Sunday 11 May, to Whistler

There is currently a school bands competition being held at our hotel so there are hundreds of high school aged kids wandering around. Thankfully they were very quiet last night and I had a really good night's sleep. Breakfast was okay and we beat the school kids rush by about 5 minutes. I'm only having cereal yoghurt and Vegemite on toast, so wasnt going to be queuing half a mile for the hot food anyway. Be that as it may, we were on the road again by 9 am. I forgot to mention yesterday that I did actually see a moose on our travels but it was a bit of a distance away and quickly hidden by trees as we passed on the coach. So now I have seen all the major wildlife except an Eagle although they may have been some of the large birds I have seen a number of times flying very high in the sky. We depart Sun Peaks and get into the Cariboo Chilcotin Coast region, stretching from the Cariboo Mountains to the Pacific Coast. We are following the tracks of the early gold rush pioneers and are in the local version of farms and cowboy country.

Baseball is clearly popular here, even on Mother's Day.

As always, whenever we see train tracks there is likely to be a very, very long freight train.

Much of the land we are tendering through is owned by the local First Nation peoples. An attempt at setting up a rodeo seems to be doing okay but the nearby ghost town not so much.

Every now and then there appears a newish development area which is premised around a golf course. Big money involved. They look like cookie cutter houses but were too far in the distance for a reasonable photo. The countryside remains amazing with so many rivers and lakes, mountains and valleys. I have so many photos to choose from, so if there are too many for your liking then simply scroll past.

We stopped for morning tea at a trucker stop and then on to Lillooet for lunch. We saw out first vineyard which is fairly new and is now producing their own grapes rather than bring them in from the Okanagan Valley. Later saw the hydro electricity plant which powers the area but decimated the local salmon run.

It doesn't matter what side of the coach you are on, the scenery is breathtaking. The power of the river flow has created its own dam. I think it is Thompson's River but don't quote me on that.

Then on to Whistler for the night. It is to early for the summer season right now so the chair lifts aren't operating which is a shame, so instead of wandering around the village upon or arrival, we opt to do our laundry and are very pleased that we were first to get to the one washing machine on our floor! Great time to start happy hour and get into the blog while the washing and drying occurs.

Laundry complete so it's time to wander into the village and source a suitable venue for dinner. Pizza it is and what a pizza. We decided to go halves in a 14" one which was smaller than we wanted but the smallest size. However as they only had 18" bases made, that's what we had. It was ginormous! 3 pieces each and we were done so have bundled it up to take for our lunch tomorrow. Just hope we don't fill the bus with the aroma of pizza...

Many of the village shops are closed so it is mainly food ones open. Not too many people around either and the chairlifts aren't operating, which is disappointing as I remember how much I enjoyed the peak to peak ride. While we were eating the pizza back in our hotel room, I turned the TV on for the first time. Good grief, there seemed to be 100s of programmes but they were all rubbish. Another fairly early start again in the morning so an early night is in order.