Happy Canada Day!

Friday, July 1st – Whistler, British Columbia - Day 140 

Canada Day in Whistler! To celebrate Canada Day, Sam Roberts was playing a free show in the Olymipic square in Whistler. That’s all it took to convince us to stick around. Before the concert, we wanted to explore some of Whistler’s natural beauty. 

 We started by travelling down the road to Garibaldi Provincial Park for advice. A helpful ranger planned our day for us. We were starting with Brandywine Falls followed by the Train Wreck trail. Off we went. 

The Brandywine Falls trail was an easy walk to a high fall that formed a river that moved through a scenic valley framed by mountains. John was not happy with the hike, but we pushed through (or more accurately, I pushed him through). Gen, Charlotte, and I decided to take a side trail to Swim Lake; Aisling reconsidered and joined us afterwards. Jo-Ce and John didn’t like the steep slope of rock we needed to climb to follow the trail so stayed behind. The trail was beautiful; we get tired of the flat, wide, open paths and just want a rocky, rooty trail to follow and this was that. The lake didn’t look swimmable, but the view was nice, the trail itself was worth it. We stopped for lunch on a picnic bench by the parking lot before moving on. 

The Train Wreck trail had us moving downwards along a path beside a ravine. The path led to a scenic suspension bridge above very fast-moving water. Just past the bridge, we found the wreckage of a train that had gone off the tracks years ago and was subsequently dumped in the forest for the grafitti’ers and hikers to play with. The kids climbed onto the top of the train cars and were hopping over roots, stumps, and logs. The tough part was the uphill back to the car; John made it with a good deal of carrying on Dad’s shoulders. 

To be continued....