Rocky Road trip
According to the tourist office once we'd seen Vancouver Island the best thing to do was head for the Rockies - they're beautiful in the spring, lots of lovely hiking trails - so that what we tried to do.

After 400km on the road we reached a place called Kamloops; it was supposed to be spring weather so the snow came as a bit of a shock. We stayed in a hostel that used to be the courthouse (our room was formerly the judges private chamber), which doesn't really have anything to do with the road trip, but never mind. The following day we set off for Lake Louise, about 400km further East. The further East we headed the mountains became larger, the snow deeper and the national parks more boarded up for the winter. By the time we reached Lake Louise, deep in the Rocky mountains, we suspected our plans to enjoy the alpine spring-time would need to be revised.

In Vancouver we'd decided not to go sking / snowboarding, however one look around and it was clear there wasn't anything else to do. Louise had received 15 inches of snow in the last 3 days, apparently the best they have had for 15 years! So what choice did we have... The village was tiny, a handful of hotels and very little else (Susie found the bakery - tasty cookies). The ski-resort on the other hand had miles and miles of slopes, an enormous area quite unlike anything we'd seen in Europe. We didn't experience 'Canadian Powder' (not a euphanism for cocaine) but did enjoy the sort of groomed slopes a non-inuit would describe as 'like the first run of the day all day'. For those non-skiers / non-snowboarders, it was really cold and you wouldn't like it.

After a few days Susie decided we would go husky sledding, so that's what we did. If sitting 4 inches above the ground being dragged over hard packed ice, jolting your spine while staring at 7 dog-arses is your idea of fun then sledding is for you, if you prefer your winter sports not to stink of dog-crap then stick to strapping slippy plank(s) to your feet. We were allowed to take a turn at 'driving', this turned out to be a much more pleasant position to adopt, less arse and more bounce from your knees. After this morning of delight we headed towards Banff, stopping off at a gorge to view the ice falls, really spectacular, quite literally breath taking, (many degress below freezing).

Tempting fate we decided to drive back to Vancouver in one go, the weather was kind, Kylie filled the car with her squawking from our only CD, and 8 hours later we were back in the city of the drifters, they should be so lucky.

Tomorrow morning we're off to New York, our final city before we head home next Saturday - this time next week we'll be back in the UK - guess all things come to an end sometime.
- posted by Adrian @ 5:57:00 AM