Vancouver - Shuswap Lake - Banff

We arrived in Vancouver via Dallas on Monday 8th September (happy b'day mummy P!) and settled into HI Jericho Hostel, which is situated right on the beach west of Vancouver. We had one day before we left for our tour of the Rockies so we wanted to make the most of it. It was a brilliant day spent discovering the coastline, downtown area, and Granville Island. As we walked back to the hostel we witnessed a beautiful sunset (below) which we sat and watched from a log on the beach! We immediately loved Vancouver and were in good spirits for our impending adventure...

Day one and two of our Moose tour were primarily travelling days. We clocked up several hundred miles but got the chance to get off and stretch our legs at some interesting spots. These included Bridal Falls, the town of Hope, and Craigellachie (The Last Spike) where the transcontinental railroad was completed. Having spent most of the day on the bus with two seventy-year-olds from Ireland and several snoozing Japanese girls, Jen was just about ready to kill someone...

As we got closer to the Rockies the scenery became more and more spectacular, and we knew we had definitely arrived when we came to Emerald Lake at the end of day two. This was one of our favourite lakes in the Rockies, the reflections were amazing and we can both vouch for the 'glacial' temperature of the water!

We spent day two at HI Banff knowing that day three towards Jasper was going to be one of the most spectacular days of the tour (maybe the whole year), so we got to bed early after cooking the whole bus a beef stir fry.