So really day 1 of doing anything except touring airports! It was a full day for sure.
We took a LandSea Tour up the Sea-to-Sky Highway to the village of Squamish. To me, this is one of the most spectacular rides in the world. The water in the glacial fiord as you drive this rode is still yet powerful. You look out on the Gulf Islands and it appears they go on forever. And though the highway is better than it was when we were last here before the 2010 Winter Olympics, I was grateful I was not driving.
First stop – Horseshoe Bay. This is one of the BC Ferries terminals. These are ferries like they have in Scandinavia – big ones. This village is on Howe Sound and the ferry terminal is the one for North Vancouver and above. The South Terminal is almost to the US Border but that is a story for later.
From here we went to Shannon Falls – for whatever reason we had never stopped here before. The falls are spectacular! This is within the BC Provencial Park system.
Next up was the Sea-to-Sky Gondola. We (less Kathy who chose to stay on the ground level) rode to the top. Talk about views! Wow. We walked across the suspension bridge (we did that in NI – this one was longer but did not blow in the wind like that one did) and hiked the trail at the upper level of the gondola. We saw other falls in the distance, interesting wetland features (at a very high altitude) and were literally in the clouds.
On the way back down we toured the Brittania Mining Museum. We had always seen this when here before but it was abandoned. Someone came in a did an amazing job of turning this into a museum of copper mining which was mined here until the 1970s. I learned a lot about how this worked – really had no clue before – and was reminded again how HARD industry was and how UNSAFE it was in the early 20th century.
Headed back into Vancouver and had our initial meet-and-greet with the Tauck party. Looks to be about 45 of us on this tour. We head out to tour Vancouver, Granville Island and on to Victoria by ferry this afternoon.
I love the mountains and when there Psalm 8 always is on a continuous loop in my head: “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!”
As usual on my iPad, my photos are loading in random order and I cannot tell what size they may render to the web (I am sure there is a fix for that but….)
More later.
Still Choosing Joy!
Cille
Cille Litchfield 