Day 2: Baker City to Seattle

Lots more driving today.  We left Baker City early this morning and set out for Mount Rainier.  Going north through Oregon was even more beautiful than the day before, but once we hit Washington we landed back in farm country again.  At least this time we got to look at…

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Day 3: Seattle

Today we played tourist in Seattle. We started the day at the Museum of Pop, or MoPOP.  The museum is sort of divided into two parts – we visited the ‘music’ section first.  As soon as you walk in, we found this incredible sculpture: Then we visited the Jimi Hendrix…

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Day 4: Seattle to Vancouver

We left Seattle early this morning.  We originally thought we would take a ferry out to the San Juan Islands and do some hiking, but the scheduling proved too challenging.  Instead we decided to go east, and try some hiking in the Northern Cascades. We took a beautiful scenic drive…

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Day 5: Vancouver

Today was an Adventure.  With a capital A. We started the day at Stanley Park, which is pretty awesome.  We explored the park both on foot and driving, because it’s just enormous – bigger than Central Park.  Definitely the best part was the totem poles: After that we went back…

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Day 7: Jasper

Jasper is awesome.  I mean, we knew all along that this was likely to be the high point of the trip, and we’ve seen the pictures.  But being here and surrounded by all the enormous, beautiful mountains and lakes is really something special. We were pretty bummed when it rained…

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Day 8: Jasper to Banff

You know, very often things are over-hyped and nowhere near as good as their reputations.  Today proved the exception to that rule by far.  The Icefields Parkway more than delivered on everything we heard about it. We left Jasper in yet another rain storm.  I’m pretty sure we missed some…

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Day 9: Banff

Banff is beautiful.  I can totally understand why it has the reputation it has. It was really nice out today, and we were surrounded by all these big, awesome mountains, so we thought it would a good day for a hike.  We ended up climbing Sulphur Mountain – 3.5 miles,…

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Day 10: Banff to Moosejaw

Well, today has been weird.  Although we did sort of expect it to be. We left Banff after breakfast, and after about an hour of driving east, the Rockies just…. stop.  It’s bizarre, there’s really no foothills or anything; one minute you’re staring at beautiful snow covered peaks and the…

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Day 11: Moosejaw to Winnipeg

Not the most exciting of days.  We did visit the Western Development Museum before we left Moosejaw this morning.  Which wasn’t quite what it sounded like – it actually had an incredible collection of old cars, airplanes and railway bits: Before we left Moosejaw, we did take one more detour…

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Day 15: Ottawa to home

Ottawa is a really nice city, we both wished we’d had more time there – we will definitely go back for a long weekend.  After breakfast we took a fun walk around a farmer’s market.  On the way out of the city, I did get a great photo of the…

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Some closing thoughts

We really had an awesome time.  Yes, there were definitely some boring bits, but we saw so many weird and wonderful things we could never have seen any other way.  I don’t know that I’d do it again, but it was a fabulous two weeks.  The biggest down side was…

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Day 1: Home to Quebec City

As expected, today was all about driving. Somehow we actually managed to leave the house pretty much exactly when we planned, and it was an easy ride all the way. We stopped for a great lunch in Ballston Spa (great little town) and coffee in Plattsburgh (just no), and got…

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Day 2: Quebec City

We had a nice day walking around Quebec today. Our day started at one of the city’s more famous boulangeries, where we totally pigged out on croissants – and oh my, that was definitely worth the pound of butter we probably ate. Walking back to the hotel we realized it…

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Day 3: Quebec City (sort of)

We went a little off script today. First we stopped at North America’s oldest existing grocery store – it’s been in business continuously since 1871. We had fun poking around although we didn’t buy too much. The fudge sausage proved too tempting to resist. We have no idea what it…

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Day 4: Quebec City to Matane

My husband led me astray today. For weeks as we’ve been preparing for this trip, he’s been talking about leaving the coast and traveling on all these gravel roads that crisscross the peninsula – a little like ‘light’ off-roading. So after driving a couple of hours north on the Trans-Canada…

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