Today we’ve visited Grouse Mountain. The two main reasons of our visit:
- It’s our home snowboard resort (for next winter)
- It has a grizzly bear habitat ( wiiiii)
We drove up to North Vancouver and took the skyride to the top of Grouse Mountain.
The first show we saw was the lumberjack show. Pretty funny show with two lumberjacks competing against each other.
Checklist from this morning:
- patch that helps against seasickness
- sunscreen
- camera
- lunch pack
Although I really hate water and I get sick at see it was really worth it!
This morning we had to be on Granville Island to take the pod pilot for our whale watching trip.
Wild Whales Vancouver offered us a protective suit (which we really needed) and the guided us to our boat “the pod pilot”. We left Granville Island, direction Vancouver Island. After a bumpy ride we circled around the different islands near Vancouver Island. We didn’t see any whale for a while until suddenly our captain received a call from one of the other whale watching boats. A killer whale was spotted near Pender Island. The pod pilot rushed to the spotting place and suddenly out of nothing a fin of an orca came to the surface.
Mister Pender aka T14 decided to join us. Pender is a transient whale (whales also known as mammal hunters who travel between California and Alaska).
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It’s going to be a rather short post today. I was awake this morning at 4 am (jet lag I think) (and of course if I’m awake, Kris needs to be awake too:)). We have to get up pretty early tomorrow morning for the whale watching tour.
We had a nice day (except for the woman who was barking at me, like she knows me…).
I took some pictures of downtown Vancouver and Granville Island Market. The photo’s are made with my mobile phone, so quality isn’t that good, but it will do to give you an impression…
I’m probably exaggerating (since it’s our first day in Vancouver), but it is wonderful!
Let’s start at the beginning. Thursday morning we left Belgium to take our plane in Amsterdam. It was a pretty sad moment for a lot of people and a lot of reasons…
First of all we had to leave everybody behind and second, Freggels (our cat) needed to go on the plane. Freggels is an indoor cat, which means that he is not used to noises,…
After a trip of 16 hours (in total) we arrived in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I was so happy to see Freggels back (alive and kicking). Immigration went very well and getting our luggage and the agricultural inspection (for freggels) went very smooth. So no problems at all.
We rushed to the Canadian Superstore (OMG, amazing, huge, …) and bought some cat little, food,…
We arrived at the hotel and they told us that the room was booked for one person (without cats, because they don’t allow cats) (I admit, at that point I started stressing). But the hotel management arranged everything without any problems. I as well as Freggels could join Kris in his room (lucky us;)).
This morning we got picked up by somebody from destination services to arrange some stuff (checking accounts, saving accounts,national insurance number,…) I found out that we have to do a road test before we can exchange our drivers license into a Canadian one (again lucky me… People who know me, know that I’m stressed out about this). We even have to do a theoretical test, so back to study…
This afternoon we went for a drive. We decided to search for some housing locations. We ended up in Port Moody and Coquitlam. I think we both decided that we definitely want to live near Port Moody. It’s really amazing… It’s a small village about 10 km from Vancouver Downtown. It’s near the mountains and near a small bay. So I really hope to find something over there. Last stop today was the supermarket. I think I never spend this much time in a supermarket. We checked every row and discovered a lot of new stuff. But since we only have a small kitchenette in the hotel we stuck to spaghetti for today… (Check out the ice cream, and that’s not even the part of Ben and Jerry’s)
Tomorrow we probably head out to Downtown, and Sunday we’re going whale watching.
As for now, I really miss everybody and we’ll probably have some difficult times coming, but we’re enjoying the moment and we’ll take it day by day.
As you can see in the picture below, Freggels loves Canada (and the airco).
The Wave is a sandstone formation on the slopes of the Coyote Buttes in the Paria Canyon-Vermilion Cliffs Wilderness, located just south of the Utah-Arizona border about halfway between Kanab, Utah and Page, Arizona. The area is managed by the Bureau of Land Management and visiting The Wave is restricted to 20 persons per day. Obtaining a permit has to be done four months in advance and can be done through a lottery system on the website of the Coyote Buttes BLM.
We headed out on the 10km (6 miles) round trip in midst June at a temperature of around 38 degrees Celcius (100F) and the temperature soon got the best of us. The combination of some steep slopes and sand dunes got us strolling from shade to shade, as far as we could locate any as there is not much cover available on the trail. During the hike, The Wave is nowhere to be seen until the very last moment, which is of course preceded by a very steep, very sandy slope…
Once at The Wave, the views are amazing. The sculpted sandstone really looks like a large wave has suddenly been frozen in time and has been converted to sandstone. The area of The Wave is not that large, but still very impressive.
When we hiked back, the sun was already setting which made the hike suddenly seem like a breeze. Well, at least I learned a valuable lesson, never underestimate extreme temperatures…
Back home, I saw a book in the bookstore called “Unforgettable Walks to Take Before You Die” which pictures The Wave on its front cover and I must say, this is certainly one I won’t forget soon.
Lets fast forward a bit, I still have a ton of photos of Yellowstone, but things might get a bit boring if I continue with them, so let’s move on to…
Jackson, Wyoming, is a small town located in the Jackson Hole valley located south of Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park. In the last couple of years, the town has gone from an actual cowboy town to an upper class ski resort, which results in a combination of great western stores and sushi bars.
For superb boots and an excellent service, visit Stone’s Mercentile. They have an enormous collection of boots and hats. I bought a pair of Nocona boots in their shop and they are just great. Proudly made in Texas, YIHA!
The bar in the picture, called the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, was founded in the late 1890’s and tries to keep the cowboy history of Jackson alive with live western music and it’s authentic looks.
PS: Apparently, Jackson is home to the world’s largest ball of barbed wire… What famous game does this remind you of? 
I’m a bit low on inspiration at the the moment, so I’m just gonna do a quick post with some more pictures from Yellowstone National Park and short descriptions.
The first picture shows a dead tree in Mammoth Hot Springs, killed by the calcium carbonate dissolved in the hot spring water. Mammoth is a large hill of travertine that has been created over thousands of years as hot water from the spring cooled and deposited calcium carbonate. Each day over 2 tons of calcium carbonate flows into Mammoth.
The second picture is taken at Grand Prismatic Spring, which is the largest hot spring in the United States. The vivid colors in the spring are the result of pigmented bacteria that grow around the edges of the mineral-rich water. The bacteria produce colors ranging from green to red.
Ine | 
