Sea-to-Sky TakoLuka

Sea-to-Sky Highway is one of Vancouver's famous roads that goes from Vancouver to Whistler and even further into the mountains. I'm borrowing that name for this post, because it's pretty close to where TakoLuka has gone for this past two weeks ^^

First up, on the last Saturday of August, my family, including my uncle and aunt who visited from Holland, traveled to Whistler by train on the Rocky Mountaineer. It's a scenic 3-3.5 hours ride from North Vancouver to Whistler. The attendant was very friendly and pointed us to many attractions and gave us many new information about the sites that we didn't know about.

Although one of the things we didn't know about was that the employees were locked out at the time and they had replacement workers until they settled their contract. I'm not sure if there are any resolution to this yet... We had to cross the picket line since we already paid for these tickets...

They provided us with some refreshments before the train ride. I had quite a few, but there were still some more left over!

Of course there are other locomotives around the area, such as this cargo one for CN Rail.

Here's TakoLuka explaining all the emergency exits and where you can break open the window in case of an emergency.

It's like she's walking around on the train! XD

TakoLuka usually eats tuna, but I think she'll settle with salmon as well, right?

I was tempted to get Fraser the Bear plushie.. But I'm sure it's just more stuff on my bed ^^; TakoLuka really want that salmon in his mouth though...

The Lions Gate Bridge... Built my the family who owned Guiness... Yes, Guiness the beer. It's also designed by the same person who did the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

TakoLuka having some lunch... With the lack of tuna, she goes after the mayonnaise instead..

A nice scenery of Howe Sound.

We passed a couple of waterfalls at least... I forgot what this one was called.

Here's a nice view of the Cheakamus River that can be only seen when you ride the Rocky Mountaineer.

We only had about 3 hours at Whistler, so we didn't do too much. We went on the Peak2Peak Gondola though, connecting from Whistler to Blackcomb. But first we had to go to the peak first by riding this smaller gondola. There were lots of mountain bikers in the area. Some just wearing helmet and some were fully geared from head to toe.

At the peak we were greeted with some leftover snow! I didn't even know they lasted this long!

TakoLuka is fine in the snow :P I should've brought Azunyan so I can replicate my post from last winter :P

After a 25-30 minute wait we finally got on the Peak2Peak Gondola. The normal gondola comes around every 5 minutes... But the special silver ones come only about that long. What's so special is that it has a glass bottom so you can see below!

It makes TakoLuka look like she's floating in the air!

Here she is content to be outside my bag on a nice surface...

Until she realizes where she is and how far down it goes below ^^;

On the way back we just went on a normal gondola, but not an opportunity missed to take a photo of a scared TakoLuka ^^

Another view of the waterfall as we ride back down from Whistler to North Vancouver. It was a very short trip unfortunately... I was asleep for half of the way so I probably missed some new information that wasn't repeated by the attendant ^^;

The next week, on Labour Day, we went to Lynn Canyon Park in North Vancouver. Two days in a row... At least I did. For this part, these photos were the ones where I was with my family.

Sneaky brother took a pic of me setting up the next TakoLuka shot...

Underwater TakoLuka! "Come and get me," she says as she sticks her tongue out... Little does she know that it's really cold and bad for plastic figurines like her to stay under like that... (At least that's what I think... it was really cold water!)

She got on somewhat dry land to give us this nice shot :P

This tree got my attention... It looks like some kind of condo for some kind of animal... Woodpeckers? Squirrels? Dunno, the tenants weren't there.

And one of the destinations for this 2nd Lynn Canyon Park trip was to see the Twin Falls. It was nice, but we can only see from above.

The water looks very nice... So nice that a couple of guys jump into it after we left the area... It's still icy water, y'know!

It was quite a strenuous hike even though some of the steps where wooden planks. The hills were quite steep. I think we got some exercise out of it... Or at least work out the dim sum we had for breakfast, lol.

Lastly... Took a picture of this using the zoom in the camera. It was quite far away, but got nice detail on this... fruit? Berry? Whatever!