The most exciting part of the present was the fact that Kris made me foster mom of a little bear called Max.

MAX –Squamish

Max arrived at Critter Care on the evening of November 4, as a feisty furball in a trap. He had been wandering around on his own for the past two months, finding food wherever he could. Max was never seen with a mother bear so it is unknown how he lost her. He weighed in at a healthy 60lbs, and was named by Critter Care’s executive director Gail Martin.

Max spent the first few days at Critter Care in isolation, where he quickly settled into his new surroundings, but never lost the attitude. He is now sharing the enclosure with Rose, Kira, Kaymona, Jeanette, Sabbath, and Simon. Our second and third bear enclosures are attached so we have opened them up for the bears to move freely between the two sides.

Max is still not sure of all these new bears. He insist that he doesn’t need any friends and is fine on his own, but we know better. Eventually they will settle down and begin playing, eating, and sleeping together. Max will hibernate here at Critter Care and then be released in the Spring.

- Critter Care Wildlife Society.

Photo credit: Critter Care Wildlife Society

We just found out that Max is ready to be released in the next few weeks. I will receive more updates on the details of the release soon! Most likely they will release him in the Squamish area (his original habitat).

Today we also went to a volunteer orientation: both Kris and I will be spending some volunteer hours at Critter Care. We will be helping with cleaning the cages, laundry, food prep, washing dishes, washing animal carriers, maybe we’ll even be involved with the release of some animals. Also, since we live in an area with lots of wildlife, we will be involved in picking up animals and safely driving them to Critter Care.

We’re really excited to help them out and hopefully we will be able to make a difference in the life of some BC mammals!

Wildlife rehabilitation is extremely expensive, and CCWS does need all the help they can get! For those of you that are interested, you can also sponsor injured and orphaned wildlife! Sponsor rates start at $35.00. For more information visit the CCWS website.

Leavenworth is a charming little town in Chelan County, Washington. What makes this city special you wonder? Well, the entire town center is modelled on a Bavarian village. They even have a nutcracker Museum. While we were visiting, the town was celebrating Oktoberfest. The funny thing is that it’s actually claimed to be one of the most attended in the world outside Munich, Germany. Not sure if that’s true though so don’t quote me on it.

I know it sounds cheesy, but we actually quite liked it. We’ll definitely be back, we really need to try some schnitzel:). That specific evening we enjoyed pretzels and cheese fondue at Uncle Uli’s Pub (a cozy pub, and dog friendly on-their deck).

Uncle Uli’s Cheese Fondue

Pretzel

A little over a 1000 kilometers later we arrived in Yellowstone. Our goal was to get there as soon as possible so we could spend the maximum amount of time in the park.

This blog post will show some scenery pictures, the following post (in the next few days) will be about the wildlife we encountered.

In the previous post we mentioned we stayed in the Mammoth Hot Springs area of the park: below a picture of the cabins we stayed at.

Mammoth Hot Springs Cabin (photo credit stpaulsgirl’s)

Grizzly, thinking the shower is the most appropriate place to sleep

Bull Elk outside the restaurant

It was the first time we entered the park through the North Entrance, the Roosevelt Arch (Gardiner).

Try reading the inscription on the top of the arch: “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People”. This is a quote from the Organic Act. The act is the legislation which created Yellowstone. For those who didn’t know, Yellowstone was the first national park in the world.

Roosevelt Arch

Yellowstone River

On our way to Cody

Soda Butte in the Lamar Valley

One of the things we did was an off road drive on the Blacktail Deer Plateau. Not ideal with a regular compact car, but it was gorgeous!

Blacktail Deer Plateau

Blacktail Deer Plateau Drive

Along the road we noticed a lot of signs mentioning that trails were closed. Remember the story about the Grizzly bear attack in August? This is the trail where it happened. (Just so you know the rate of dangerous encounters in the park is extremely low).

Mary Mountain Trail

Halfway between Equator and North Pole, who would have thought?

45t Parallel

These are taken in one of our favorite places in the park: West Thumb

Sunrise in Hayden Valley

We just came back from a road trip. We managed to drive 7550 kilometers in 3 weeks, so we covered quite a bit of ground.

Just like last year, we decided to include Yellowstone. I know, it’s the 3rd time in four years we’ve been to Yellowstone, but it’s still my favorite place to go. The abundance of wildlife in combination with the scenery makes it so special.

Unlike other years, we stayed overnight in the park. We were able to book a cabin in the Mammoth Hot Springs area. Something that was really neat, was the fact that we didn’t have cell phone reception, internet, radio, television, A/C. We were “obligated” to go for an evening walk, read a book and listen to the bugling elk. Very enjoyable:)

We will be posting some pictures in the next few weeks, but I just wanted to give you guys a little something to start with.

We met this handsome fellow on our way to Canyon Village, just past Dunraven Pass. Make sure to turn on your sound when watching the video:)

One of the big problems is that their food source is threatened. The bears feed on whitebark pine nuts and the tree is expected to continue to decline in the next few years. But there’s another huge problem: The grizzly population in Yellowstone has been isolated for a long time and declining genetic diversity could make them vulnerable in the future. For example grizzly bears in Glacier National Park can go up north and breed with different Canadian grizzly bears, there’s a wildlife corridor for them, unlike in Yellowstone.

Anyway, that’s it for now, more to come soon!

We started driving Thursday evening, direction Kamloops. We booked the Accent Inns for the night. Quite nice actually, pleasant memories! It’s the same hotel chain we stayed at (for 3 weeks) when we first arrived in Vancouver. Funny how all those hotels have the exact same interior.

Friday, early morning (way too early, but for a good cause) we headed in the direction of Jasper. We could have easily made the decision to go straight to Banff, but we wanted to drive along the Icefields Parkway. We’ve visited Jasper before in the summer which was nice, but not at all comparable to the winter scenery. We were even able to walk on the Athabasca Glacier together with Grizzly which was quit fun (and cold). The glacier is actually the most-visited glacier of the North American continent.
I’m not going to talk about climate change, but it is definitely one of the only glaciers I’ve seen that shrunk that much in such a short amount of time. There’s signs everywhere that show you the history of the size of the glacier.

For pictures:

Late afternoon we arrived in Banff. We decided to go for a stroll along the boulevard, just to be able to stretch our legs and paws a bit. Grizzly of course was over-excited and wasn’t too fond of practicing what we learned in our dog classes (aka: not pulling).

After our stroll, we had some dinner and headed to the Banff Upper Hot Springs.
The Hot Springs are in the top 10 of the best in the world. I have to say, I think I agree, the view is just amazing. Just what we needed after a long drive. And because Kris gave me a waterproof camera as a Christmas present I was actually able to take some pictures.

Kris and Griz

Kris in the Banff Upper Hot Springs

Hot Springs

On Saturday we drove from Banff to Cochrane to visit Olivier and Saartje. We hadn’t seen them in ages and it was really nice to catch up and talk about our similar experiences from the last couple of months.

They both prepared the most amazing Easter dinner at their lovely new home!
We started of with some appetizers (dates, stuffed eggs, olives,…), followed by lobster Gnocchi (Saartje, I still want that recipe:)) some very tasty ribs (prepared by Olivier) and of course dessert: the best brownie I had in ages and some wonderful carrot cake. It was actually the first time I tried carrot cake and it was truly delicious!

We were very well taken care of and we had an amazing evening! (don’t forget guys, we owe you big time! Thanks again!)

Enough talking for today, some pictures of our road trip (credits go to Kris):

Grizzly has a paw infection so we were obligated to buy some boots:)

On the road

Mountain goat, Grizzly’s best friend (NOT)

Athabasca Glacier

Taking a nap while we’re driving

Some of my pics:

Some coyotes in the distance

Town of Jasper

Icefields Parkway

So that was pretty much it. We’re planning to go on a hike on Sunday. We haven’t really decided where, but we’ll hopefully be able to post some pictures. Hope you’re having a good week. Enjoy the weekend!

My mother in Vancouver

We also did a short day trip to Whistler where we visited the Olympic skijump and biathlon area. At the Biathlon shooting range you could try out a biathlon rifle and shoot at the targets. Ine beat me with a perfect 5/5 score against my less perfect 4/5. I had a bad bullet… On our way we saw 2 bears (see previous post for picture). We ended the day with a very nice dinner at the Rimrock Cafe.

Ine at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Biathlon Shooting Range

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Skijump

Below are two more shots from the previous weeks, I still have a huge backlog to process and I’ll try to post some more soon.

Bald Eagle on the rocks in the Georgia Strait

Grizzly smiling for the camera in Golden Ears Provincial Park

They were stuck in Toronto for 24 hours, but luckily they were able to catch the first flight, on Tuesday morning, to Vancouver.

As you can expect, they were very tired, but they had to keep going until the evening because otherwise they would give in to their jet lag. I decided to take them out to visit some furniture shops because if we wanted to enjoy our Christmas dinner, we needed some dinning chairs.

On the 24th we prepared our Christmas dinner and of course ate it. After dinner we went for an evening/Christmas Eve walk. Kris wanted to take some pictures of the huge Christmas tree in Port Moody.

On Christmas day we went to Whistler. Our first stop was Brackendale: Winter home of the bald eagle. I think we’ve seen enough bald eagles for the rest of the year (but we’re going back with some friends in January, on the day they count the bald eagles). We did quite a long hike to the perfect viewing spot near the river. Because there was a lot of snow it took us a while to get there, but it was definitely worth it!!

After the hike we proceeded our trip to Whistler. We had to be there in time for our Nicklause North Sleigh ride and Fondue Dinner.

A beautiful 30-35 minute ride through wooded trails beside Green Lake before returning to the Den Restaurant at Nicklause North Golf Course for a four course gourmet fondue dinner (including an appetizer, cheese fondue, Chinois fondue and finishing with their chocolate fondue for dessert.)

It was a wonderful white Christmas day with an amazing dinner. We all ate waaaaay too much, but we really enjoyed it!

Normally we were going to Grouse Mountain today, but it was snowing again, so we decided that it wasn’t worth going up, because the mist would block the view.

So instead of going up the mountain we went downtown. We’ve visited Gastown (it is a tourist attraction, but they have a few nice souvenir shops though…). We had lunch in the Old Spaghetti Factory. The restaurant is special because it is decorated in a nostalgic theme using genuine antiques, stained glass, Tiffany type lights, and an authentic trolley car (in which we were seated). Which was rather nice!

Still on our agenda:
- Tomorrow we go snowshoeing (on Cypress, Grouse or Seymour, not sure which one to choose). Doing some exercises will be good to get rid of the extra weight we gained because of the dinners we had the last few days.
- On Sunday we will probably take the ferry and go to Victoria and the Royal British Columbia Museum.
- Visit Canyon lights
- Bright night at Stanley Park and the Vancouver Aquarium
- Downtown
- Metrotown
- …

I think we could say we have a very busy agenda. I hope the weather allows us to do all these things, because it keeps on snowing, which makes it hard to visit everything:)

Below some pictures of the last few days.

Some kids building an igloo in front of our apartment

And last but not least, our sleigh ride in Whistler.

So we went to Metrotown on Saturday and we both didn’t know what to get (but you already knew that). Surprise, Surprise, Kris talked me in to buying a cocktail dress. So I’ve bought a black cocktail dress. Perfect match with my new shoes.

Kris decided to wear a black suit, and he bought himself a nice looking shirt, tie and belt.

Pictures will follow on Friday (because then we have to go to the event).

So after too many hours of shopping we decided we’d reward ourselves with a visit to the Vancouver Aquarium.

We’ve been there before, on the 7th of June. But we missed the birth of the baby Beluga by 3 days. So since she is still little now, I really wanted to see her.

And of course we also visited the otters. The otters in the aquarium are famous for holding hands. We haven’t seen them doing that, but we saw them cuddling.

Here are two movies, one of the two cuddling otters, and one of an otter busy scratching:)

I tried to take a picture of the jellyfish but it’s blurry. I didn’t have my Gorilla Pod with me but I still like it though. I know a real photographer wouldn’t post something like that. Good thing that I’m not a real one .

I also have a picture of a seagull. We saw it a few weeks ago when we were walking to Stanley Park. But since Kris was waiting for his pc to arrive, it has taken him a while to go through his pictures. So more pictures of Kris will follow, but here is one to get you started. It’s a seagull with a starfish in his mouth.

We don’t know yet, what we will be doing tomorrow, but if we decide to do something interesting we’ll certainly let you know.

It’s a trail along the the bay and the path you are walking on, is a wooden path, so you feel like you are walking in the “Hoge Venen” (at least I felt like that:))

We were standing on some kind of platform and watching the shoreline and then suddenly somebody said: look there are some bear paws next to the water. So since it was still low water it meant that the bear had probably visited this spot early this morning (the footprint wasn’t washed away and it’s high water around 4pm).

If you click on the pictures you will be able to see them a little bit bigger and you will be able to see the paw. On the second picture you can find the paw in the shadow of the pole. Just underneath the small rock.

My dad gave me his Kowa (spotting optics) before we left Belgium, and now I can definitely start using it (it’s placed in front of our window on Kris his tripod). I used it to watch the bay and the boats who entered the harbor. Now I can use it for wildlife watching, because we can see the spot, where the bear paws were, from our apartment. So who knows I’ll spot one before they go into hibernation.

OK enough bear talk for now, I don’t want to bore you guys with my bear stories all the time, so let’s start with our stories of Fright Night.

Like I told you before, I hate haunted mansions and Kris hates roller coasters. So not a good combination to go to a theme park where they have a fright night… But well, we both got over it (or at least I did;)).

It wasn’t the nicest theme park we have visited, but we had a really nice evening. There were 4 haunted houses, which were cool. We also did a maze and according to me that was the funniest thing of the evening. Although, I am forgetting one thing, Kris and me (yes Kris too) went in the music express and I have to say it goes much faster than I can remember (Kris hates fast rides). It’s the same ride as the “rups” in Belgium.

We saw something that is definitely an attraction for David. David you should really do this, it’s pretty extreme but really really cool. (not that we did it, because it was a little bit too scary for us:)). It is probably difficult to see what kind of attraction it is on the picture, so I’ll try to explain. Designed like a giant airplane propeller, the Revelation holds two to four people in the seats at each end of its 48m arm. You take off quickly spinning up to 100 kph and experience some pretty intense “G” forces.

We had a really nice weekend, but back to reality now:).
Plans for next week:
Kris has to go to work
I’m going to attend some sport classes
And I’m a volunteer for the Halloween trick or treat on Friday (something that is organized in the community we live in). I still have to figure out what I have to do, but more about that later.

Below some more pictures of the theme park. Credits go to Kris of course.