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| View from cottage at sunset |
Our plans for our visit to Canada were always flexible and so we stayed in Ontario quite a bit longer than originally intended. This gave us the opportunity to spend more time with our son and new daughter and more time enjoying the “cottage lifestyle” and doing a few jobs about the place. New friends we made invited us to stay a few days and took us to a classic car show at Orillia and to a local market which featured sculpture, art, food and clothing, much of it quite different from items seen at Australian markets.
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| Montreal old district |
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| Street theatre in Montreal |
We spent a few days in Montreal wandering the cobblestone streets of the old part of the city while struggling with everything being in French but we got by with some very rusty school French, luck and help from friendly locals – most signage was in English as well, but often that was in small print.
When we finally left Ontario in early September we flew west to Calgary in Alberta then took a four day bus trip up into the Rockies visiting all the famous spots like Jasper, Banff, Lake Louise and the Columbia Icefields – so many mountains towering over us and lovely blue-green lakes fed by glaciers – we lost count of the glaciers!
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| Lake Louise |
The bright lake colours and cloudy white or blue rivers are coloured by rock flour ground up by the glaciers and so fine it stays suspended in the water. The amazing scenery is all around you all the time – photos can’t do justice to the awesome 360o spectacle. The bus trip took us through Rogers Pass on the last day and on to Vancouver.
We wandered the city for a day then picked up a rental motorhome for a 7 day trip north in British Columbia through Whistler, which is a pretty tourist village which hosted events for the 2010 Winter Olympics, to Lillooet, a small country township beside the Frazer River, a complete contrast to Whistler.
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| Camp spot at Lillooet on 3 levels by the Fraser River |
Lillooet has a surprisingly warm climate in a sheltered gorge which channels the warm southerly breezes and provides excellent crop growing conditions. It is also famous as a jumping off point for the trek north to the goldfields, and for the fishing in the river including salmon and white sturgeon, a recent catch measured a record four metres and weighed half a tonne. From there we turned south again on roads featuring plenty of rock fall and avalanche warming signs and tunnels through the sides of mountains till we got back to Vancouver.
Before leaving to head home, we spent two days with friends at Victoria on Vancouver Island which is reached by a 1 ½ hour ferry trip through surrounding islands. They took us to the beautiful Butchart Gardens and for a tour of the city and surrounds which was a lovely end to our Canadian Summer.
We were lucky to see some of this beautiful country during one of the best summers – in 3 months I think it only rained on us about 8 days. The people were all friendly, polite and helpful, and the towns and cities were full of bright flower gardens and hanging baskets. There is so much more to see so with luck we’ll get back before too long and reconnect with all the new friends we made.
