It's the final countdown

It was a historic day in the span of our trip. Today we went across the final leg of this roadtrip. While we started at one end in Golden, BC, we ended the day in Vancouver, BC. Now before everyone gets all up in arms about how you can't just 'drive through' British Columbia listen to this first. As much as I would like to give every Province it's fair share, I only have 30 days to make this all work, and anyone with access to a calendar can tell that this trip is nearing its deadline.

However, I didn't just pass through it without note, we went to a few noteworthy stops before getting to Vancouver. As well, the plan is to spend tomorrow day in Vancouver, ferry over to Nanaimo tomorrow night, and spend another day and night on Vancouver Island. After that, it's making our way back through the province but exiting through Jasper way, up through the Yellowstone Highway back to Winnipeg and then the long, dull ride through Northern Ontario.

To focus on the day at hand we started off in Golden, grabbed a quick continental breakfast and were on our way. We stopped in Revelstoke Mountain National Park to get a few walks in. Unfortunately as with the theme of the rest of our trip, the big cedars trail was closed due to Avalanche risk, so we settled on Skunk Cabbage Trail. Now, we didn't go for the name, apparently it was supposed to have lots of birds in it, and while you could hear them, we didn't see much of them. What we did see quite a bit of was skunk cabbage, what is that you ask?

This. In all of it's fragrant glory

I don't know why they use this as the main attraction for the trail, it actually did smell quite skunky. Needless to say, once it was apparent there weren't many birds to be seen, we didn't stick around long.

After that we went to visit the Revelstoke Dam. It is the third largest dam in the BC Hydro infrastructure, and it is the 2nd most productive (somehow?). However, because it was an operating hydroelectric dam, there were really tight security measures which included no picture taking. It was almost not worth going to because we had to submit to a full car search and sign a waiver saying we weren't terrorists. Not really though, the security was a genial old security guard who needed to check our licence and the trunk. The only picture I have of the place was the one I snagged on the drive down to security.

I hope this picture doesn't lead to all that terrorism I keep hearing about.

It was a really neat place, it showed the work behind electrical generation in a non-environmentally impacting way (Other than river diversion). The observation deck wasn't anything to write home about after yesterday, but the information session and self-guided tour made the 2-1 $6 admission worth it. It's also worth noting that they have such a belief that people won't come back that a season pass is the general admission + $1.

The last detour of the day before we hit up Vancouver was the Salmon Arm Freshwater Pier. What made this an interesting spot was that it was 300m long, making it the longest Freshwater Pier in North America. It was a neat walk with lots of bird sightings.

Long Pier is Long

After that it was mostly the driving descent from the mountains to the not-so mountains. I was apparently under the misconception that you completely leave the mountains once you get so far into BC. I was patently wrong, you can actually see the foothills of the mountains from Vancouver, practically as far as you can get west without getting to Vancouver Island.

It goes from this...

To this!

As you can see there is significant improvement, but you're still in the shadows of the mountains once you get to Vancouver.

Tomorrow, we're taking in the sights that Vancouver has to offer, and then over to the island!