Joe and Françoise's excellent adventures!

We said goodby to Whistler on another beautiful day, catching the reflection of the skiing slopes on Green lake.

We continued north along the Cascades, where there are MANY reflecting lakes, so we did not stop at all of them.

The road over the Cascades is very pretty, but also really steep and winding. Joe did a fine job at managing all the hair pin turns, while I tried (and mostly failed) to capture the landscape.

We stopped at several view points and lakes.

Once on the other side, the landscape changes dramatically because it is so much drier. In fact it starts looking like Arizona, or maybe the dry part of Wyoming. It is definitely not as pretty as the Pacific side, but it is interesting in its starkness. We stopped in the little town of Lilooet, where the very friendly young woman at the visitor center said that there was basically nothing to see in town, and that we should go to a lake further down, and to the Hat Creek ranch - which was already on our plans. The town of Lilloet was born from the Fraser river gold rush in 1858, which makes sense. What makes less sense is why people stay there now……. Although, from the road above the canyon, it does look quite striking.

(See top picture).

So we stopped at the Marble Canyon lake, which is indeed very pretty, has cristal clear water, and loons!!

We then stopped by the historical Hat Creek Ranch, which is a restoration of a 1860 ranch and road house, and well worth the stop. It also has some of the history of the original first nation people, who still live in this area. The are many different tribes, with difficult names - my favorite being the Ts’Kw’aylaxw - I have no idea how to pronounce that! Here are a few pictures of the ranch.

The blacksmith made me a nail - I’m very happy with it!

On we continued though Kamloop, which is a largish city that I had never heard of, and puzzled me a bot - this is a dry and remote place - what do people do here? again - the town owns it’s existence to mining, and there is still mining going on (copper and gold). But tourism is listed as its main industry and i struggle to understand why. It is on a pretty lake, but in a VERY arid climate. It is just not that pretty. It is however almost halfway between Whistler and Jasper, and people stop there on the way. We choose to bypass it and instead stop at Sun Peaks, another place I had never heard of. It is a large ski area, built in the 1970’s to look like an Alpine village and it is very pretty.

Also, because it is higher, the temperature was very nice - here is what the car dashboard read in Kamloop (That’s 90 Fahrenheit- I have it packed for that!!!!). I am so ignorant of where we are that I had to ask google if we were in the Cascades or the Rockies.

Turns out- neither. We are in the Shuswap highlands, a range i just learned about. But isn’t it what road trips are all about??? Discover places you don’t know anything about? I went for a bit of a walk, and got the wrong directions from two very friendly locals, who sent me the wrong way, but in different ways…. Of well I had a nice walk through an alpine meadow and met a cute ground squirrel.

We had an early dinner (the fish tacos were excellent!) and have another long driving day tomorrow - this time, we should make it to the Rockies!

The whole LeGoues/Jasinski clan came to Whistler a couple of times in the early 2000’s for skiing. It was great! So in my memories, it is indeed very pretty, but definitely a winter destination. Turns out, it is even prettier in the summer, with many varied activities: hiking, biking, swimming, kayaking, just going ooh and ahh at how pretty it is…. I could really see spending a few weeks here (we are only here for 2 days however, because that’s how road trips work….). Apparently, I’m not the only person who feels that way, because it was really busy in town, even though it’s not full season yet. It got very quiet in the afternoon, because Canada was playing Quatar in the word cup - they won 6-0. So yeh Canada!

We certainly lucked out with the weather and were able to enjoy a lot of what the area has to offer. We started with a short helicopter ride over the glacier, because we like seeing things from above and helicopters are cool. The glaciers are shrinking, like everywhere else, but still pretty healthy here. This time of year, they create waterfalls just about everywhere.

There are 2 lakes in Whistler, on called Alta and the other (showing a lack of imagination), “green lake”. Here are both of them from above: green lake is fed from the glacier, and the finely ground particle refract the light, turning the water green. Alta is fed by melting snow and a river, so does not contain suspended particle, thus is has the more typical blue alpine color.

We then took the Whistler Gondola to go to the top of the mountain - there is a nice bar/ viewing area, where Joe choose to enjoy the view, while I walked down to the Peak chairlift that takes you to the very top of Whistler. There, they have built the Cloud Raker bridge - a suspended 430 feet metal bridge that goes over the Whistler bowl, and a cantilevered view point called the Raven’s nest. It is very impressive, and just a bit scary (yes, the bridge does sway a bit….).

The panoramic view at the top is amazing: top picture of the blog is of Mount Garibaldi (described as a “potentially still active volcano…. I’m bit puzzled by what that means) and the well named “black tusk”.

I love that, as the snow melts, in every nook and cranny, some flower starts blooming.

On the way back, i finally got to take a picture of a hoary marmotte: Whistler is named after them - they whistle when they feel threatened, and there are enough of them that sometimes it sounds like the mountain whistles. They are under stress right now because coyotes have moved in and are a new predator. I saw several, but they move fast! This one was nice enough to pose for a picture. We of course did not see them when we came in the winter - they hibernate. Right now, they are busy getting fat, and it looks like it’s working!

After this, i joined joe at the bar for a “Bloody Mary with a view” (It’s actually called a Cesar, which is uniquely Canadian - has slightly different spices, comes with sausage and vegetables on top - so counts as a meal! There are many interesting birds around, but few who will sit still enough to take a picture of. This Clark’s Nutcracker was an exception, because he was too busy eating to pay attention to me.

So after that meal, we took the Peak-to-peak gondola, which join the top of Whistler to the top of Blackcomb - the mountain next to it; in fact, when we came here to ski, we stayed in Blackcomb ,and it was complicated to ski on the whistler side. So this was build in 2018 and is quite a marvel of engineering: it has the longest unsupported span - 1.88 miles between posts, and the highest point above ground (1430 feet) in the world. It is impressive! It provides nice views of the Fitzsimmons ravine, and of the dam that was built on it - this “micro dam” provide enough power for 70% of the entire mountain - the goal being to be 100% self sustaining by 2030.

We got a bit confused on the way down, and ended up on the Blackcomb part of town, but there is an extensive set of pedestrian/bicycle trails that are lovely, and got us back to our hotel.

On the way was a Cow’s ice cream store, and I think there is a law that says that, when in Whistler, you have to have some Cows Ice cream. So I did…..

It was just too pretty a day to not do some more walking - so I walked to the Alta parc - again, i could stay here a few more days.

On the way, I took pictures of the many wild flowers - the is my favorite picture because it’s being photobombed by a little creature (more pictures at end of blog. We had a simple an lovely dinner at the hotel, sitting outside in the warm late afternoon sun- just a charcuterie platter and salad. It was delicious!