Friday, May 23rd

Nick and Robyn stayed home from school today to join us on a day trip to Whistler and all the stops in between. It took us over 8 hours to get to Whistler because we stopped so often to look at other things!

The first stop was in Aldergrove, to take photos of two deer on the side of the road. Along the way we had to take a little ferry across the river to continue our journey. Then we went to Lynn Canyon, walked along the river to the pools, ate pizza at a skate park in Lynn Valley, checked out the view from Cypress Mountain, stopped at Shannon Falls and walked to the base of it (got soaked), stopped at a viewpoint to see Shannon Falls and The Chief in the far distance, stopped at Brandywine Falls, walked to a lookout to see the Black Tusk, and then finally headed to Whistler. On the way, we spotted a brown bear munching the new grass along the highway! It was rather arrogant, not caring about us or the traffic, just pulling up tufts of that yummy fresh grass.
When we finally got to Whistler, we were disappointed to find that the lifts were closed (at 4:30) and there was nothing to do but walk through the village. We had a delicious meal at the Keg. As we left the village, we saw a big, black bear walking near a train track in front of a few industrial buildings. He looked so lazy and harmless...hard to believe they can be deadly! After a few minutes, he got bored of looking at us and posing for our cameras, and he slowly sauntered onto a parking lot and disappeared between some cars.
On the way home (we left at 8:30) we checked out a road that had a sign at its entrance saying "home of the future Nordic Track" (2010 Olympics) so we headed up this lonely, new road.... and suddenly started seeing bears every few hundred meters!!! These bears were much more shy, but we ended up seeing 6 of them before we turned around to head home!! That was 8 bears in one day!!! And they all looked very healthy, too- they really love that new grass!
We got home just before 11 pm... only 2 and a half hours to get home...compared to over 8 to get there! (;

Our first Bear!!



Shannon Falls


Dave contemplating the rushing water