Ellen flew back into sunny Vancouver on Friday afternoon – yay! She said it rained the entire drive to Whitehorse to catch her plane and after an hour or so on the plane back to Vancouver the weather got so much nicer. I picked her up from the airport and we went straight to Spanish Banks beach to chill in the sun and have an afternoon beer. Very relaxing afternoon – Ellen also has her new ring which she is super stoked about!
So El is only here for 1 week, but two weekends, so the plan is to get as much outdoor activities in as possible – summer will be over by the time Ellen gets back home from her next work stint. We decided to head on a day trip on Saturday to Manning Park to do the Three Brothers hike. It is a 3 hour drive from Vancouver heading east towards the rockies – we haven’t actually hiked out here before so we are super excited for a change in scenery!
We made it to the trail head at around 9:30am on a clear sunny day. The first 5km was quite boring walking in the forest, but after a while we got up past the trees and into the mountain meadows. There are still lots of wildflowers but they a starting to die as there is a bit of a cold chill in the air – WINTER IS COMING!
You can also tell how stoked Ellen is to see some sun! She has pretty much had rain the entire time up north in the Yukon.
After around 10km, we made it to the top of the third brother! The views were nice but super chilly. The mountains here are a bit different to Whistler/Squamish area – they are a lot more rolling and less jagged.
Ellen is very stoked about her ring too! Gurl is flashing that bling at every chance.
We headed back down, to the car and home. It was a long day with all the driving but worth getting out to see something different. Saturday night we had our friends Bonnie & Alf over for dinner and we watched the Canucks! They lost 😦
On Sunday, we woke early to watch the Formula 1. We are both so into it now – Riccardo came 4th which was a good result for him. After that we headed down to Granville Island at 9am to jump in the speed boat we, and 4 other friends hired for the day! It was shaping up to be a super sunny day, so we were pumped! None of us had a boat licence…. they let us take it anyway!
We sped out of the harbour past all the rowers, and paddle boarders, and then a bit further out we ducked and weaved amoungst all the big commercial ships (they were stationary). It was so fun – we got some air on a couple of big waves! Don’t worry mum we had lifejackets on.
We went down into the Howe Sound which is water we can see when we drive from Vancouver to Squamish. It was super calm in the sound – we cruised around in here for 3-4 hours and drank beer, swam & ate snacks. It was such a nice day, with an unreal backdrop of the moutains skying above us – who would have thought in Canada we would be having a boat party!
When it was time to head back Ellen had a bit of a drive. Mick & I were sitting in the front and Ellen was going what felt like full tilt over big waves, and then she got scared and slowed right down, but when she did the nose of the boat went under a wave and soaked us! I still think she meant to do it…
The clouds and rain started to roll in as we headed back to the harbour, we definately got the best out of the day! For the rest of the afternoon we hung out at home and did some life admin. I also watched the Canucks again but they lost 😦 looks like they will get booted from the playoffs next match.
Another weekend done and dusted. More photos are here
Justin & Ellen's travels 