caught up on the family gossip on their deck, then Yvonne prepared us a delicious dinner - more wine after and spirited conversation - Len left us to solve the problems of the world, as he had to work on Saturday.

Saturday:

In the morning, Yvonne took Owen and me (and Zoe) to the Farmers' Market - a real "country" market with crafts, jams, oysters and lots of plants. There was an interesting booth - bookcrossings.com - that was giving away books donated by the library - classics, children's books, recent bestsellers. Each book has a registration number. You read the book (0r not) and can comment on it through the website. Then you "release" the book, either by leaving it where someone else can find it, or by giving it to someone, and you can follow its progress from one reader to the next through the website. We each chose a book - a trashy novel for me and a George Orwell one for OE. We will see where our books end up. If this interests you, you can also register your own book(s) on the website, and release them on their own journeys.

After the market, we took Zoe for a walk at Willingdon Beach and a play in the ocean, then went for lunch at a pub overlooking a lake, and then for groceries. Powell River has the motherlode of flavours of Chapmans icecream - Maple Twist, Strawberry Banana, Orange Pineapple, Tiger Tail, Chocolate Caramel, Mocha Almond Fudge....

I am moving to PR!!! Wiener roast and enormous bonfire on the beach with their friends Guy and Catherine and their B&B guests Keith and Elaine.

Sunday: Yvonne and Len made their guests, and us, a delicious Mothers' Day breakfast. Yvonne and I puttered in her garden until it was time to leave to catch the ferry. Zoe followed our van for a block - Yvonne says that means she like us!

We surprised Karen at her shop in Gibsons - thought Laura was goin

g to call them and warn them that we were coming, but she forgot! Anyway, Clarence and Karen seemed glad to see us. The boys took us out to a Greek restaurant near her shop for dinner and we had a great time catching up. They are really hoping to come to the wedding in August.

Monday: After another delicious breakfast, courtesy of Karen, we left to catch our last ferry, to the mainland. We decided to go back by way of Squamish and

Whistler, instead of through Vancouver and while S&W were unimpressive (maybe you had to be there for the Olympics), the rest of the drive was spectacular - even windinger and hillier that the road to Tofino with breathtaking scenery. We spent the night in a camground outside Lillooet - this time overlooking the Fraser River with nothing between us and the river but a sandy beach punctuated with giant black and red rocks.

View of our van from the beach

Tofino

Thursday morning, after another leisurely breakfast, we move to a beachfront site! Our van is pointed towards the ocean so we can sit in the seats and enjoy the view. Our picnic table is on the beach - it is the best camping spot EVER!!

We drive into Tofino to have a look around - more commercial that O

wen had imagined, but less "Canmore-ish" than I expected. We have coffee and read the paper, then head over to the Rec Centre to se

e if Laura Lunty still works there - and she does! When we say we want to surprise her, her co-worker brings her out with her eyes covered, and Laura is VERY surprised to see us. We arrange to return and have dinner together, then Owen and I head to Long Beach, where we spend the rest of the day reading our books and walking the beach. We walk

ed from out little spot to one end of the beach - took 40 minutes, one way!! and there was probably an equal distance of beach in the other direction - again, clean, with hard, flat sand, not much detritus washed up on shore, and hardly a person to be

seen.

[View to the south

and to the north]

Dinner with Laura at Sobo restaurant - I ordered salmon for

the first time in my life, I think, and it was delicious. We caught up on all her family gossip and ours, and she assures us she will try to get all her siblings out for Adele and John's wedding.

Back to our campsite to enjoy sunset and the darkening view of the ocean. z

Vancouver and beyond

Had roast lamb dinner in our favourite restaurant - Olympia on Denman Street - as good as we remembered and a LOT of food.

Wednesday morning we caught the 10:30 ferry to Nanaimo and then drove to Tofino - a rollercoaster of a highway - up, down, around bends, with lush green scenery all the way.

Went to Ucluelet first to have a look around - walked to a nice little lighthouse and along a path by the ocean, then headed towards Tofino. The Pacific Rim National Park has beautiful campsites -private and spread out so that you can barely see your neighbour, but no hookups and no sites available on the bluff (with an ocean view). We decide to check out the Bella Pacifica - I have been in touch with them and they felt there would be beachfront sites available at this time of year. We don't get a spot on the beach, but do have a site with a panoramic view of the ocean. The beach is clean, huge, flat and virtually uninhabited - we are a week early for tourist season, but have totally lucked out with the weather.

Vancouver?

After Owen has an run and a shower and we enjoy a pancake breakfast, we head out, choosing again, we think, the "quieter, more scenic" road to Horseshoe Bay, where we intend to catch the ferry to Vancouver Island. Somewhere our navigator screwed up and we missed the connection to Highway 1, finding ourselves instead on Hastings Street in Vancouver and eventually a couple of blocks from the Buchan, our favourite hotel. This fortuitous mistake, coupled with the first sun we have seen all day, spur us to decide to spend the afternoon in Stanley Park and the night at the Buchan. Yes they have a room, yes we an park the Roadtrek in the back. So we eat a hastily prepared lunch in the Roadtrek in the parking lot, then head to Stanley Park, where we are entertained by a young-ish man on a seatless bicycle who is jumping from log to log along the beach (on his seatless bike!!) He leaves us about the same time the sun does - we move to a sunnier spot, and read for 20 minutes before..... it starts to rain.

Hope!

We continue along our scenic highway to Hope, and finally find a tourist info centre that is open. The very friendly lady tells us about a hike to some railway tunnels, so after a meal and some internet at the Blue Moose, our favourite coffee shop in Hope (this being our second visit!!) we find the Kettle Valley Tunnel Quintette. This is an easy walk for about a Km to 5 tunnels built through a mountain in the early 1900s. Despite the rain, it is worth the effort to find and photograph these tunnels - amazing how they blasted these 5 train-size holes in the mountain - in a perfect line, to boot!!

Continued on to Bridal Falls, where we stayed 20 years ago with the girls. This place sets us back $31.50, with no internet available until tomorrow morning. Still, as we pull into our site, the sun shines for, we think, the first time on this trip, so we crack a beer and catch 10 minutes of rays, before we lose the sun.

Hot showers tonight!! We still have not figured out the hot water syst

em in the Roadtrek.

Woke up to a gentle, light snow! We liked the scenery around Logan Lake so much, we decided to drive the Fraser Canyon highway, instead of the Coqohalla. This added 100Kms to the voyage, but it was spectacular scenery on a winding, well paved, relatively untravelled highway. The weather - light to torrential rain the whole way, but the lady at the Hope Visitors Info booth told us we had missed snow on the Cocohalla (choose your own spelling....) Bought gas at a First Nations gas station for 10 cents a litre cheaper that we paid in Kamloops, with the added attraction of 3 hummingbird feeders that were aswarm with tiny red birds.