In September of 1999, Felicia, Susie, Larry, and I flew into Vancouver to start our trip out. The plan was to see as much of British Columbia, Alberta, and the Canadian Rockies as we could see in 2 weeks. We had a wonderful time and saw mountains, glaciers, the Pacific Ocean, bears, elk, more bears & elk…
We took another trip to the Canadian Rockies in July of 2010
After landing in Vancouver, we rented an SUV and took a ferry boat from Vancouver, through the San Juan Islands and down to Victoria on the south end of Vancouver Island and saw the Butchart Gardens and Victoria. Five years after this trip, we went back to the San Juan Islands on our 2004 Vacation in Washington State.
From Victoria we then headed NW to go to the town of Tofino the west coast of Vancouver Island. We hiked through the dense rainforests of the Pacific Rim National Forest, missed out on a whale watching tour and watched the large waves of the Pacific Ocean beat large logs apart on the rocks.
Click on any photo to see a larger view
Leaving Vancouver Island, we drove east until we reached the remote town of Kamloops. Not satisfied with how far away we were from civilization, we went another 30 miles further from town to a Bed and Breakfast on a very remote farm. Felicia had been wishing to see bears for several years. When we woke up at the farm in Kamloops, a bear/bears had knocked over some fruit trees during the night and left all kinds of claw marks around. That was close enough to a bear for me, but we saw 5-6 a day for the rest of the trip. Black, Brown and Grizzly Bears are all over that part of Canada and we read the Ranger reports to see where not to go.
There just wasn’t much around our cabin near Kamloops except nice scenery and bears. To save a 1-hour trip, we took a small ferry across a river. The ferry was pulled from one side of the river to another with cables and would hold several cars.
Heading north from Kamloops we drove to Mount Robson Provincial Park, the highest mountain in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. We stayed for several days at the Terracana Ranch Resort while we hiked around Mount Robson and the Robson Glacier.
From Terracana, we took 4-wheeler ATV trips up and down the logging roads, went eagle watching from a speedboat and watched bears around our cabins and salmon in the Fraser River beside the cabins. It was very peaceful. Even though it was only mid-September, the entire area was getting ready to close for the winter. All of the highways are closed to traffic for about 5 months during winter.
The area around Mount Robson was filled with mountains in the 11,000 to 13,000 foot range. We left the Terracana Resort and went to the town of Jasper in the Canadian Rockies. We spent several days heading southwest from Jasper to Banff along the Continental Divide. We were in British Columbia and Alberta. We went through Jasper National Park, Glacier National Park and Banff National Park. The following pictures are of the mountains, glaciers, lakes, elk and rivers that we saw.
