Vancouver

The drive through the mountain pass to get to Vancouver was really fun. Especially the downhill section. It's many twists and turns were very exciting.
Due to some construction we ended up parked on the highway for a while before we could get into the city. It's actually quite small and we ended up passing right though to North Vancouver since I was not sure where to exit, but we found a nice hotel there anyway and found that it was quite close to the aquarium and a ferry to the island anyway so it worked out quite nicely.
We crossed the bridge and wandered though some crazy traffic but we were able to get to the aquarium, but not soon enough to make the line to see the Baby Beluga through the underwater windows. We really lucked out in that they had such a rare birth a month ago so we were able to see something quite amazing. The aquarium was smaller than I thought it would be but it was nice to see all the amazing critters they had.
The next day we took the ferry to Vancouver Island and prepared for the last leg of the journey across Canada.

The trip to the west side of the island and the open Pacific was even better than the mountain pass into Vancouver. There was a section with many more twists and turns and it was super fun to drive it. I'll really miss these mountains!
We got to the Pacific Rim National Park and made out way to the beach. I should note that after going through the mountains the sunny weather we had to start the day turned into a completely overcast day suddenly. The mountains have a huge effect on the weather and most of the moisture that comes from the pacific falls on the west side of the island. This does support an amazing rain forest with amazingly huge red cedars that go up seemingly forever. Check the photo gallery to see just how big.
The beaches were fun but without any sun it was quite cold. I got to wade in in order to escape the rising tides that were about to trap us on some rocks but no swimming here! There were a lot of surfers but they all had wet suits to keep them warm.
We found some interesting sea life in some tide pools. Crabs, a sea slug, some teeny tiny hermit crabs and a few other things I'll have to look up to figure out what they were.

All in all is was quite an amazing end to the cross Canada portion of the journey. Now we being the long trip home.