Oct 30, 2011 - Kamloops and the Trans Canadian Highway

Off to Vancouver on Sunday October 30th with a stop along the way in Kamloops about 1/2 way to Vancouver from Banff traveling 310 miles should have only taken us 6 hours.. But didn't expect to hit snowstorms and highway closing due to accident took us 9 hours.. Before leaving Banff, I called highway road reports, spoke to the ranger in the morning and looked on line.. only reports we heard were some rain but mostly clear... So thought, some rain shouldn't be problem.. Well should have thought differently traveling up around 6,000 feet up...

Sep 20, 2011 - Valemount, BC

Valemount, BC is in a very beautiful valley on the western slope of the Canadian Rockies and is a popular cross-country skiing and snowmobile area during the winter and also popular as a summer hiking, camping and boating destination. We would liked to have spent more time in the area but winter comes early to the area and we needed to get across the Canadian Rockies and on to Jasper.

Aug 15, 2011 - Western Canada Games

Last night the Saskatchewan rowing team arrived home from Kamloops B.C. This was hands down one of the most incredible experiences of my life so far. All those months of training were most definitely worth the experience. First of all the social aspect of this trip was amazing, we got to meet such a variety of athletes from all kinds of different sports across Canada including teams from; the Yukon, Nunavut, North West Territories, Manitoba, Alberta, B.C and Saskatchewan. The varieties of sport were huge also, in our week there were;...

Aug 14, 2011 - Vancouver - Kamloop

Tonight I left Vancouver on the train, lets say you sure got to know who was in your carriage, it was like been a school camp again, our seats became bunks, but it was very comfortable and we had some laughs. Glad i was not on the top bunk. i have not laugh so hard at watch 60+(age) rolling into these curtain bunks. People were very nice, most of them will be on the train for 3-4 days, bugger that, happy to have a hotel room tomorrow night.

Jul 15, 2011 - Friday

On our way out of the National Parks we visited several interesting stops. The first was two spiral railroad tunnels completed in 1909, you can see in the picture where the train when into the MTN and exited above of the inlet. There was a second spiral tunnel on the other side of the narrow valley. These tunnels reduce the original railroad grade from 4.5°to a much safer 2.2°. Another stop was at a natural bridge where the force of water over time has created an eroded rock archway over the Kicking Horse River. Some pictures are...

Jun 26, 2011 - Fosslin

Next day we dragged ourselves out of bed for an early start as we needed to make some miles early through Kamloops (one of the base towns during my last visit) and out to McBride fossil beds to do some fosslin! The fosslin was great and our guide John was really helpful (his Scottish accent was pretty screwed up by lots of years in living in Canada). I spent most of the time alternating between thinking, how cool is this, I hope I find a better fossil than Rochelle and how much would Corin love this! Almost every time you picked up a slab...

Jun 11, 2011 - Kamloops to Banff on Rocky Mountaineer Train

The second day of our train journey was from Kamloops through to Banff which was the longer travelling day of the two. The scenery on this part of the journey was equally as impressive. We arrived into Banff late evening. Will keep this post short and sweet and leave you with a selection of our photos.

Jun 10, 2011 - Vancouver to Kamloops on Rocky Mountaineer Train

We headed off early today to board the Rocky Mountaineer Train at the Vancouver railway station on our journey to Kamloops. From the moment we stepped on board we were treated like royalty - red carpet, peach champagne & coffee with cinnamon scone - yummy :) Just like our cruise, lots of beautiful scenery, food and drink! We were certainly spoilt and it was definitely a first-class service, with an unbelievable menu for breakfast and lunch in the dining lounge. When we were being offered drinks, one of the steward's favourite lines was...

Apr 23, 2011 - Back in the Loops (4)

April 22, 2011 Well I am back in Canada (Toronto) and was greeted oh so warmly by customs. Pro tip 101: don’t claim $300 on the immigration form and tell the guy you are importing a motor bike. ‘You’re Goin to the room’. But I’ll get to that later. First off, the taxi guy charged me $COP24,000.00 to get El Dorado, the international airport in Bogota. You fucker - I have been here and back, by taxi, on several occasions and EVERY TIME it’s about $COP15,000.00. I complained but he just looked at me. I have enough Pesos and may not get back to...

Oct 29, 2010 - Back in the loops (3)

October 29, 2010 I arrived at San Francisco around 12:30am and spent the night in San Francisco airport. My flight to Kamloops leaves at 7:30am. This is clearly the worst airport in the world next to Las Vegas’s. But – the bench I got to sleep on was better than 50% of the beds I have been on in the last few months. After traveling to 3rd world countries for a while there are some adjustments. Here are just a few: Took a shit and looked for a basket to put the toilet paper. Then remembered that I can flush it here. Wanted to nik the ½...

Sep 4, 2010 - Kamloops, BC

There are two roads south from Prince George. Since we don’t want to go east as far as Alberta we chose to go back down the road that we came up on in July [BC 97]. It was a nice road but it didn’t have anything special about it. We tried something different for lunch. People had been talking about a Tim Horton restaurant. We had seen them in eastern Canada but never stopped. We decided to see what they were all about. Lo-and-behold, who should we see coming out as we were going in? Rich and Cheryl. We stopped for a long chat before they...

Aug 27, 2010 - Kamloops to Vancouver Rock Mountaineer

Day 16 We survived the night in The Sandman Inn Kamloops after turning off the air conditioner and puting up with the noisiest fridge we've ever heard.It is debatable now whether this room was noisier than the Sutton Hotel room next to the lift - Mmmm well Dave and Annette will know in the morning 'cause they scored our room this time round back at the Sutton! Any way, with two alarms on the Rybaks were up and ready to go this morning! The bus driver took us on a scenic tour of 'Damloops' on the way to the train station - it took about 2...