Roadtrip life! Taking you to Whistler, Vancouver and Vancouver Island :)

So I still owe you a few adventures from when I still lived in Banff! I did a lot more hikes and little roadtrips that I just didn't get around writing something about. Susi visited as well so I will have to do a little bit of catching up at some point. And I will!!

This is very up to date and an unlucky occurence presented me with a bit of time to my hands (being stuck in the California backcountry). Our car was making weird noises and we decided to get that checked. Turned out we were basically driving around without brakes and there's no way around getting that fixed, simply for safety reasons. We discussed a few other options, but decided in the end to just get it fixed, as our whole lives are in this car right now. Of course that cut deep into our roadtrip funds. We had to rethink, reorganize and refocus a little bit. We planned to be in San Francisco that day (where we booked an Airnbnb), but we couldn't  go of course and had to book another hotel room for that night. Well. It all added up (emotionally and moneywise) and we were very exhausted and done with everything at the end of that day.
So glad everything kind of worked out and is sorted now and I really have to thank my parents for all the help and support they gave me!

After this little setback we are back on the road again (current location: San Francisco, California)! We are staying at a nice Airbnb and are tired from sightseeing, so I am finishing up this blog entry :) Let me take you on a little trip to BC!

Olympic Plaza in Whislter

On the 4th of July we left for our roadtrip through Western Canada and all the way down to San Diego along the West Coast of the US.! We did not make any specific plans, the plan was to just go, stay where we like it, leave where we don't. 6 weeks is plenty of time to just do whatever we want. We worked long enough and hard enough to have earned this priviledge.

I picked up Krissy from Lethbridge on the 1st of July and we spent an amazing reunion on Canada day with a parade, hot dogs and concerts in the park, and finsihed off the day with some fireworks in the end! We felt really Canadian that day! Also thanks to Rikki, Jess, Kiersten and Jordan to give us the real Canadian experience!

View on Whistler Blackcomb from Downtown!

The next few days were dedicated to last preparations and... off we go! First stop: Whistler! Steph joined us for the first part of this roadtrip which was really great :))

And I really really liked Whistler!! Coming from Banff, of course I compared these 2 villages. In some ways you can, in some ways you can't. And actually it doesn't even matter. Whistler seems more sophisticated, newer, the people are different. It does have a completely different vibe than Banff which felt very refreshing. I think I'd have been very happy living there as well! It's a ski-in-ski-out which is awesome!!! (The skiier in me is never going to shut up. Hence new trip plans to go to New Zealand ;D) Also, the Olympics are still very present everywhere which is cool as well.
The weather treated us with a lovely 39°C. I'd have loved to do a little hike or something but in this heat... no. Just no. Seeking the shade seemed more appropriate. We went to Alta Lake and I enjoyed a very refreshing bath! Very satisfied with the choice of staying there for 2 days. Also camping turned out to be just fine and we had a great time.

(I don't like my Whistler pictures very much. I'm gonna show you some anyway but I'm not proud of them)

Little pond on the way to Alta Lake.

View on the mountains from Alta Lake! Lovin it!

We had one more night left until we wanted to be in Vancouver and we found a nice campsite near the town of Squamish, BC. We made it to the coast! It was called Porteau Cove and was right at the beach! We got some cider (ok we got a massive bottle of Cider and it was great) and cooked some chilli at the campsite. Couldn't wish for anything more!
The 'fog' you can see on those pictures isn't actually fog. BC and Alberta have been hit pretty hard by forrest fires. This way kind of scary (our campsite wasn't in any danger though). As a consequence, having campfires was absolutely forbidden. Very understandable!

View from the campsite! It's kind of cool to be on the ocean and still see the mountains.

All the smoke made the sunset look very mystical and cool.

Next stop was Vancouver where we picked up Thea from the airport. BIG REUNION!!!! This was very exciting. Coming in from North Vancouver, we stopped in Lynn Valley first as Steph hasn't been yet. Otherwise not too many pictures as we've already visted Vancouver. We did a bike tour through Stanley Park (we didn't do that on out first visit). It had cooled down a little so it was ideal. We found out that there is free outdoor cinema in Stanley Park so we went to see Pitch Perfect in the evening.

Lynn Valley

Suspension bridge. And yes, we did cause a little congestion up there.

Cool bridge. Also, in the back you can see the smoke. Not so cool.

After 2 days we went on the ferry to go to Vancouver Island! We took some food and had a nice little lunch on the way to Nanaimo. Arriving, we headed straight across the Island to got to Tofino! What an awesome little town. Typical, charming beach village with a lot of cute small shops and little piers.

On the ferry to Vancouver Island!

The next day, we had a big day! Whale watching!!!! So exciting. This was something that was on my bucket list for Canada and as Tofino is supposed to be one of the top spots for that, so what better place is there to go on this expedition (thanks Steph for that word ;) )? It was really great. We had to wear funny astronaut's suits (included swim vests) and went out on a boat type called Zodiac which zoomed across the ocean and jumped over the waves. We saw some grey whales, sea lions, sea otters and a few little porpoises. Very well spent 3.5 hours. Couldn't have wished for anything more. No more words left.

Little Canyon somewhere on Vancouver Island

Hi Tofino :)

REUNION in Astronaut's suits!

This is the back of a Grey Whale (not a rock).

Tail!!!!

This is officially the biggest chiller on Earth!!!

Seals! Still amazed how they got up there just using their little fin arms

Sea lions were also hanging out on this little island.

Bye, bye Tofino. It's been a great pleasure!

Those 2 days in Tofino were over way to quickly and we travelled south to go see Victoria. Steph stayed in Tofino for another few days so we had to say good bye to her. Not a final good bye yet (at least for Krissy and me as we still have to go back to Banff at the end of our trip to sell our car in Alberta. We drove south and found a nice camping spot at Thetis lake just a few kilometers from Victoria and spent one last camping night.

I don't know why, maybe it was the weather but I didn't get the vibe of this city at all and we all kind of agreed on that. It was good to see it anyway. We spent the day browsing around, going to the movies and stayed in a hostel for that night. The next day was another day of good bye, we took Thea to the airport so that she could start her exciting time in the UK! Glad that's closer to Germany than Australia ;) As this was already at like 6 in the morning, Krissy and me caught a very early ferry.

There we go. Now it was just Krissy and me! We had to reorganize the car a little bit to prepare it for actually sleeping in it which included getting rid of one of the seats (It's living on some parking lot now... ooooops. I think we accidentally dropped it there.).

Next stop: USA!!! But this is not gonna go into this entry. I have to keep up the suspense a little bit ;)