Expedition Canada

Summer's End Tuesday 8th Time for a nap - just look at those claws! The first weekend in September is the long Labour Day weekend which signals the end of summer holidays.  Kids go back to school over the coming week.   Yippee!😀 It also means the end of the BC Ferries unreliable hourly summer schedule, dropping to an even less reliable two hourly fall and winter schedule.  It assumes the ferries are working.    Saturday August 29th both ferries 'went tech' resulting in cancelled sailings and passengers enjoying a 4-hour+ wait to get to where they were going.  Fortunately we weren't travelling that weekend.   Wildfires & Weather A number of friends in the UK have got in touch to ask if we have been affected by BC wildfires this summer.  The short answer is no, thank goodness!  At the start of our road trip at the beginning of July, the Icefield Parkway (in Alberta) was socked in smoke, but that has been it.   Catastro...

Wolf on the Loose Tue July 30 Pet not predator Just back from a week in Whistler where we took advantage of not having Jack with us and were able to spend a lot of time up the mountains and in bars, where dogs are banned. Promoted as 'dog friendly', compared to the UK it is anything but.  More of Whistler later. Morning walks along Bonniebrook beach almost came to a halt a few weeks ago, before we headed North, after I came face to face with a large wolf gambolling along the road heading for Jack.  What do you do when a wolf heads towards you?  I had no idea.  It had, what I assumed was a tracking collar, but turned out to be a domestic dog collar.  His name I discover is Rudiger and he has a reputation for escaping from the compound his owner created for him with 12' high fences with an overhang. He wanted to play with, rather than consume Jack, but it was still an initially unnerving experience.  Rudiger has been the source of much social media commentary...

The Sea to Sky Highway Wed August 16 Sea to Sky Highway in the 50's I have no idea how many times we have driven the Sea to Sky Highway to get to and from Whistler, and beyond.  The first time was in 2013, when Ros spent a year working for ZipTrek, having transferred from their operation in NZ.   We have seen it when the snow started at the Vancouver end and at times when only when we've got close to Whistler has the snow been evident.  The first half of the drive runs along Howe Sound, until just before Squamish, when the gentle climb starts up to Whistler.  The road has not changed in the ten years we've been driving it, though it is very different to the 50's when the road was on a par with today's Forest Service Roads.   The road we know today was originally started during the early 1900's when copper mining started at the Britannia Mine (1904), just below Squa mish.  There is believed to be an older First Nations trading trail before that....

Still feels like Summer Mon Oct 3rd Sunset over Van Island - still warm enough to eat outside Message from the editor:  Technical glitches in the last blog update email, lost the formatting and didn’t save the changes after the typos were corrected.  Guardian readers may not have noticed.  The forecast rain reported in the last blog never arrived, water restrictions remain in place and the Sunshine Coast Regional District has convened their Emergency Committee.  Although it’s cooler at either end of the day, temperatures have been in the mid twenties which is 6c - 10c above average for this time of year.  The rain forecast set to swamp the Public Holiday next weekend  (Monday Oct 10th is Thanksgiving in Canada) is also looking less likely, maybe a few showers.  The coast has gone 80 days without any significant rainfall.   Some are speculating it may lose its status as a temperate rain forest. Canadian Thanksgiving is a celebration of th...