Thursday 14th October - Tofino - Vancouver
Up incredibly early for us these days to catch the early morning bus back to Nanaimo - it was still pitch dark at 7am as we got aboard . 3 hours later we arrived at Nanaimo ferry port. We grabbed sandwiches and muffins for breakfast and walked onto the 'Harbour Lynx' - this ferry unlike the one we caught 10 days ago was passenger only and took less time plus it dropped us in 'downtown' Vancouver rather than an 80 busy journey away. Once we arrived we checked the tourist info centre for today's 'Deal of the day' for accomodation - once they told us we headed that way on foot. Once checked in it was time to make use of the room phone. Sue phoned her friend Marilyn for 1.5 hours and Derek phoned some car rental places to get the best deal for the next week or so to Calgary. Once that was sorted we headed for Virgin Megastores to buy the new Tears For Fears CD for Sue. We stayed a bit longer to listen to favourite songs on the in-store jukebox where you can 'scan' your CD and listen to anything before buying. We hoped to see the film 'Motorcycle Diaries' this evening at the cinema but alas we were slightly too late to catch it.

Friday 15th October - Vancouver - Whistler
Last night we had to contend with a teenage party in the room next door - they kept raiding the soft drinks machine in the corridor and finally belted up after being threatened by the manager with eviction . We picked up our car downtown after a taxi-ride - we got ourselves a Pontiac GM whatever that is but we like it lots! It's automatic, with a CD player, aircon, cruise control and even a spoiler with total insurance cover. On our journey north through the mountains we stopped off at Shannon Falls - an incredibly high-up waterfall spilling down way above the tree-line. Onwards towards Whistler and we were there just after 1 o'clock. After a visit to the tourist info office, we headed for a walk around the Lost Lake loop with it's array of autumnally coloured trees - brilliant reds, yellows, oranges and greens. After a bit of searching around for some place to stay we settled for a superbly decorated B & B near the centre of town. We met Marie and Andy from Seattle/Goa/England in the B & B and chatted a while. We found out the Thai restaurant was having it's opening night of '50% discount' so we were only too pleased to head along for what turned out to be a great restaurant with some excellent food. Sometimes we really do feel like the luckiest people in the world!

Saturday 16th October - Whistler
Our first night at a 'B & B' turned out to be an extremely comfortable night's sleep and totally excellent breakfast . We decided to stay an extra day/night partly to see more of Whistler and partly cos we like the place we're staying in so much - the day's weather of cool autumn sunshine for walking also helped. We drove about half an hour out of town including up 7kms of dirt track to start our hike towards Lake Cheakamus and maybe onwards to see some glaciers (Derek wanted to relive his New Zealand experience!). We followed a marked trail along a river leading to the lake. Despite warning about 'problem bears' in the area we soldiered on for a couple of hours past towering trees, magical mushrooms, ice-blue water and inquisitive squirrels. After 3+ hours of walking we made it back to the car park - by the time we got back to our B & B (a huge Swiss style chalet like every other accomodation here) it was time for a welcome soak in the hot tub outside in the garden. Whistler is a town of a population of 8,000 people but in skiing high season it has up to 40,000 people here! It's the largest ski resort in the whole of North America and from the amount of building work we see it's going to be even bigger soon .

Sunday 17th October - Whistler - Clearwater (265 miles)
Last night we grabbed a bottle of wine from the liquor store and had a night in front of the TV with a video. We chose one called 'Revenge' from the catalogue of early 90's tapes - it was deemed to be an 'instant classic' on the cover - time has told us otherwise and we weren't too bothered when we didn't catch the ending, due to talking to locals Jamie and Heather who also stayed in the same B & B as us. We felft vilified in our decision to stay in Whistler yesterday as the weather was good then - today it was a mixture of cold rain and sleet showers all the way of our journey. The best place to be was inside a warm car - Sue drove for the first 3 hours round some very twisty mountain roads with snow capped peaks and huge coniferous trees everywhere. We swapped over after having a sandwich for lunch and Derek drove us the rest of the way to a backwater called Clearwater. We checked into the first motel we saw was the weather outside was turning cold and raw .

Monday 18th October - Clearwater - Jasper (180 miles)
Looked out the window to find the car covered in snow. So off we set with a blanket of snow everywhere around us and slush in places as we drove to higher ground. In places it did come down quite heavily but we drove through it and reached Jasper mid-afternoon time. We also crossed a time-zone of being an hour ahead coming into Alberta. The first thing that struck as we got out of the car was the cold. It was SOOO cold - like nothing we'd experienced anywhere - and it's only October! The locals assured us that this is unseasonally cold at the moment. One look at the frozen ice covering the number plate of our car confirmed this to us. We found a nice place centrally located to stay and will stay here tomorrow whilst more snow passes us by.