PNW and Canada adventure // part II: Canada

My parents, my brother and I went on a four week road trip through the Pacific North West and Canada in August. It was an awesome experience and I took hundreds of pictures. I wanna share some of our adventures with you so I've decided to share our trip in three parts:
Part I: the USA (from Seattle to Yellowstone NP to Glaciar NP)
Part II: Canada (from Calgary to Vancouver)
Part III: Knitting edition (duuuh, this is a craft blog and there are just so many awesome yarn shops and wip photos to share!)

We spent the second half of our trip in Canada. Immigration was much quicker than expected. We spent our first full day in Canada exploring Calgary before we headed to Banff National Park in the evening. Luckily, we had reserved our campsites the day before so we didn't have to worry about not finding a place to sleep.

Banff and Lake Louise were... well, rainy. Just like the rest of the Rocky Mountains. We walked through (the very tourist-y and overcrowded) the city of Banff and stopped at the famous Lake Louise to snap a picture but it was too cold and rainy to actually enjoy the scenery.

We stayed at the Tunnel Mountain Campground in Banff (where an entire elk herd visited our campsite!) and the Lake Louise campground. Lake Louise was the first campground we ever stayed at that had electric fences to keep bears out.

We drove along the icefields parkway but the landscape wasn't as impressive as we were told because it was overcast and all the lakes that are suppose to be turquoise coloured looked gray and muddy. A little bit of sunshine would've made a huge difference! So the icefields parkway is on our 'visit again when the weather is better' list (along with the Glaciar NP).


We did go on a small hike though. The 'parker ridge' was a rather steep hike but we were rewarded with an awesome view over glaciers and we got to see this cute animal sniffing the plants.


We stopped at the three valley gap ghost town to take a break and take these pictures in the parking lot. There were two cats that were snuggling/fighting - they're adorable, aren't they?

We had planned to stay in the Rocky Mountains a couple days longer but we were all annoyed by the bad weather (camping in the rain with tents isn't fun...) so we fled to the Kelowna. The Okanagan valley is famous for it's warm weather (there are lots of vineyards) and we enjoyed wearing shorts/skirts again after being bundled up in all the warm clothes we had brought for days. We went peach picking close to Kelowna and they were the best peaches I had ever eaten. Soo aromatic and moist and BIG. Yum!

We visited friends in Harrison Hot Springs for a couple of days. They are our former neighbours and it was so much fun to stay with them. Warm home-cooked meals and comfy beds are priceless after camping in the rain for days.

We hiked parts of the needle peak trail (here's a video of the trail I found online) and picked blueberries on our way back. They were sooo delicious!

The next day, we went out on the Lake Harrison. I don't know a single person in Germany who owns a boat (probably because it's very expensive and we don't have many lakes compared to Canada) so spending the day on the lake was one of the highlights of our trip. My brother tried wakeboarding, we  'hiked' to hidden waterfalls, spent some time on a deserted beach with lots of driftwood and enjoyed the scenery.

Last but not least, we visited Vancouver!

Of course I had to go back to UBC (I studied there for a year in case you're a new-ish blog reader) to show my dad and brother around because they've never been to Vancouver before.

We stayed at a very cute bed & breakfast in Kitsilano, one of the 'hip' neighbourhoods and just 2 walking minutes from the beach! If you ever need a place to stay in Vancouver, I highly recommend the Between Friends B&B. The breakfast was awesome and we got to meet new people every morning. Oh and the owner and her stuff are so friendly and interesting - we could've stayed there all day just talking to them ;)

I'll share the final part about all the yarn stores we visited (& awesome stuff I bought) next week.