Caching Adventure Vacation

Terry and I are heading off on our caching adventure vacation this weekend. We are heading to the west coast for 2 weeks and are getting pretty excited about it. We’ve travelled a little bit around the Maritimes and into Maine for our vacations the years since we’ve been caching but this is the first time we’re going far away, on a “real” vacation.

We’re flying into Calgary Saturday around noon and picking up the car. Then we’re heading directly to Drumheller, Dinosaur Valley and the Badlands, about an hour east of Calgary. The Royal Tyrrell Museum (fossils and dinosaurs) is our must see there, along with the Badlands. 

Then we head back west, past Calgary, to Canmore and Banff for a couple of days. We had friends in Calgary but they moved to Moncton in April so we have no reason to spend much time there; too many other places we’d rather see. After 2 days exploring Canmore/Banff we’re heading up to Jasper, stopping at Lake Louise on the way north – another must see!  We have 2 days in Jasper and then head south and west to Golden, BC for a night.

 The next day we head for Kamloops, stopping at Revelstoke and Craigellachie (where the last spike was hammered in)along the way. From there we head over to Victoria on Vancouver Island. We’re bypassing Vancouver, neither of us likes big cities and again, we had to pick the places we really wanted to spend time in.

The drive through the Rockies can be made in one day, although it’s not advisable. It’s 985 km from Calgary to Vancouver, then a 1.5 hour fabulous ferry ride over to the Island and Victoria. We’re taking a week to do it. When we were planning this trip we knew we wanted to do as much caching and see as many sights as we could and not spend our days just driving. So we worked it out so we are not travelling more than 350 or so km in any given day, most days less. We`re taking our time and are stopping for the quicksand cache, the Natural Bridge on the Kicking Horse River cache, at least 3 0r 4 caches at hotspings, a series that recent logs have stated  has had a bear in the vicinity (ok, maybe not those!), and anything else of interest we find. We`re driving through at least 5 National Parks (Banff, Jasper, Yoho, Glacier, Mt Revelstoke and possibly Pacific Rim, if we get that far up Vancouver Island).

I`ve been pouring over the caches in all the areas we`re visiting and picking the ones we`d like to hit. The places we most want to see (Banff, Jasper, Lake Louise) are in the parks so the cache density is very low but there are some. The cities we`re just stopping over in (Golden and Kamloops) have greater cache densities but our time will be more limited there. But we have a good long list of things we want to see and caches we`d like to find so I`m sure we`ll have no problem filling the hours!

I lived in Victoria for 10 years and have a sister there so we are spending our second week in that beautiful city. It`s one of my favorite places because you have both the ocean and the mountains, at the same time. You can sit on a beach, feel the warm ocean breeze and look out across the water and see snow capped peaks. It`s beautiful. Driving up island, in some places you have sheer rock face on one side and a 500 foot drop to the ocean below on the other. It can be hairy, especially if you meet a loaded logging truck coming the other way!  Because I`m somewhat familiar with Victoria and the Island we`ll spend lots of time caching, seeing the sites and visiting my sister and some friends I haven`t seen since I left over 9 years ago.

It`s going to be an adventure! We`ll keep you posted! 🙂