Even though we had quite a bit of snow on our way there, the ride was magnificent! It cleared out and by the time we entered the park, we had blue skies!

Icefields Parkway (photo taken by Kris)

Icefields Parkway

Icefields Parkway (photo taken by Kris)

Athabasca Glacier

Athabasca Glacier (photo taken by Kris)

Columbia Icefield
(photo taken by Kris)

Our next visit was Johnston Canyon. It’s a really short hike, but because of the icy sections it took us a quite a while to get to the actual falls.

Johnston Canyon

Johnston Canyon (photo taken by Kris)

Johnston Canyon (photo taken by Kris)

We spent the evening in Banff and did a leisurely stroll through the village. It’s a really neat little town with lots of stores and restaurants.

The next day we decided to go to Lake Louise. We had never seen it in winter and I have to say, it was a pleasant surprise! Because the lake was still frozen you could walk all the way to the very back of the lake and it was even groomed for cross country skiing.

Walking on Lake Louise

Kris has way more pictures of our walk, but that’s for our next post.

One other thing I wanted to quickly mention are the wildlife overpasses. Recently I read a book called “Walking the Big Wild” and it made me pay attention to the efforts that Parks Canada and Banff have put in creating wildlife crossings. The crossings are structures that allow animals to cross human-made barriers safely. The ones created in Banff are definitely the most recognizable wildlife crossings in the world. Banff has 22 underpasses and 2 overpasses. There are plans to build at least 17 more!

Wildlife Overpass

Anyway, that’s it for today. Hope you enjoyed reading this post. More to come soon!

The 21.5 km trail takes you through the Minnekhada Regional Park and finishes at the Pitt River Wildlife Sanctuary. There’s a lot of bird spotting opportunities along the way, particularly bald eagles and great blue herons.

We obviously didn’t walk 21.5 km. We walked until we were able to see Pitt River which was about 5 km (round way). Very easy hike, no elevation gain, but beautiful scenery.

Deboville Slough

One of the reasons we wanted to go was the number of bear sightings in the area. The trail goes through blueberry fields, an excellent food source for black bears.

We were walking for about 2 minutes, when we saw the first signs of bear presence.

Mommy bear with 2 cubs

The previous picture shows the view we had on our left side, looking to the right, this is what we saw:

Pitt River Panorama

And we can’t forget my favorite mountain (see picture below)!

Mount Baker from Pitt River

We were still enjoying watching the bears, when all of a sudden we noticed the bears had another audience:

Coyote and Bear Family

After a little while we decided to head back to the car as it was getting dark.
As much as I love bear watching, something was telling me not too stay there after dark:)

The picture below is taken on our way back to our car.

Deboville Slough, Port Coquitlam

We got invited to go to the Okanagan together with some friends. It is a region located in British Columbia defined by the basin of Okanagan Lake and the Canadian portion of the Okanagan River. The region is known for its dry, sunny climate, arid landscapes and lake shore communities. The economy is retirement and commercial-recreation based, with outdoor activities such as boating and water sports, snow skiing and hiking. Agriculture has been focused primarily on fruit orchards, with a recent shift in focus to vineyards and wine.

“Wine Tasting” that was everything we needed to know to get ourselves out there! It still took us 1,5 year to visit that region. It’s not too far away (only 380 km) and it’s a very nice drive. You go through Manning Park (and yes we saw a bear!, lots of deer, coyotes, ground squirrels and various colorful birds).

The weather was gorgeous and therefore ideal for a wine tasting tour. I was driving and Kris and Dulce were tasting. No worries, even though I was driving, I did get to taste what I wanted!

On Sunday we first went to Okanagan Falls to visit The Blasted Church Vineyard. Really nice location, amazing view!

View from the Blasted Church Winery

After buying the first bottles of wine we visited See Ya Later Ranch (one of my personal favorites)!

View from the See Ya Later Ranch.

See Ya Later Ranch wine bottle.

First of all, they were extremely dog friendly, which probably has something to do with the fact that I really liked them, but they also had an amazing ice wine. Definitely one of the better ice wines I’ve ever tried (and trust me, I’ve tried quite a lot).
Besides that I also really liked their vineyard and their branding!

Grizzly after he broke loose from the pole he was tied to (obviously having fun with the winery’s dog).

After buying more bottles of wine we headed to the Naramata Bench. Twenty two wineries are located on this prime agricultural land. Some are situated on the picturesque rolling hillsides while others are perched at the edge of cliffs close to Okanagan Lake. A remarkable setting.

The first winery we visited on the Naramata Bench was Laughing Stock Vineyards. More bottles of wine were purchased:).

Next stop: Popular Grove. Gorgeous winery, amazing view! Besides wine they also sold cheese. Unfortunately the cheese I wanted was sold out, but Dulcie tried some and she loved it!

Popular Grove Winery

Our next stop was Hillside Estate Winery. This time I got to try some wine, because we were going for lunch after at the Hillside Estate Bistro. The food was fantastic! (just to give you an idea of what they were serving: Kris enjoyed the Rare Seared Albacore Tuna Melt and I had the pleasure of trying the Natural Pature’s Chèvre and Tomato Tart.

The unique thing about Hillside Estate is the impressive tower. It kind of dominates the view as you drive north along Naramata Road. The massive structure houses cellars dug deep into the side of the hill with 6.7 metre high walls of solid river rock.

Hillside Estate tower

Last but definitely not least: Elephant Island Winery. My second favorite! You can actually taste the wines outside on their patio with a remarkable view over Okanagan Lake. Of all the wineries we’ve visited, those people seemed the most laid back. They have some very unique fruity wines. We were able to try about 5 different wines. 3 of them really appealed to us: 2 dessert wines: The Cassis and the Framboise (you could taste the Framboise for a small donation, it was to die for!) the other one was the Black Current wine. All three of them were berry flavored.
Ooh and just a little hint, if you ever go there and buy wine, make sure to ask for some food recipes. They have some really nice ones based on some of their wines.

Since most of the wineries close around 5 we decided to head back to the hotel and wait for Ben to return from his soccer tournament.

A picture from our new wine collection:

On Monday we walked around town and gave Grizzly the opportunity to play in the water of Okanagan Lake.

We had a wonderful stay and met some really nice people! Thanks Dulce and Ben!!!

Later this week you can probably expect some pictures of last weekend (when we went to Vancouver Island).

Hope everyone’s having a good time!

Mount Washington Panorama, Vancouver Island.

Campbell river sunset, Vancouver Island.

Blue Heron on the Vancouver Island Coast.

And a final one not from the island, but from Stanley Park in Vancouver:

Prospect Point Panorama, Vancouver

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!

We’ve noticed that the last couple of days, the mountains on the North Shore were getting lots of snow. So today we decided to go to Mount Seymour and enjoy the snow. We were pleasantly surprised with about 50cm of fresh snow!

Of course Grizzly enjoyed this even more than we did! He definitely is a sled dog.

The predictions for next week are really good. They say it’s going to snow a little bit in Vancouver later this week. We’re living up a mountain so chances are pretty high that we’re going to get the first snow up here.

We were told by neighbors to get used to it, because there’s going to be days that we won’t be able to drive down the mountain…

A couple of images taken with my mobile.

Kris and Grizzly

Mount Seymour

Grizzly

Bear Den

Grizzly Paw

Grizzly and me

Rumors are that Whistler Slopes might open next week. Cross our fingers!

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

On Sunday the weather was so nice that we decided to go to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver. We were limited in doing a long hike, so we only did a short one to the viewpoint, Point Atkinson.

Because it was really hot we decided to go to the beach after our park visit. It was the first time for all of us to go there. It was extremely crowded, but we had tons of fun.

I actually went in the water with Grizzly (again). He used to be really afraid of it, so by going in together with him, I’m hoping to get him more familiar with swimming.

Because it was the last evening of Lieve and Thierry their visit, we decided once again to have a very tasteful dinner at Banana Leaf. It is a Malaysian Restaurant on Broadway.

Check out a couple of our pictures.

Point Atkinson

Grizzly watching the Vancouver skyline

Soaked

Lieve and Thierry

We will have some friends coming over next week so we will probably go kayaking with them and of course do some fun stuff. Apart from that I will have to work a couple of weekends next month, so unfortunately I won’t have too much time to think about blogging.

And something incredibly cool:
I am a volunteer for Bear Aware. They are organizing a Bear Aware Open House really soon, so I will also be helping at that event. Again, busy times coming up…

I will paint faces at the Bear Aware Open House:

Practicing my face painting skills

I hope everybody is enjoying the sunshine! Enjoy your week!