Waking up on our last morning in Kamloops we were sad and excited. Sad because we loved Kamloops. The city was big enough to have everything you needed but small enough that it didn’t feel overwhelming to an outsider. We were excited though as today we would be driving to Whistler, one of British Columbia’s and Canada’s most famous resort towns. Our route today would also be taking us on arguably BC’s most famous road; BC Route 99 aka “The Sea to Sky Highway”.
The Northern Portion of the Sea to Sky Highway
In order to catch the start of the highway we had to backtrack about 30 miles west on Trans Canada Route 1 and the Yellowhead Highway past Cache Creek. Once on it we started our drive south and a bit west heading towards Whistler. The Sea to Sky Highway is famous not only for making it simple to get from Vancouver to Whistler and beyond but also the engineering feats it took to create the road in the first place. The road was built in 1942 and completed to Whistler. It took another 50 years to build and pave the current 254 miles from the American border to its end point at Route 97. We were excited to find out what this road had to offer!
As far as towns go, they are few and far between from the highways starting point to Whistler. What it does have though are amazing views and scenery with very little people and traffic to slow you down. Leaving Kamloops, we drove through our last desert scenery that we would see for a few weeks. We stopped for gas at Cache Creek then turned left onto Hwy 99. The desert scenery stayed with us at first but gradually mile by mile left us as we entered the Coast Mountain ranges and started to enter into more of an alpine environment. The road at this point was magnificent. We passed small farms and cabins as the road twisted and turned through the desert, alpine and mountain environment. It hugged cliff faces and made huge altitude changes as it twisted and turned. To say that this was a tough drive in a large vehicle would be an understatement.
Eventually as we got closer to Whistler the desert fully stopped and we were back into the coastal mountains and a more of a rain forest type environment. There started to be small provincial campgrounds every so often as the road ran alongside a large creek. As driving Bubbles gets pretty tiring on the winding mountain road, we pulled off into one for lunch. It was beautiful. There were only about 12 spots to set up and most were located right alongside the creek. We admired the scenery for a bit before having lunch. We were only able to book one night in Whistler even though we would have loved to book more. As it was a popular spot campground spots filled up fast.
Whistlers’ Olympic Village
It was a little after 3pm when we entered the town of Whistler and made it to our campground, Riverside Campground. We chose to stay there as there were walking and biking paths connecting it to everything else in town. After setting up Bubbles we looked at a map and found the path and headed into town. After a 30 min walk, we reached Whistler’s “downtown”; the Olympic Village. The winter Olympics were held in Vancouver in 2010 and many of the events were held at Whistler. The Olympic Village was built to live on, after the Olympics ended to house shops, restaurants, hotels and condos.
Ski Resort Mountain Biking
Walking into the village Julie and I were taken aback by the size of it all. We expected a plaza with a few shops and stores, but this was massive. It was a huge pedestrian area with multiple plazas, walkways and levels with thousands of people walking around. We were not sure where to go at first. We found the largest plaza, still complete with Olympic rings and took a few pictures. We then made our way towards the actual ski area. We were not sure what would be there in the middle of the summer but to our surprise there were mountain bikes….lots of them. It turned out that the resort had turned into a mountain bike mecca in the summer. Trails had been built on the mountain and special mountain bike chairs for the chair lifts had been built to get the bikes and their driver up the mountain. It was quite the sight to see, hundreds of people in full mountain biking gear waiting in line as a skier or snowboarder does then quickly putting their bike on the chair and up the mountain they went. Later after looking into this sport we saw that Whistler was one of the top places in the world to do this.
Our Unexpected Personal Chef’s Table
After watching the bikers for a bit, we started to get hungry. We found a small restaurant/bar called Bar Oso. We went in and sat down and ordered some cocktails. It was then we noticed that the chef named Colin was directly in front of us behind the bar making food. We thought this was a bit odd as Bar Oso also had a restaurant, so we started to ask some questions. The chef said that while the bar opened at 4, the restaurant does not open until 6 so for his first 2 hours he works at the little station at the bar making people bar snacks before going into the main kitchen for dinner service. As there were just a few people in the bar we started to chat with Colin asking him questions about where he was from and what all he was making. He said that their short ribs were the best, so we ordered a small plate of them (they were amazing). He then preceded to give us a small sample of whatever he was making for other people as well. It was almost as if we were at the chef’s table, he was preparing a tasting menu just for us. It was awesome! Once it was time for Colin to leave the bar and go to the kitchen we paid up and headed out ourselves.
We were now hungry for dinner and as we had a pretty fancy tasting appetizer, we decided to go a bit cheaper for dinner (or as cheap as one can get in Whistler). We ended up at a Mongolian BBQ. While it turned out to not exactly be cheap, we thought the food was tasty and we enjoyed ourselves. After dinner we strolled around the village a bit more before starting our walk back to Bubbles. Whistler is pretty neat as you can access almost the entire town by its pathways. All have street like signs and some even have streetlights! It made us really wish that we had been able to spend another day in town as we would have loved to ride our bikes and explore more…oh well, next time.
The Southern End of the Sea to Sky Highway
The next morning after waking up and eating breakfast we took to the road once again. South of Whistler the Sea to Sky Highway turned out to be much nicer. It had been redone prior to the 2010 Olympics and you could really tell. Most of the road went from being a 2 lane very windy road to a 4-lane modern highway. At first the road went around a few curves heading southwest and before long we caught our first glimpse of the ocean. This was one of the neatest parts of the road. Cliff on one side and spectacular ocean view on the other. The road continued to come down in elevation, curving alongside the mountains and past small coastal communities until we reached the outskirts of Vancouver.
Stanley Park – Vancouver
Today we were heading to Victoria on Vancouver Island and had a ferry to catch in the afternoon. As we had a few hours to spare before the ferry we drove into downtown Vancouver and to its main park, Stanley Park. We had been to Stanley Park a few times before. It’s one of our favorites for a major city in the world. Vancouver sits on a peninsula and Stanley Park takes up the entire end of the peninsula, surrounded by water on 3 sides. We drove the parks small roadway which circumvents the park before finding a parking area and had lunch. We thought back to our 2 days on the Sea to Sky Highway and just what a neat and difficult road it was to drive. We saw it in a desert environment, alpine mountain, rain forest and coastal. It really had everything, and we would love to do it again!
Next up…Part 1 of our time on Vancouver Island!
