Canada - BC reunion tour 2008 - Part II

Completed on: Feb 27, 2009 @ 22.00 BST

Craigellachie - On our way from Kamloops to Revelstoke, we stopped at Craigellachie. Every Canadian of course knows that in Craigellachie is where the CPR from the East met the CPR from the West, and the last rail spike was driven. The last spike was actually gold to signify the event. During the hammering of the last spkie, it was bent several times, and they had to keep straightening it. They obviously have since removed the golden spike (cause if they didn't, I'm sure the next person by would have).

Here we have Seth applying the breaks on this caboose. Shame that the cabooses were taken off the trains to save a couple bucks, but hey, that's progress.

Now that the breaks are applied, all you have to do is sit back and wait for it to stop. Might as well do a couple chin-ups while we're waiting.

Here are Seth, Kim and me on the back of the caboose.

And, incase you don't know how wide a caboose is, Seth is showing you exactly how wide it is! It's t-h-i-s wide!!!!!!

Here comes a coal train. If you've never seen a Canadian coal train (for those readers in the UK or Oz), the coal trains are over 100 cars long, and are often more than a mile.

Since the trains are so heavy, mountains so large etc, the engines are huge!

This is about as close as I could get (gvt regs - pah!) but it does show that the train just goes on forever!

Here's Kim and Seth at the Craigellachie Monument. Seth is more impressed by the train going by, as all he's seen is the little ones that we have here.

The story goes, that the old guy (probably the chairman or whatever) drove the final spike. Now, I'm sure (from the number of times he bent it) that it was the first spike he'd ever hammered. So, fine, he's a big wig, let him do it. But, the interesting thing about this picture is the little kid behind him -- he actually predicted that the last spike would be right here. Now, that's pretty clever, considering there's over 5000 miles of track from coast to coast.

Revelstoke - After Kamloops, we were off to see my Dad and Lia in Revelstoke. If you've never been never been to Revelstoke, it is a very nice, picturesk town. They are currently revamping their ski hill, so in the next couple years, it'll be one of the skiing hotspots. Problem now, is that the housing market is also going straight up, which is forcing the locals out.

After we arrived, we settled down to our dinner (or lunch as you may call it) from one of Revelstoke's most famous and time tested venues - yes, we were at A&W. It's been a while since I've had rootbeer and a A&W burger, so I had a double, large rootbeer and onion rings. OK, I'll bet you're wondering why I'd even bother to enter this on my site, but it's a nice change from bangers & mash, or cod.

After arriving at Dad & Lia's place, we decided to check out the back yard. And, when we tried to play football, we'd found that all the grass had been stolen, and this odd, cold white substance was covering the backyard.

Now, what do you do with such a substance? Make a slide, of course! Seth required some assistance on the first couple runs, just to get the slide established, but after that, we'd made some stairs, and let him slide to his heart's content.

What could be more perfect than a snow-slide?

There's two ways up to the top of the snowbank. The first (albeit boring) way, is to climb the newly formed snow stairs.

The second way up the top of the snowbank, is to have your self airplaned above the clouds, and to have a perfect landing uptop of the slide.

Oh, look at that! A three point landing! Seth sticks the landing, going for gold at the Olympic slide aerobatical display.

Here Seth is trying to figure out how this "snow" stuff works...

Oh SNAP! Figured it out! Got a handfull of the stuff. Now... what does one do with such a find??

Attack Daddy!!!! See how fast you can run with a snowball hurtling towards your head.

Smowball launched! Target wounded!

Here Kim is helping to shovel the walkway. But, what's that? The walkway is already clear, and nobody walks that way?

Ah, now I understand. If you look in the middle right, you'll see that Kim created a snow cave. Very nice.

Since I'm at the top of the slide, Seth has to use the old stairs, with a little help from Kim.

The next few mountain pictures are from Dad and Lia's back yard. Might have mentioned this earlier, but you really "forget" about the mountains after you've lived in a country that doesn't have any.

Zoom of the previous picture.

Hillside looking East.

Picture looking South. The one thing I like about this picture is the birdfeeder (in the lower middle). The birds don't have to fly up to it, but land on the snow and just walk over to it. How lazy is that?

As well, the guy right infront hasn't bothered to shovel his roof (have to do when the snow gets too heavy), but he has the ladder poised to shovel from infront of his satelite dish! Doesn't matter if the roof leaks, as long as you can watch the game! I think if that were me, I'd put the dish at the end of the roof, and that way it'd have to snow 15 feet before you needed to shovel it.

Close-up of the previous shot.

Further close-up of the previous shot. Gotta love that zoom lens!

Here are some of the mountains looking West. On the far left is Mt. Begbie which is a glacier. I've heard that in the summer you can climb up it -- I've always been busy and never arranged a trip. Scroll to the right to see the entire picture.

Close-up of Mt. Begbie.

Closer-up of Mt. Begbie. Maybe, on second thought, I've decided not to climb to the top. Seems a little more difficult climb than it did from far away.

Here is Kim and Dad waiting for us to finally get ready. It's not my or Seth's fault! So much snow to throw and explore!

Here is the Powder Springs Hotel. The owner has a heli-skiing operation on the ski hill, but not sure what's going to happen to the hill now with the new Japanese owners. I think (but don't quote me) that's Mount McKenzie in the background. It's hard to tell, but above the treeline is another part of the mountain. There, the snow doesn't melt until the summer.

Seth is braving walking on the snow. Sure, you can walk on the nice, clean sidewalk, but where's the adventure in that?

The next two pictures are from the leisure centre looking West across the Columbia River. It doesn't really seem that wide, but it's very fast.

I really hope that you've appreciated the above and below pic, because, I tried to walk on the top of the snow like Seth did a couple pics above, and sank. That's never happened before! Course, last time I tried to walk on snow, I was probably about 10. It must be with the global warming, that the snow is much softer and not as strong now. As a result, I got snow in my socks, shoes and pants (and that's much funnier if you are reading this in English! (nobody in Canada will get that))

Our walk's goal was to go swimming at the leisure centre. They have done a really nice job with this place. They have a really nice pool, hot mini-pool, sauna, and a waterslide. This was Seth's first waterslide, and, since it wasn't busy, I was able to go down with him the first couple times. After that he was ok to go down by himself. At the leisure centre, they have this grizzly bear, which is quite tame. The story is that it was separated from it's mother when it was a cub, and a logger fed it. Instead of hibernating, the bear lives in the town, and guards/sleeps in the leisure centre at night.

I was born and lived in Revelstoke, and this was the first time I'd ever been up the ski hill.

Infront of us is the ski lodge, and in the foggy distance is Mt. Begbie and the Columbia river below. On the far left in the mountains is not another ski hill, or even logging, but they've shaved the hill for the power lines. Guess they figure that the trees steal their power if they get to close. Greedy trees! Scroll to the right for the entire picture.

Here is Kim admiring the ski hill. I think this run is called "The Banker", and at the start of the season, this run claimed 1 life. From this picture, it doesn't look that dificult of a run, but add the chairlift running down the middle of it, plus at the top, it gets much steeper and rockier.

For those of you who don't like heights, there's 3 ways to get down:

1) Ski - not an option for us as we all forgot our skis

2) Walk - not an option as we had to be at the dam in 45mins

3) Take the tram back down - as the first two are non-starters, we'd have to take it back down. Weeeeee!!!!!!

Here is the main downtown section of Revelstoke. It's weird, but when you're on the ground, it seems a lot larger than that. As well, you can really tell the decrease of the railway in this picture. It only looks like the two main lines are used, where before, you'd have all of the yard working (that's the white triangle bit in the middle - there are tracks all through there, but none show up in the picture.)

Phew! We all made it the top of the Gondala ride and survived! I would like to say that this is the top of the mountain, but from here you need to take another ride up to get closer to the top. Here is Kim, Seth and Brian.

Here is Lindy, Seth and Brian. Lindy was kind enough to give us the hill tour, and also took us to the dam (but no pics from there due to security (no, really - no cameras allowed anymore)).

Here is the other chairlift which will take you a little further up the hill. You'd need skis to get to that lift, so we had to give it a miss.

This is a zoom from the above picture. Incase you didn't notice it, there's a little bear cave close to the ski run. If anyone gets too close (and they have), and the bear is awake, the bears get an easy dinner in a nice warm package.

Here is a view at the other mountains.

And, it's obvious that you just can't drive your Chealsea Tractor up the hill, so you may need a little more traction. Here's where this bad boy comes to play! Can you believe that it's a highly modified Ford F150.

After a couple cups of hot cocco and biscuits, we were back down the mountain.

On the way back to Dad's, Seth had made a new friend.

We may have mentioned that Revelstoke is overrun with bears. Here's another example where the bears are allowed to just roam the streets.

We took a little visit to the Revelstoke Train Museum. Here they have an old steam engine and several carriages.

At the train museum, they have a train simulator. For a couple of minutes, you too can drive a coal train.

Our last day in Revelstoke was a slightly overcast day, but for the first day in a couple, we were blessed with the sun.

First :- We aquire a good source of snow. Sample it. Test it. Ensure it is the right consistency.

Second :- We find our target, and look down, not to arouse suspicion.

Third :- Throw snowball, point and laugh. Got YOU!

Here's Lia taking some cute photo's of Seth (as if you could ever take a bad one of him).

It's hard to imagine (from the UK anyway) but the sky was really that electric blue. No filters were used on that shot. This is Mt. Revelstoke off to the East.

And Mt. McKenzie to the south.

This is looking West. Off the pic to the right is the valley where the Trans Canada Highway follows. Just infront of that Motor Inn sign is where the Greyhound station is. Keep going for 2 and half hours, and we'll reach Kamloops (except this time, where the bus was two hours late and was full, so we had to take a taxi to Salmon Arm). I've spent quite a few trips there over the years.

Surrey - When we were at the coast, we were fortunate enough to stay at Karen's place in Surrey. I think I've said it above, but you really forget the BC scenery. I don't know where else in the world that I've been that has a major city surrounded by mountains, sea, rivers, ok, sure the odd bear, but it was an eye opener to be back again.

Scroll right to see the entire picture.

Port Coquitlam - On the way back from the interior, we had the chance to stop off at Lori's (Kim's sister) and she took us to Rocky Point Park. I believe that this entire inlet is all tidal. Ok, so, a lot of inlets are tidal, but check this out on Google - this bay is massive and it all goes under the Lion's Gate and under the Second Narrow's. We've been thru (over?) the second narrow's in a little 15 foot boat as the tide is going out, and there's quite a current. Definately recommend (if you get the chance) to go to Coal Harbour and rent a boat and go up Indian Arm to Granite Falls and to the end. It'll take a couple hours, but well worth the trip.

We parked at the west end of Rocky Point Park and walked to about half way through Inlet Park. It was a very nice park, and definately worth a stroll.

Here's a wide angle shot in the middle of Inlet Park.

And here are Kim, Seth and I on the very same bench the above wide angle picture was taken.

And, back in Rocky Point Park, looking north towards Old Orchard Park. I'm not sure why there's 3 parks all joined together. Probably different towns own each park.

Seth is trying to recreate a scene from "The Blair Witch Project"...

Looking north in the middle of Rocky Point Park.

If you look back at Google of the park, you'll see that there was two warf's. We were able to spend a little time playing on them, and fortunately no (little) people fell in. Someone was trying their best though.

Vancouver Airport - Sadly, our visit was over and it was time to go back home.

The following statue is one of Bill Reid's, called "The Jade Canoe". This is one very busy canoes. I don't think he could add another animal in there if he tried!

Here it is from the other side. When you see something like this, you realize what art is. When you see a painting with a red, blue and brown line selling for 10 million, you just can't understand the correlation between the two art forms. I guess I'm a realist - I believe art has to look like or have some sort of effort behind it before I will like it.

I don't know who created these statues or what they're called, as I couldn't leave Seth or our luggage to go and check. How about this -- who ever comes up with the best name, I'll put on.

Looking at all of these pictures again as I write this webpage, I remember all the beautiful scenery that BC has to offer - some I never really noticed until this trip (I know - that seems really strange). You really take it for granted when you live in such a beautiful place. But, most importantly, the one thing that Kim and I really missed was the people. Yes, you lot. Wish we could have seen more of you, and spent more time, but we did very well visiting everyone in the couple weeks that we had. We would like to come back in a couple years. So, in the meantime, I wish you and yours, all the best.

Brian, Kim and Seth.