Jasper - We Saw a Bear!

We had one final weekend with my parents before they (sadly) had to go back home. We decided to do  a trip up to Jasper. a) because we hadn't been there before and it's on our bucket list, and b) because it's supposed to be bear central, and O'Hara was getting desperate. 

Dad loves having his photo taken almost as much as O'Hara

I also developed an obsession with photographing wildflowers

We booked our accommodation really late so the only place left was the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge. Fairmont Hotels are generally pretty fancy, and this one had some really beautiful grounds but the hotel room was pretty sketchy. There was a mouse in our room, never a good sign. 

Our room was shit but there were fun props!

Jasper however was incredibly beautiful. Canada in the summer, especially the Rockies is incredibly busy. There seems to be a huge mix of people touring, but I guess when you have 300 million neighbours you're always going to have lots of visitors. 

These are the things tourists come and see!

We spent the weekend hiking, viewing lakes and canyons, eating and drinking out delicious stash of wine from the weekend before. We also managed to fit in some pretty incredible wildlife viewing. O'Hara finally saw his first bear. He's only been here 15 months. Pretty sure Mum and Dad managed to  get into double digits in their 2 week trip. It was a decent sized black bear who walked in front of our car, stopped next to us to eat some berries and then wandered past our car. O'Hara had the biggest smile on his face. We also saw a herd of Elk ladies with their babies, and one daddy Elk with his giant set of antlers. Best.

Hi family! Hi bear!

Can't wait to see the family again, I hated having to say goodbye all over again. Sometimes being and expat is truly shitty. Luckily Skype and the Internet exist. I wouldn't have coped nearly as well 10 years ago.

Sleepless in Seattle

It wasn't necessarily sleepless for the reasons you may think. It was mostly because we were in a room with 4 people and 2 double beds. The room was huge, so it was completely unnecessary to have doubles but that's how it was.

Canada celebrates Remembrance Day with a public holiday, so we decided to head to Seattle for the long weekend. Kamloops can get a little stranded during the winter as the Coquihalla Highway is a death trap, so there won't be many more trips westward until next spring.

Poor Wheels (our bad arse car) bore the brunt of the trip even worse than our credit cards. Someone shredded a tyre before we came through and it was obviously still on the road. The person in front of us flicked it up and it smashed the front of Wheels! Luckily the car still ran fine and we didn't crash but it was scary and sad.

Seattle was so fun! We were busy little bees and packed our days with tourist activities. So what did we learn?

1. A brewery tour that only has three stops will be plenty to get you wasted.

The second stop...

Inappropriate

2. Seattle was able to build it's downtown streets up at the second level on prostitutes taxes.

We can be happy underground

Underneath and on top!

3. College football is ridiculously extravagant. The $80 for my nosebleed ticket paid for some pretty fancy marching band shapes. Watching this performance as an outsider was entertaining, does anyone know a country that is as patriotic as the US? North Korea perhaps? It was a little much for Canadians and Australians who rate patriotism alongside boganism.

Ameri-boner

Trying to stay warm and awake

4. The Tutankhamun exhibition will not let you walk in off the street at 10am, instead you need to buy tickets for 5pm. Even then it'll be chock a block with people. Ancient Egypt was cool.

5. $2.99 for bar snacks during happy hour isn't dodgy. Instead they will be delicious!

6. Don't give drunk people weapons and let them eat crab. Neighbouring tables may get more than they bargained for. It's also totally possible to over eat crab. Hammer Time!

Hammer Time!

7. I tire out from shopping way too fast. O'Hara makes me look good, but with girls I'm the first to need the man seat.

8. Driving the Coq at night time when it's snowing is the scariest thing I've ever done in my life. You know when they travel at light speed in Star Wars? It's exactly like that. You can't see that you're moving, in fact it looks like you're going backwards. You can't feel that you're moving and the car doesn't move right. Cue sobbing "I don't like this, I don't like this!!!!!"

America, thanks for showing us an awesome weekend. See you in a month!

3 Australians, a Canadian and an American walk into a bar...

What happens when you put 3 Australians into a car with a Canadian and American? Obviously trouble!

We set out from Kamloops to Vancouver around 3pm. This drive is usually around 3.5-4 hours if you take the Coquihalla. As we were going through Whistler, the drive would have always taken longer than normal. TWENTY FIVE hours later we arrive in Vancouver. Pretty sure that's some kind of record.

So what were the learnings from this adventure?

• Belieber hysteria has nothing on three girls seeing a bear. Or when driving on the sleep bumps too close to a toilet break
• Call Me Maybe cannot be played too many times on one road trip
• Someone from Texas and Cobar can have EXACTLY the same taste in music
• A shotski is not just a word for shots (like brewskis) but instead shots all lined up on an actual ski
• If you start singing Shots, you will have to do one of these
• Whistler is busy as hell during summer
• Ordering half the menu will result in me lying in foetal position wanting to die from being so full
• Epic traffic on the Sea to Sky on a nice day is completely bearable (and a good opportunity to tan and paint your nails)