Whistler

Argh.

The one time in my life (so far) that I get to Whistler, and it's doing the "Hawaiian Punch" thing. That's the phrase that the locals are using to describe the incessant and overwhelming deluge they've been dealing with this winter. (Same basic idea is what we were calling "El Nino" couple years back...) While we've been in Vancouver, we've had two of seven days of intermittent drizzle. The rest has been unremitting downpour. Wow.

Back to the Whistler thing. We actually rented a car for a day because that was cheaper (by far) than most of the other transportation options. Go figure. It was a 2 hour drive if you didn't stop, but we stopped. There were two things that we wanted to see along the way that taking a bus would not have allowed. One was a spectacular waterfall, and the other was an eagle habitat. Apparently eagles congregate somewhere just north of Squamish (which is a small town that's halfway between Vancouver and Whistler on the "Sea to Sky Highway" or BC 99) to pick off dead salmon from the river as they wash back out to sea. For those who don't know about salmon spawning, it's a huge deal around here (British Columbia), and the annual ordeal kills millions of salmon. Anyways, the upshot is that there are some 3500 bald eagles that make their home just north of Squamish for a few months during the winter to take advantage of this scavengers' banquet. It was so cool that we stopped on the way up and on the way back.

Here's what the place looked like:



Here's an eagle (apologies for the resolution...my whole kingdom and my right arm for Photoshop...):



In flight:




Oncoming!






When we actually made it to Whistler, it was kind of a letdown after seeing a bunch of beautiful bald eagles and the waterfall I mentioned before. The drive to Whistler has the potential to be awe-inspiring. Unfortunately in this case, because it was pouring rain and foggy, we were unable to see any of the terrain. I didn't even bother seriously considering skiing because the conditions were/are so bad. The place was still pretty busy though. And the one redeeming thing was that they had this rockin' Irish pub, and they served me a couple pints of the "other" beer that is owned by the Guiness company: Kilkenny. For whatever reason, this beer is not available in the states. Go figure. Word is they don't think there's a market for it. Morons. Now for those of you who are Guiness fans, imagine a pint of beer that acts a lot like Guiness (great big frothy head, looks real cool right after it's been poured) and tastes like a "bitter" version of Guiness. Now, I don't mean that the beer tastes bitter, but that it's like a "bitter" (name for a kind of ale) that you would find in an English (or Irish) pub. Anyways, bottom line is, it's great, and it's a good thing my wife was there, or I'd still be there drinking it. Heh.





So, midafternoon rolled around after our lunch at Whistler (you couldn't even see up the slopes...the lift lines vanished into the fog after about 50 meters) and we got on our way back down to Vancouver. Wouldn't you know, we got on the road and it pretty much stopped raining. Argh. The good news is, it was still light out and now on the way back we were able to check stuff out that we were unable to see on the way up due to fog. That night, we got back to our hostel in Vancouver, packed up our gear and got ready for another travel day (Vancouver to Victoria, which is the capital of British Columbia, on the georgeous Vancouver Island).