BC Vacation -- Day 2

This day started in Kelowna, and ended with me meeting up with a good friend of mine from college, Dunc. All comments on pics below refer to pics from the top down, as usual...

Pic 1: Nice hotel in Downtown Merritt. Good to see Mairitimers representing in this town (note the flags)!

Pic 2: Sprinklers on farmland in Merritt. With no AC in the car, I comtemplated stopping and running through them...!

Pic 3: Mountains on the Coquihalla Highway between Merritt and Hope. The Cascade Range is really beautiful, and ranks up there with the Rocky and Coast Mountains.

Pic 4: The lonnnnng descent to the Lower Mainland. I think my ears almost exploded, lol!

Pic 5: Almost to the Lower Mainland, one of the mountains in the Coast range come into view.

Pic 6-7: Downtown Vancouver. Very imposing and modern, but the next pic...

Pic 8: ... is just weird for the sake of weird!

Pic 9: An awe-inspiring view of North Vancouver from Downtown. This sight will live in my soul forever...

Pic 10: The spread of nachos and the Atlantic Trap and Gill on Robson Street in Vancouver, as I enjoy a bite.

Pic 11: Dunc and I after polishing off a pitcher and a few pints. It was easily the most fun I had during my trip to BC!

BC Vacation, Day 1

Preceding this, I ran into a pretty bad snag on my way down to Calgary for the last weekend of the Stampede -- my battery died in Red Deer. Since this happened just as every mechanic in town was getting off for the day (it was a Saturday), I had to miss a pub crawl I signed up for in Calgary, but I ended up spending the night with Curtis and Phil, two college buddies of mine. We went and saw the Transformers movie, which was OK (though it smacked of an ad for GM). I made it down to Calgary on Sunday, and spent the last night on the Stampede playing poker and hitting the Roadhouse bar with two other fellow Aitken Rangers, the Baxter brothers, Trent and Trevor!

The pictures above are from the first official day of my BC vacation (although a good part of the first day was spent in Banff National Park). Refer to the key below (and in all other posts on my BC adventures) for comments on the aforementioned pictures:

Pics 1 -3: Lake Minnewaka, Banff National Park.

Pic 4: Kicking Horse Pass, Yoho National Park. This road passed by one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever (the Spiral Tunnels, that trains use to make it through the pass safely) and a very difficult one in the present day (the twinning of the Trans Canada through Kicking Horse Pass to Golden, BC)

Pic 5: A snowshed tunnel in Rogers Pass. There were about five of these tunnels, of which some were not lit. This took me by surprise, even though there was a sign warning about it!

Pic 6: View of the Kootenay Mountain Range from Revelstoke, BC. Lots of snow in the mountains even in mid-July (!). I stopped here for some baked goods (including that BC staple, Namaimo Bars, hahah) to wake me up, as I was starting to zone out a little from all that driving (5 hours at that point). BC is not a small province!

Pic 7: A houseboat on the shores of Okanagan Lake in Kelowna, BC. Definitely gotta get some of guys and gals together and do this sometime in the near future!