May 14, 2019
By the time we got sorted with our bed frame in our van at Jim’s, popped to stock up on food and water etc time was getting on. I’m not a massive fan of driving through strange city’s, particularly in the dark, still getting used to how the road rules work so we opted for the classy location of parking up at the road side in North Vancouver over-looking the waterfront with the downtown area all lit up across the water. Not the most spectacular location but I like how you are able to park up for free at certain locations. Where we stayed was literally a square grass wasteland at the waterfront but there must have been a dozen other vans parked up here and despite being in the city it was surprisingly peaceful and quite nice looking out at the hazy lights of downtown Vancouver across the water.
The following day we headed North up Route 99, the famous sea to sky highway. It was a beautiful drive up. Turquoise skies, the coast to our left and around every bend the snow capped mountains kept building and building. Squamish isn’t too far North of Vancouver and it didn’t take us long to arrive at the small town surrounded by towering limestone cliffs. After grabbing a quick coffee and some WiFi at Tim Horton’s we headed off to find the free camp ground we had found via the invaluable Ioverlander app. It’s an absolute God send this app when your traveling Canada and trying to keep it as cheap as possible. You down load the full country so that you can use it when offline and it tells you every camp site there is and if it is a free site or paid for. Another 20 minutes up the Route 99 highway and we turned off the main road and headed up a steep incline until it leveled out. It was quite busy when we arrived but we managed to park up and grab a spot.
This particular spot is very popular with climbers due to the surrounding cliffs and we almost felt a little left out as everyone who arrived was pulling out various ropes, helmets and climbing equipment. It’s a quiet site and very basic. No spectacular view like Lake Jones and not even any bins, but they did have picnic tables and fire pits along with Bear proof containers to put your food into. The reason they don’t have any bins is due to the high risk of bears in this particular area. You have to keep all of your rubbish in your van and dispose of it when you leave.
The next few days were fairly lazy. We spent a day along at Alice lake which was nice. Popular with the locals and a great place to while away a lazy afternoon in the sun as well as giving us somewhere to reorganise Buddy a little better and to drop our rubbish off that was starting to build up. It was around this time that Buddy began to develop a bit of a chest shall we say. Particularly on start up he was rattling away somewhere in the exhaust system and as always we dropped Jim a line to seek advice. From a video we sent him he suspected something was wrong with the catalytic converter so we went off in search of a mechanic to take a look. Not being far from Whistler we decided to head North to see what we could find. Every singe garage was booked out for the next week so we rang round the small handful of mechanics back in Squamish to see if any of them could help. Yet again they were all busy so Buddy would have to cough and splutter a wee bit more until we could get him looked at.
While we were up there we decided to check out Whistler as it would be rude not too being so close. We had wanted to get some snow boarding done while in Canada and Whistler with it’s Blackcomb resort and slopes would have been ideal. Unfortunately it’s a little late in the season now and all the slopes were closed. We took a quick spin round the toy town-esque resort and it didn’t take long to realise how expensive Whistler is. I’m sure it’s all pretty in the winter when the snow has dumped all over it and you can get out boarding but at this time it was full of Porsches, Ferraris and massively over priced restaurants and bars. We had seen enough and headed back to the camp site. On the way back we took a turn off when we spotted a sign for waterfall. On the drive up we very lucky and saw our first bear in the wild. It was a young black bear and it was beautiful to see it as it came out of the woods, sauntered across the road and sat down on the other side. Amazing to see but the horrible thing was that somebody had dumped some litter at the side of the road and the poor young thing started to munch away on an empty pizza box, obviously attracted by the smell of food. People really need to be more responsible and think of the impact of their actions. Great to see the bear but horrid to see the impact that man has on nature at times.
Once back at the site we discovered that on a weekend it is massively popular. There were cars and vans strewn everywhere but eventually we found a spot a bit further down the hill away from the mass of eager rock climbers. When we first pulled up there was an ambulance at the top and we suspected a climber had fallen. What we didn’t expect was that for the next 90 minutes 4 rescue helicopter’s were constantly flying in and out above the hills behind us ferrying bodies out. It was genuinely sickening to the stomach. I counted at least 3 bodies being airlifted out. Swaying lifeless bags hanging on ropes below the choppers. Something serious must have happened and when we got back to the land of internet the following day we took a look to see what had happened but we couldn’t find anything. It may happen a lot around these parts, but to us it was horrible to watch knowing most likely people had lost their lives. Very sad.
We’ve started to work things out a little better due to how busy this site was over the weekend. We have decided that we will park up early for the weekend at the free spots before they get busy and make sure we have enough food and water to get through to the next week. During the week when things are quieter we will use the occasional paid for site to grab a shower and better facilities.
With Buddy’s cough getting progressively worse we spoke with Jim who gladly offered to drive up the following morning to take a look himself to see what needed sorting. We really can’t thank Jim enough for his help. Within 10 minutes of checking the van he had popped to a shop to buy us a new Catalytic converter and he left it with us and said the next day he would try calling the local garages himself to see if he could get us in to get sorted. Unfortunately they wouldn’t do it for a reasonable price so he booked us in to an exhaust shop his brother used to own back in Vancouver. We had only been out of Vancouver for 5 days but didn’t have any choice but to head back down a couple of days later to get the work complete.
On the way back we at least tried to make the most of it by stopping off at Shannon Falls for a quick trek and some lunch and then also a quick stop off at Lynn canyon just outside Vancouver. As always to keep things cheap we managed to sleep in a free spot for the night….the parking lot at the Muffler Man exhaust shop. Yes, yet again it was another night sleeping on some random road in the city but hey free is free so no complaints from us.
With Buddy fixed within an hour this morning we have decided to head East instead of North now to check out Canada’s wine country. Let’s hope the bank balance can handle this as I’m sure we will tempted to spend a few nights around here near the wineries!
