Vancouver 1, 719 km, 24.514 km

We split the drive to Vancouver in three. The first section of 305 km was along Hwy 97 further south. The valley opened up further and fields with grass being harvested were everywhere. It was dry and smoky. Somewhere there must be a forest fire. You saw horses and corrals for rounding up cattle. It had the feel of cowboy country. Still we saw very few cattle. There were no stops of interest along the way so we arrived at Green Lake provincial campsite mid afternoon. Also since it was sunny we found it was a shame to waste the first sunny day by driving. The sun was shining and the camper had dried out. Time to finally  spray paint some rusty spots underneath the front doors. At night it cooled down significantly because we were still at a high altitude (1100 m).

After stopping at the old Gold mine supply town of Clinton, we turned off Hwy 97 to drive the much smaller Hwy 99 via Whistler to Vancouver. The road is very picturesque. It winds seriously up and down in-between high mountains (sharp hairpins). There is not too much traffic so you can really enjoy the scenery. At one lovely small lake in Marble Canyon, we had our lunch together with many other tourists (it is on a circle route from Vancouver). When coming out of the valley you drive along the Frasier river which flows deep below you and you slowly descend to Lilliooet where we camped along a small creek (Seton BC park) smelling dead (salmon) fish. We were now at 200 m which made it a lot warmer. The next day we followed the Hwy 99 winding up to over 1200 m and then down again through Whistler to Vancouver. At the highest point on the road we suddenly saw 2 parking lots full of cars. Apparently this is the famous walk towards Joffre (glacier) lake. It is such a popular trail that you have to reserve a slot in advance. Fortunately there were some cancellations and we were allowed to make the climb through the forest up to the lakes. It was a tough 2.7 km uphill climb up from 1200 m to 1600 m. As expected by the number of cars there are a lot of other hikers going to the lake for the lake view of the nearby glacier. The valley was however full of smoke so the pictures are not clear.

Just before it became dark at 20:00 hrs we arrived at Bill’s place in Vancouver. We parked the camper in front of his house on a sloping road. Bill took us on a small sightseeing tour of the nearby city streets and through China town. Today we walked a bit around the residential neighbour. The weather was dry and mostly sunny with a temperature around 20 deg. The area has mostly individual houses built in the 80ties and 90ties but here and there they are being replaced by condo’s townhouses and high-rise. We did not do much during the day. Only walked a bit around the area and relaxed (reading) next to the camper. In the evening we moved the camper a bit further down the road to a more level spot before going out to a Malaysian restaurant together with Bill’s son and partner.