British Columbia

Last Thursday we arrived back in our home country on a late night flight from Mexico to Vancouver. My brother Chris was waiting for us at the airport and after a nice little reunion we went drove back to his condo in Langley. We could tell right away that we were back in Canada. Everything we drove by was so spacious, clean, and modern. Everything was in English and at first it was a little weird to be able to easily understand everyone around you and recognize all the signs.

Our first order of business was to shop for a car for our road trip. The next morning we got up and started our search. After a Tim Horton’s coffee (it was really nice to have one of those after 7 months) we spent an hour or so calling and emailing private sellers and unfortunately we had no luck. We couldn’t find anything that would work for us. We ended up just leaving and driving around Langley and Surrey visiting used car dealerships. We ran into our fair share of shady sales people and found very few cars that would be acceptable. After hours of looking we finally found one that would work for us. The vehicle we selected was a Jeep Patriot. It’s a really nice vehicle but it had above average mileage so we were able to get it for a bargain. It’s a nice enough vehicle that we could consider keeping in the future or maybe sell it for a good price when we arrive back home in Ontario.

The next day we figured we’d test out the Jeep by driving up to Whistler via the Sea-to-Sky highway. I had been to Whistler a few times before, but Joh hadn’t, so it was a definite must-do. Chris, Joh, and I had a great ride up to Whistler and we spent a few hours walking around the village there and grabbed a nice lunch at the Longhorn restaurant at the base of the mountain. We also visited the Olympic park and facilities while we were there.

On the way back we stopped at a few stops including a waterfall and the look-out on the top of Cyprus Mountain where you can see a great panoramic view of the city of Vancouver and a good portion of the Fraser Valley. From there we saw Stanley Park and we decided to go down the mountain and go check that out too. While driving around Stanley Park we noticed a huge crowd of people waiting around, so after a bit of investigation we discovered that there was to be a big fireworks display later that evening. Rather than waiting around with the crowds of people for four hours, we decided to go out for dinner. I spotted an Asian restaurant and we managed to convince my brother (he’s a very unadventurous eater) to come along with. It was a nice little reminder of what’s coming up in a couple months. We enjoyed it quite a bit and Chris was able to find something on the menu that didn’t scare him. The fireworks turned out to be really impressive too.

The following day was our first Sunday in a church in over seven months and it felt really good to be back. We also met a few cousins and aunts and uncles there as well. It just so happened that one of my cousins was having their baby baptized on this day too so it was nice to be there for that. We were able to go visit my aunt and uncle for lunch and talk to them and their kids about our trip. One of their kids (Leonard) was a geography expert and knew all of the places we had been. Apparently he studies atlases in his spare time. It was really impressive to hear how much he knew about the places we’d been. After church in the afternoon we went to visit another aunt and uncle and more cousins (yeah I have a ton of family in BC) and we had a nice afternoon out on the patio catching up. Afterwards we went to visit our friends Derek and Karen for dinner and the evening. It was good to see them again, and they had just come back from holidays in Oregon so they gave us some tips about where to go.

The next day we visited my Oma in the morning. We had a good time with her talking about everything. She doesn’t have Internet access, so my Mom had been sending her print-outs of our blog for the last seven months. So it was neat to show her our pictures and talk about our trip.

After shopping for all our camping gear in the afternoon, we spent a nice evening with Chris and then hit the sack for a good night’s sleep. The next morning we left to start out on our road trip. We’re now a few days into our trip and we’ve been having a great time so far. We’ll write all about it in the next blog entry.

BC Photo Album