Our tour began in Calgary, mid-west of all of Canada. As we arrived, we had to stay a night before being allowed to drive a car, so we went to CanaDream in Calgary the next morning. After the car takeover procedure of about one and a half hours, we went off to the supermarket and hit the highway right after our purchases. Of course, our first day's target was in the Rocky Mountains.

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This episode starts with the second day of our road trip. Still used to European time, we got up pretty early these days and were among the first to visit the big places in the Rockies, like Moraine Lake, Peyto Lake, the Athabasca Glacier on Columbia Icefield and the Athabasca Falls at the south border of the Jasper National Park.

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After leaving the Rockies, our passage continued through parts of the Cariboo Mountains. Within short time and distance, the nature around you changes completely from these forest covered mountains to a very dry area. We left the foggy Rockies behind us and eventually got to Lillooet on a very scenic route through the Fraser River valley, where we camped right next to that river.
At the end of this album, we find ourselves as close as a one hour drive to Vancouver, quickly passing Whistler where we found no good reason to stay.

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The City of Vancouver was one of the highlights for the trip. We camped at a campsite half an hour north of the city and drove to Northdale where we got on the Seabus to get to downtown Vancouver.
To explore it, a good way is to rent a bike and ride around Stanley Park - which is what we did. It took us a day to get around all of the park, see Greenville Island and Gastown. The second day was devoted to shopping - Marie bought several pieces of clothing while I spent my money on a Rayban.

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We had left Vancouver at the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal and made our way up north the Sunshine Coast. After a day of driving the scenic ways along the coast we hopped on the next ferry up till the last ferry passage when we finally got to Vancouver Island at Comox. We camped at a campground near seal bay.

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After just one day on the east side of the island, we progressed on our way to the western parts. Behind the mountain range of the mid island, weather conditions rapidly changed to a moist and foggy climate. The highlight of that part clearly was the Pacific Rim National Parc, with its Long Beach, but also the Lighthouse trail starting from Ucluelet.
Victoria wasn't exactly exciting, but we got on a whale tour there, and we were able to watch local and transient Orca whales; after all I fear we chose the wrong company, 'cause the other boats made their way much closer to the whales and had better views probably.

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Back from Vancouver Island, the route took us to the U.S. The border cop obviously trusted us and let us in the country - so we drove all the way down to Seattle. We had a day for watching the city - the harbour, Pike market, the first Starbucks Coffee store.

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After having visited Seattle, the trip continued in north-east direction until we came to the US-Canadian border where we had the car being searched by US policemen. Behind the border, we camped in Osoyos on a lake. After that night we drove to Kelowna, the hottest place of our whole trip, if weather wouldn't have been like it was. We tried to visit a winery, but didn't buy any wine actually because we felt it was way to expensive:)

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After the Okanagan part of our trip we had done most of the route we had planned but still had some days left. The Rockies have been a beautiful place when we first were there, so we decided to spend the rest of our days in Canada there. Quite obvious the air became colder as we got closer to the Rockies. This time we had more luck with Lake Louise and made a walk to the Teahouse which took us 3 hours. Another amazing lake we saw was Olive Lake, though still in the Kootenay National Park.

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When we returned to Calgary and returned the car, we still had one day and night to spend in Calgary before our flight home would take off. We stayed in the brand new Acclaim Hotel in north of Calgary and decided to visit the a bit pricy Calgary Zoo to see the missing local animals we hadn't yet seen on the trip (missing was a grizzly and an elk).

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