July 4, 2001: Seattle, Washington
	July 2, 2001: Glacier and Mount Revelstoke National Parks
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Today, we'll spend some time in Revelstoke, heading up to the top of Mount Revelstoke, which is just above the city. Then we have a fairly long drive to Vancouver where we will see what we can see in the city and also spend the night.

In Revelstoke, British Columbia

Revelstoke (pop. 7200) is located in southeastern British Columbia, about 400 miles east of Vancouver and 300 miles west of Vancouver. It is just outside the southwestern corner of Mount Revelstoke National Park. The city is situated on the banks of the Columbia River just south of the Revelstoke Dam and near its confluence with the Illecillewaet River. East of Revelstoke are the Selkirk Mountains and Glacier National Park, penetrated by Rogers Pass used by the Trans-Canada Highway and the Canadian Pacific Railway. South of the community down the Columbia River are the Arrow Lakes and the Kootenays. West of the city is Eagle Pass through the Monashee Mountains and the route to Shuswap Lake.

Revelstoke Bear Sculpture

Revelstoke was founded in the 1880s when the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) was built through the area; mining was an important early industry. The name was originally Farwell, after a local land owner and surveyor. In yet earlier days, the spot was called the Second Crossing, to differentiate it from the first crossing of the Columbia River by the Canadian Pacific Railway at Donald. The city was named by the Canadian Pacific Railway in appreciation of Lord Revelstoke, head of Baring Brothers & Co., the UK investment bank that, in partnership with Glyn, Mills & Co., saved the Canadian Pacific Railway from bankruptcy in the summer of 1885 by buying the company's unsold bonds, enabling the railway to reach completion.

The construction of the Trans-Canada Highway in 1962 further eased access to the region, and since then tourism has been an important feature of the local economy, with skiing having emerged as the most prominent attraction. Mount Revelstoke National Park is just north of the town. The construction of Revelstoke Mountain Resort, a major new ski resort on Mount MacKenzie, just outside of town, is underway since late 2005. Revelstoke is also the site of a railway museum.

Revelstoke

Revelstoke is also the site and namesake of the 1965 impact of a meteorite, which, though resulting in only a few small pieces that could be found, made a splendorous fireball track across the sky. This meteorite was a carbonaceous chondrite, an especially primitive and friable type. That fact, plus the rather flat trajectory (allowing a long air path) accounts for the paucity of surviving fragments - most of the meteorite vaporized, burnt up, or broke into dust.

Revelstoke holds the Canadian record for snowiest single winter. Over 80 feet of snow fell on Mt. Copeland outside town during the winter of 1971-72. Lest you think that it doesn't mean much because the snow fell on a remote mountaintop somewhere, the actual town received over 25 feet of snow during that winter, and snow levels were higher than many roofs around town by more than ten feet.

We didn't spend much time wandering around town, we wanted to drive up to the top of Mount Revelstoke.

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A Trip Up Mount Revelstoke

The trip up to the top of Mount Revelstoke took a fair amount of time. While not far from the town as the crow flies, the Meadows-in-the-Sky Parkway, which is the name of the road up the mountain and which is only open in the summer, was a series of twists and turns and switchbacks.

The Parkway began in the rainforests of the park’s southwest corner, wound upward through the sub-alpine forests and ended in the rolling sub-alpine wildflower meadows. The road went all the way to the top, but there was still so much snow that we parked in a lower parking area and walked the rest of the way.

When we got to the top, we found that there was an unoccupied ranger station, which also appeared to be a kind of weather station. There were amazing views all around, with the Monashee Mountains in the west and the Selkirk range in the east.

The Town of Revelstoke and the Monashee Mountains

It was neat up here on the top of Mount Revelstoke, and particularly neat to walk through a few inches of snow in early July- something we could never do in Texas. As you'll see from the pictures we took, the views were indeed well worth the trip up here. Just use the clickable thumbnails below to have a look:

It wasn't actually very chilly up here this morning, which made all the snow on the ground seem that much more of an oddity. I suspect, that with the daytime temperatures we've experienced in the last few days, this snow won't last the week.

When we'd had our fill of walking around the top of Mount Revelstoke (and throwing a couple of snowballs at each other) we walked back down the road to the parking area for our trip back down the mountain and back onto the Trans-Canada Highway heading west.

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Driving From Revelstoke to Vancouver

The drive from Revelstoke to Vancouver, which took over five hours was a pleasant one (save for the speeding ticket I got near Salmon Arm, Canada). The scenery was uniformly very pretty- lots of mountains (most of them snow-capped), thick forests, picturesque small towns and some lakes (large and small).

Fred and I at Shuswap Lake

Shuswap Lake was situated to the north of the Trans-Canada Highway between Revelstoke and Kamloops. The lake is the source of the South Thompson River, which becomes, in turn, the Thompson River and then the Fraser River. Arising from a spring high at Fraser Pass near Mount Robson in the Rocky Mountains, the Fraser River (the longest river within British Columbia) flows for about 900 miles into the Strait of Georgia at the city of Vancouver. It is the tenth longest river in Canada. Each year, 27 cubic miles of water flow our of the Fraser into the Pacific Ocean, and the river also dumps an annual load of 20 million tons of sediment into the ocean. The river is named for Simon Fraser, who led an expedition on behalf of the North West Company from the site of present-day Prince George to the mouth of the river.

Shuswap lake is at the heart of a region known as the Shuswap Country or "the Shuswap", noted for its recreational lakeshore communities, one of which is the town of Salmon Arm.

Shuswap Lake near Salmon Arm, Canada

The name "Shuswap" is derived from the Shuswap or Secwepemc First Nations people, the most northern of the Interior Salish peoples, whose territory includes the Shuswap. Shuswap Lake consists of four arms, forming a shape reminiscent of the letter H. The four arms are called Salmon Arm (southwest), Anstey Arm (northeast), Seymour Arm (north), and the main lake (west). Shuswap Lake connects to Little Shuswap Lake via the Little River, which flows from the end of the west arm.

To the north-west the lake is mainly fed by the Adams River, which drains Adams Lake. Other rivers that feed the lake include the Salmon River, the Eagle River, the Seymour River, Scotch Creek and numerous other smaller waterways.

Use the clickable thumbnails below to see two other pictures that we took at our roadside stop by Shuswap Lake:

We took advantage of the stop and the scenery to have some lunch and get ready for the final run over to Vancouver.

At left is a map of the section of Canada that we drove through from Revelstoke to Vancouver, and I have marked the location of Shuswap Lake (you can see its various "arms").

The five hours of pleasant driving brought us to the outskirts of Vancouver on the east. Here, the land flattened out (being pretty much an ancient delta), although mountains were never out of view in the distance.

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In Vancouver, British Columbia

On our drive to Vancouver, we talked about what we might want to do there, and one of the things we thought we might do was to take the ferry to Victoria Island, and go to the gardens located there. So when we got into the city, the ferry terminal was the place to which we headed.

The map at left will give you an idea of where we traveled in Vancouver. Our first objective was to see if we could get a ferry to Victoria Island, so we first drove down to Tsawwassen where the ferry terminal was located. There, we found that while we could get a ferry out to the island, we would have less than an hour to spend there before the last ferry returned to the mainland. This eliminated a visit to Victoria from our list.

I wanted to show Fred what the downtown harbor area of Vancouver was like, so we drove north into town, stopping at a point where we could walk around and get a look at this cosmopolitan city. But in the time we had, we just didn't want to walk around aimlessly, so we drove a short distance out to Stanley park, which is on a peninsula that sticks out into the Burrard Inlet. From there, I thought, we could get some nice pictures of the city.

When we lost our light there, we drove to the harbor area where there were a number of restaurants where we could have dinner. We ended the day by driving south towards the border, crossing back into the United States and spending the night in Bellingham, Washington.

Driving into town from the ferry terminal, we just picked a place off one of the main streets that I thought might give us some decent views. It did, and we took a couple of pictures looking down the hill towards the harbor and the cityscape around it. You can see those two photos here and here. Next, we drove out to Stanley Park, and found a parking place in one of the many small lots so we could walk around.

Along the Stanley Park Seawall

Stanley Park is a thousand-acre public park that borders Vancouver's downtown; it is almost entirely surrounded by the waters of the Pacific Ocean. The land where the park is now had been occupied by British Columbia's indigenous peoples for thousands of years before the area was colonized by the British in the 1800s. The land was turned into Vancouver's first park when the city incorporated in 1886. It was named after Lord Stanley the then governor general.

Unlike other large urban parks, Stanley Park is not the creation of a landscape architect, but rather the evolution of a forest and urban space over many years. Most of the manmade structures we see today date to 1910-1940, although additional attractions, such as a polar bear exhibit, aquarium, and miniature train, were added in the post-war period. Much of the park remains as densely forested as it was in the late 1800s, with about a half million trees, some of which are 250 feet tall and hundreds of years old. Three major windstorms in the last hundred years took many of them out, but they have been replanted.

Significant effort was put into constructing the near-century-old Vancouver Seawall. The park also features forest trails, beaches, lakes, children's play areas, and the Vancouver Aquarium, among many other attractions.

Vancouver Skyline from Stanley Park

At the east end of Stanley Park there was a wide walkway and a lighthouse, and even in the late afternoon there were a lot of people about. Walking along the southern side of the park, there were nice views looking across the water to downtown Vancouver, and you can use the clickable thumbnails below to see some of these:

It was really too bad that our drive over from Revelstoke was such a long one; it would have been great to be able to spend more time in Vancouver and particularly here in Stanley Park- not to mention taking the ferry to Victoria. Perhaps we could have stayed and done these things tomorrow, but I would have been concerned that some difficulty on the way to Seattle could have made us miss our flight.

The Totem Poles in Stanley Park

On the way to the lighthouse, we passed a row of totem poles; these eight totem poles at Brockton Point are British Columbia's most visited tourist attraction (consider that a couple million people live within five or ten miles of them). The collection started at Lumberman's Arch in the 1920s, when the Park Board bought four totems from Vancouver Island's Alert Bay. More purchased totems came from Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) and the British Columbia central coast Rivers Inlet, to celebrate the 1936 Golden Jubilee.

In the mid 1960s, the totem poles were moved to the attractive and accessible Brockton Point. The Skedans Mortuary Pole is a replica as the original was returned home to Haida Gwaii. In the late 1980s, the remaining totem poles were sent to various museums for preservation and the Park Board commissioned and loaned replacement totems.

(As of this writing, in 2014, a ninth totem pole has been added. It was carved by Robert Yelton of the Squamish Nation, and was installed with the other eight here at Brockton Point in 2009.)

You can see another, closer view of these colorful totem poles here.

We were losing our light, so it was time to head back to the car. Along the way, we came by another point of interest.

No, this isn't Copenhagen!

Our route back to the car was along the north shore of the park; if there was anything new to see, we didn't want to miss it. And indeed there was.

"Girl in a Wetsuit" is a life size bronze sculpture by Elek Imredy; it depicts a woman in a wetsuit and is located on a rock in the water along the north side of Stanley Park. The bronze sculpture depicts a friend of Imredy's, Debra Harrington, in a wetsuit with flippers on her feet and a mask on her forehead. Although some believe it was a replica of Copenhagen's "The Little Mermaid", the creator stated:

"I didn't believe we should have a copy of the mermaid. She is rightfully a symbol of Copenhagen... I proposed to have a life-size scuba diver seated there. At that time scuba diving was getting quite popular here in Vancouver and, just as important, I didn't know of any similar sculpture anywhere in the world. It was a new idea… There was tremendous opposition and great controversy. I still don't know why.."

We took three final pictures on the way along the north shore, and you can use the clickable thumbnails below to see them:

Back at the car, we checked our map for a route down to the waterfront entertainment area where there were lots of restaurants to choose from; we ended up at, naturally, a seafood place. Then we headed south out of Vancouver and down towards the border. At the border, which only took a few minutes, we picked up Interstate 5 and drove to Bellingham, Washington, where we spent the night.

You can return to today's index or use the links below to continue to another photo album page.

	July 4, 2001: Seattle, Washington
	July 2, 2001: Glacier and Mount Revelstoke National Parks
	Return to the Index for Our Canada Trip