Monday, 9 April 2012

Greater Vancouver Zoo

Easter Sunday we spent the day at the zoo, it was perfect spring weather for it..

As we walked in Brendon made a friend with Hagrid - a great horned owl. He was very suss about me, wearing my fur vest (it's fake), which freaked me out a bit but he was pretty choice

A lot of the animals are the same as the Auckland Zoo, but they had one section that was North American animals;

American Eagle

Arctic Wolf

Moose

(free moose rides)

Barn Owl

Raccoon

And Shadow the bear


When we first walked by she wasn't there and I was gutted because I was so excited to see a bear, so when we decided to quickly check as we walked back and she was out it was awesome! 

She was eating her apple in her watering hole, it was so stable resting on the back of her paw while she took bites...

Ahhh such a tourist...

We made friends with this really cute fella, I'm not even sure what he/she is but we liked him/her..


Tuesday, 3 April 2012

Road Trip to Whistler

This weekend we went for a road trip to the ski town, Whistler. Its a two hour drive from Vancouver following a river inlet most of the way which made for a really nice drive. We made a couple of stops on the way to check out some scenery.

This was Porteau Cove...obviously


And we stopped at Shannon Falls


I love this tree I found at Shannon Falls, it looked like green velvet

This was our first view pulling into Whistler, its a smaller area just before the main village called Whistler Creek

The actual village in Whistler at the bottom of the mountains was so cute and styley




And of course I found some funny statues


At the little river down from our hostel I found this awesome handrail covered in crochet



Heres some views from the top of the main ski mountain


And from there we did the peak-to-peak gondola over a canyon to the other big ski mountain, the trees didn't come out so great in the picture but they all looked like they had been sprinked with icing sugar


That faint line running through the clouds is the peak-to-peak gondola

So...most people go to Whistler to ski or snowboard...I do neither of those. BUT instead we went tubing which was frikkin fun (I think we were the only adults there without kids though haha)


On our trip home we took the long way, travelling six hours inland and around in a big loop. The trip from Whistler up through Pemberton to Lillooet felt like we were driving through the North Pole to see Santa, we just kept buzzing about the views...it was hard to capture them in the car on the highway but this stretch of road went for about an hour or two in the middle of nowhere driving through the mountains covered in snow

We stumbled across this amazing lake, called Seton Lake, and the water was so incredibly turquoise, it was like being inside a postcard

This train driver has a pretty sweet job, we meet up with this train across the tracks quite a few times on our trip (yea we were being slow tourists) and he gets to see some pretty amazing views during his day at work

We were lucky to see some wild life on our way, which I was pleased about because for the majority of our trip we didn't see much. We were actually laughing not long before seeing these guys that the 'beware of deer' symbol may be the only deer we would see all weekend


From Lytton down to Hope we followed the Fraser Canyon, which was huge. It was such a change from the snow coming up to the highest point in Lillooet, the Fraser Canyon was much dryer winding with the river and through awesome tunnels like James Bond. It was actually so desert-like we saw tumble weeds

Just before Hope we pulled over and found this lake, actually called Lake of the Woods

Then on the last part of the trip from Hope back to Vancouver it was pretty standard highway, but we did manage to find this goodie

Tuesday, 13 March 2012

Walk in the Snow

Sunday morning at Lac Le Jeune was so gorgeous, we went for a walk and got a few pics...






...And made a minature snowman...


Ice Hockey Game

You can't come to Canada and not see an ice hockey game. ..Vancouver Giants versus the Kamloops Blazers...


These photos are especially for landa; the people walking around with trays of food for sale, best of all the popcorn people yelling 'geeett your popcorn', just like all the Blockbuster type movies we watch. It was a really hard shot to get, I stalked one popcorn guy for ages trying to get a good picture but was freaking him out then managed to get these:



The Blazers won on Vancouver turf, which made for some good punch ups nearing the end of the game (no I don't have photos of the fights haha)



And I found this cute fella outside:




Thursday, 8 March 2012

View on Way Home from Work

Some days walking down the road and across the bridge to the bus after work can be pretty cold, especially as the sun starts to go down. But as I walk up the one side of the bridge looking out towards the city this is one of the choice views I get and it always makes me smile..