Sea to Sky

First things first, the car. I would like to respond to Simon's slur (in the comments section to the last post) that our infinity is entirely void of character. Firstly, it was a sunroof. How can a car with a sunroof be void of character. Secondly, if you were to drive in the car today, after our first week of camping, and inhaled just once through your nose, you would not think it was missing 'character'. If anything, you may conclude that the problem is an excess of 'character'.

Also, we have a name for the car now. Simon suggested Buzz Lightyear. I think from the title I gave the last post, it was fairly clear that I had already considered that name. Unfortunately, it just doesn't roll off the tongue. The best suggestion I got, courtesy of my cousin Verena in Germany, was that, in honour of an earlier post, and in keeping with the YMG number plate, we should call the car 'Yes Man'. And so the car has been christened, though without the smashing of a champagne bottle - we have to sell it after all.

Having stocked up on supplies at Wal-mart (not as exciting as I thought - almost identical to a large K-mart) and kitted up at REI (much more exciting - the largest outdoor gear store I've ever seen, complete with waterfall and climbing wall), we headed from Seattle to Vancouver.

Vancouver often seems to come at the top of those 'best places to live' lists, and I was intrigued to find out why that might be. Firstly, I can say that the climate is not a factor. We have been in North America for about two weeks now, and I'm still yet to see more than one hour of blue sky. Vancouver does however have a beautiful setting. The city sits on a peninsula with water on three sides, and snow capped mountains rising straight out of the water on the other side of the harbour. On a rare sunny day, it would undoubtedly rival Sydney for a scenic setting.

My theory about the high quality of living ranking is that it is aided significantly by population density. A sufficiently dense population makes public transport economically viable, enables everyone to live close to work, schools and hospitals, and gives all manner of business with the potential to improve quality of life - cafes, bars, gyms, restaurants, theaters etc etc - ready access to a sufficient catchment of customers. If there is any truth to that, Vancouver benefits immensely, because it must be one of the world's most densely populated cities. This may seem strange for a city in Canada, with so much room to work with, but the local geography dictates the density. The peninsula on which the city sits is small, but across the water in all directions the land is too steep to develop. Accordingly, Vancouver is packed to bursting point with high rise residential apartment buildings, and the skyline looks comparable to Manhattan for the sheer number of skyscrapers.

First stop after Vancouver was Vancouver Island, where we intended to camp for a night. It would be fair to describe this trip as sub-optimal. It was not until after we had booked our ferry ticket that we realised the camp site, and the west coast, which is the reason for visiting the island, was over 3 hours away by car. Given we had reservations in Jasper a few days later, we only had one night, so we were looking at a 6 or 7 hour round trip for one night of camping. Not to be deterred, we headed out to the ferry in the morning, where our first impression was that the $17 reservation fee, which had locked us into this foolhardy plan, was not really necessary, given the ferry was about 20% full.

Arriving at Vancouver Island, we started out on the drive to the other side, keeping our spirits up with the knowledge that at least it would be a spectacular drive.

Vancouver Island is dotted with high mountains jutting out of deep ocean sounds and inland lakes. Once you get to the coast it is a spectacular scene of rugged coastline meeting dense temperate rainforest and rising into snow capped peaks. I know all this from photographs. All we saw was grey sky, cloud and rain. A lot of rain. By the time we set up camp, we were beginning to believe that it simply had to stop soon. We were wrong, and forced to spend the rest of the day sheltering in the tent. The only time we ventured out, it was to prove the theory that a watched kettle never boils (at least not on what turned out to be a broken stove). After watching the kettle for 30 minutes, and then pouring out the luke warm water, we huddled back in the tent again. Dinner, which was meant to be a hearty meal of stake and potatoes, consisted of bread rolls with laughing cow cheese.

It kept raining all night, and was still raining when we packed up in the morning. It was still, still raining when reached the ferry and headed back to the mainland. In all, it had rained for over 16 hours at that point, without stopping for one single second. As I said, a sub optimal start to the camping element of the trip.

We've now finally arrived in Jasper National Park, after a two day, 900km drive along the Sea to Sky highway, with a stop at Whistler (which is cute, but pretty quiet in May). National Parks here are not quite the same as in Australia or New Zealand. There are entire towns within the national park, including Jasper town, complete with supermarkets, bars, restaurants etc, as well as our massive campsite. We are staying in camp site 10i. As far as we can tell, there are 50 circles, and each circle has campsites a-k in it. In peak season, this campground holds over 4000 people. Amazingly, with the clever use of trees and water, each campsite still has a reasonably private feel.

They do like a good warning in the national parks. Apparently the elks are calving, so there are many warnings to stay away from them. This is a shame, because elk are plentiful. A female elk looks a lot like a donkey, only with its hind legs out of proportion, and no tail. There are multiple signs warning you about wildfires. Having still not seen the sun, I am dubious about that threat. There are also bear warnings everywhere. You have to leave everything other than your sleeping bags and the clothes you wear in a car or bear locker, all the bins are 'bear proof' (with a latch to stop an animal opening them) and each camper gets a warning brochure about the bears.

It is difficult to know what to make of the bear warnings. On the one hand, it just seems unlikely that a bear, most of which are endangered, is just going to wander out of the woods and into a campground. The warnings seem a little like the rules prohibiting mobile phones at petrol station - a theoretical risk maybe, but never going to happen in real life. On the other hand the precautions they take are so extensive that you just start to believe there must be some real need for them, and having already seen, on the drive here, a deer, elk, marmot and mountain goat, I am somewhat optimistic about a bear. We are going overnight hiking for a few nights tomorrow, into the uninhabited parts of the park, so we might get a better idea then. Personally, I would be more than willing to have a bear rummage through my food supplies if it means I get to see one, so fingers crossed.

If I haven't been eaten by a bear, I will update the blog in a few days with tales of Jasper's backcountry.