Vancouver Rains: September 2010

British Columbia: Lower Mainland, Vancouver Island, and Okanagan Valley August 20-28

Hello Folks who visit this blog. This is the last post for the trip! I may continue to use this blog to post travel pictures, but since school is around the corner, I probably will be sedimentary for a while.

It is hard to believe that the trip is finished and I must now be confined to one place- the campus. Nevertheless, it has been a very worthwhile trip for me and I would not trade anything for it.

I hope through these posts, I was able to share with you my joy and my learning. Thank you for supporting me along the trip and also when I was in Ottawa. Now that I am in Vancouver, I actually miss Ottawa. : )

Hope to visit Ottawa again in the near future.

Cheers,

David Y Chen

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Forest fire in the Okanagan Valley...

Beach along the Okanagan Lake

Peek-a-boo....I seeeee you (This"advertisement board" is actually about the size of three quarters of a bus).

Stanley Park Vancouver

If I recall correctly, this is called the Incinerator's Rock along the Tofino area.

one of the surfer beaches at Tofino

MacMillan Park on the island. It is right of the highway and has really really old Douglas fir trees and Red Cedars as well. Admission- free. Absolutely stunning to walk in.

Parliament of BC

Butchart Gardern

Firework display at night

Performance by "Children of Celebrities," a Vancouver island local band at the garden

Gas Town Cheese apartment...

Marine Building in Vancouver. One of the oldest building in downtown Vancouver.

Atlin Lake, Northern BC August 19th

Atlin lake belong to Northern B.C. Oddly though, it is only accessible via a highway in Yukon. One animal that I also saw was porcupine, but it ran off the road too quickly that I couldn't capture it.

Grizzly bear mama with grizzly youth bear (however you define youth is another question

Black bear mama with baby black bears...

Just to think...this car only had 30,000 km when it arrived in Ottawa!

I think these are baby mountain goats

Atlin Lake Town area

The trip was costly...

Dempster Highway August 10th-14th

Dempester Highway...what is so special about this road? Well to start off, it is the only highway that I have driven on this trip that is entirely made up of dirt road, mud road, and gravel road. When I say gravel, it's not the nice little pebble stones you see occasionally in city road constructions. I am talking about rocks the size of your fist kind of gravel!

The highway is about 760km long and has only one gas station and one accommodation site on the way (at Eagle Plain). It was built under Prime Minister Diefenbaker as an initiative to explore the North. At that time, speculation of oil and mineral deposits prompted the government to construct that highway.

Along this highway, the landscape is truly amazing. It is something to be experienced and seen with one's own eyes. There are very few vehicles that traverse the highway, especially in the northern stretch of Eagle Plain. Therefore it is just you, the road, and whatever animals that may be in the tundra. It is a whole other world on this highway.

Despite ruining all ridges and threads on my tires (it is smooth as skate rink ice now) and other damages sustained while driving, I consider it the climax of my trip north if not the entire trip. I would recommend anyone to drive that road- just bring money, gas, food, and spare tire, and sleeping bag!

Grizzly bear...this is one out of six that I saw on that day...

Amazing NorthWest Territory landscape

(the first two pictures are taken at a "lake." The quotation marks exist because this is actually part of a construction site or at least very close to one.