Happy Fourth of July to all our American friends! No celebrating here in Canada. Their holiday is Canada Day, July 1st,
the day we entered Canada. The only celebrating we noticed that day was
a festival we passed outside of Vancouver.
Now we are definitely in the “sky” part of the Sea to Sky Highway. We left our trailer at Nairn Falls
Provincial Park
and drove up, up, up for our day’s outing, through the hairpin switchback turns
north of Pemberton. Definitely easier
not having the trailer today -- here are the signs in the opposite direction.
We went to Joffre
Lakes Provincial
Park.
The park has three lakes.
We took the short walk to Lower
Joffre Lake
(elevation 4000’) with views of Matier Glacier.
We spotted a large bird with white head and breast. We need Barbara’s parents to identify it for
us.
Addendum: It is an Osprey! (Thanks for helping us identify it, Dad.)
We decided to hike the 2.2 mile (900’ elevation gain) to the
next lake. The nicely groomed trail went
up, up. We went about halfway when we
came to this sign.
The new trail the park is building ended and the path
switched to the much rougher old trail, really an uphill scramble over roots,
logs, and boulders. Barbara thought it
might be a little too much for her, so she turned around, while Bill took the
challenge and headed up toward Middle and Upper Joffre
Lakes with even closer
views of the glacier. The water is even greener than the pictures show.
It just started to rain as Bill got back to the car, so we
headed back to the trailer. Our mileage
has been great this trip, 127 miles-per-gallon.
Just kidding. That really
was the mileage, but only the steep Joffre to Pemberton downhill segment as we
descended in second gear, then first gear with the engine doing nothing but
spinning at 3000 rpm to hold the car back.
Tomorrow we head all the way down back to the Vancouver area.
