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Canadian Rocky Mountain is an incredible place. It is a magnificent view with all the mountains ranges soar in the background. Canadian Rocky Mountains are located on the West side of Canada. It is split among the province of British Columbia and Alberta. Many of the well known national park in Canadian Rockies include Banff, Jasper, and Yoho. This time we did a road trip on the Alberta side of Canadian Rocky Mountain and visited both Banff National Park and Jasper National Park.
This road trip start in Calgary. We flew to Calgary and rented a mid size Sedan from Avis. Avis gave us a red 2016 Chevrolet Cruz. The car looks quite fancy but does not drive smoothly. Car problem aside, it does give us a built-in GPS which is very convenient. When we drove the car out of Calgary International Airport, we simply had to follow highway 201 first, then switch onto trans-Canada highway 1 towards West. It took about an hour to get to the entrance of Banff National Park. This is where we purchased our admission tickets. The admission ticket is reusable for all national parks in Canada.
After entering Banff National Park and driving on the highway, the scene on the side of the road is just incredible. The endless mountain range soaring on the side of the road. When the afternoon sunlight shines on the side of the mountain, the view is just magnificent. One thing we noticed is that there are fences on the side of the road throughout entire Banff National Park. I am guessing that this is to prevent wildlife animal from running onto the highway.
On the first day, we simply walked around Banff village and enjoyed a relaxing afternoon to check out all the shops.
On the second day, we drove to Lake Louise very early in the morning to avoid the crowd. While we were there, we did Big Beehive hike to the top of the mountain. Then in the afternoon, we went to check out Moraine Lake.
On the third day, we hiked up to Sulfur Mountain. The view of Banff from the top is amazing.
On the fourth day, we went to Lake Minnewanka to check out the clear and beautiful lake. We just loved how calm it is there.
On the fifth day, it was time for us to head to Jasper. On the way, we stopped by Peyto Lake in the morning. What a gorgeous lake it is. Then we visited the famous glacier at Columbia Icefield.
On the sixth day, we first visited Pyramid Lake in the early morning. Then we went to Maligne Lake to visit Spirit Island.
On the seventh day, we visited Patricia Lake in the morning and also came back at night to do stargazing. We also went to the top of mountain at Whistlers Peak.
On the final day, we drove for 5.5 hours all the way back to Calgary to fly back to Portland.
Overall, this road trip experience is an amazing experience! There is a lot of view points on the way and the views are incredible. I strongly suggest people to do this road trip when they got to Banff and Jasper!
McNeil Point hiking trail is one of the more popular hiking trails in Mount Hood Forest National Park. The trail is about 10 miles long round trip with about 2000ft elevation gain. So it is not a difficult hike. The trail is often filled with crowd during the summer season since it is quite close to Portland and the trail offers magnificent view over Mount Hood Forest National Park.
McNeil Point hiking trail is about an hour away from Portland. The trail head of McNeil Point hiking trail is at Top Spur trail head. To get to Top Spur trail head, you can take highway 26 towards Mount Hood. After you pass Zig Zag River Road, you will make a left turn there. This route is very similar to the one that goes to Ramona Falls. However, when you get to the intersection that branches off to cross the bridge, you have to take the gravel road instead. Do not cross the bridge! Once you get onto the gravel road, you will start to see signs to Top Spur trail head. After 7 more miles of driving on gravel road, you will arrive at a tiny parking lot with a lot of cars parking on the side of the road. If you don't get there early, chances are that you have to park on the side of the road. Many people hike this trail during early morning to catch sun rise! In addition, don't forget to bring Northwest Forest Pass with you!
Once you are prepared, you can start the hike! McNeil Point hiking trail is mostly hiking in the forest, but you should still put on sunscreen. About 20 minutes in, you will arrive at an intersection with 3 different route. This may be a bit confusing for people who is hiking this trail for the first time. You can take either 2 of the 3 routes. You can take the left route and the middle route. Both routes will take you back to the main trail. I recommend you to take the left route to avoid confusion.
On this hiking trail, there are also several look out point that gives you a gorgeous view of Mount Hood. So make sure you have your camera ready with you. In addition, one section of this trail require you to cross a very shallow stream. You don't have to panic here. There are several rocks that you can step on so you won't get wet. However, the rock surface is very slippery so please be cautious when you cross the stream here.
Moreover, be aware that you will come to an intersection with 2 routes to take. The route on the right is the old trail and is currently no longer being used. The old trail is currently under restoration process. So please do not take that old trail and let the wild flowers recover by itself. The new trail on the left is the route that you should take. Distance of both old and new trails are similar, so please follow the sign and take the new trail.
Part of the trail require you to hike through rocky field. There is one part where you kind of have to climb through big rocks. Make sure you are extra careful here because it is a cliff on the other side. Once you pass this section, you are almost at McNeil Point! You will come to an intersection with 2 routes. 1 route heads up and the other route heads down. The route heading up is to the Pinnacle. It is about an additional hour of hike and it is steep at the end of the trail. The route that goes down is the one that you should take. This route leads to McNeil Point. At the end of this trail you will reach a hut built with rocks. Have your lunch here and enjoy the magnificent view!
Quebec City is one of the oldest city in Canada. It is about 8 hours drive from Toronto and located in the Fresh speaking province of Quebec on the East coast, situated by St. Lawrence River. Every year, it has attracted thousands of visitor all over the world to visit this amazingly old Canadian city.
To get to Quebec City from Toronto, you can simply take highway 401 or Highway of Heroes all the way to the East. When you pass through Ontario and Quebec border, highway 401 becomes highway 20. We chose to stay at Delta Hotel that is just outside of Old Quebec City. The rate of the hotel is about $200 per night and the parking fee is $20 a night. Delta Hotel is at a very convenient location because you can simply just walk to Old Quebec City without driving. The traffic at Old Quebec City is insane due to the amount of people there. It is very hard to drive around when there are tourists walking around and you have to pay extra attention to the pedestrians. The streets in Old Quebec City also has steep slopes which makes driving the car even harder! If you want to stay at the world famous Fairmont Hotel, then you have no choice but drive through Old Quebec City. Fairmont Hotel is deep within the core of Old Quebec City.
The Old Quebec City is is a very popular tourist place. It has retained its French culture on the street and you will find many shops offer unique craftsmanship. It is definitely a place
where you should spend a full day walking around and have lunch or dinner at the patio dining area. For brunch, I recommend to go to Cosmos Cafe that is just a little outside of Old Quebec City. Cosmos Cafe offers very authentic French brunch cuisine. It serves various French food such as crepe. The crepe it serves is huge and there is a lot of varieties! For dinner, I recommend Restaurant 1640. The servers are extremely friendly and offers large patio seating. It also offers unique French cuisine such as escargot.
There is a lot of stores selling hand crafted items as I mentioned previously. Those shops are quite unique and the crafted items are definitely worth a second look. The crafted items are not expensive either so it is a good choice for getting them as souvenirs. There are also 2 Christmas stores and these Christmas stores are open during the summer season as well! These 2 Christmas stores sell many different unique ornaments that you don't see in other places. When you enter the Christmas store, make sure you hold onto your backpacks. This is because you don't want to knock over Christmas trees and break the ornaments. Many ornaments are made out of glass and they are expensive and very fragile!
Other than just visiting the city itself, you should also drive an hour East of Quebec City and visit Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre. It is a huge and beautiful cathedral with many stories behind it. One of the story that I can recall was about a boy having his cancer cured after visiting the cathedral. When you enter the cathedral, you will be overwhelmed by the height of its ceiling and the stained glass window is just beautiful! This is one of the most popular tourist attraction when people visit Quebec City. Note that parking is very limited here and I recommend to go there early in the morning to avoid the crowd. There is a McDonald right around the corner, but please don't park there since that parking lot is for McDonald customer. Besides, your car may get tolled away if you park there. Another wise option is to join the guided tour and take tour bus to here.
While you pay a visit to Basilica of Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupre, you can go a bit further East to St. Anne's Canyon. It is a beautiful place to put yourself in the nature and enjoy the breeze in the canyon. It is a change of scenery from the city. The admission fee is around $20 per person and the parking is free. If you are a student, you get student discount and the admission fee is around $15. There are 3 suspension bridges at S. Anne's Canyon and you can hike around the canyon. The trail goes across the canyon on the 3 suspension bridge and zig-zag down to the bottom of the canyon. Going down to the bottom of the canyon is the easy part. The toughest part is coming back up! It is said to have over hundreds of steps of stairs! So if you are not physically fit, it could be very tough for you to climb back up. Especially if you have heart related disease, make sure you take sufficient reset at easy rest location before continue to climb back up.
Mt. St. Helens. is a very well known volcano in the Pacific Northwest and it has erupted about 30 years ago. The volcano ash has covered much of the great Northwest. In order to preserve its unique volcanic landscape, number of hikers allowed to hike to Mt. St. Helens summit has been limited each year; however, you can still go to Johnston Ridge Observatory and have a great view at Mt. St. Helens and hike the trails there.
To get to Mt. St. Helens Johnston Ridge from Portland, you need to take I5 North and then go onto highway 504. Once you are on highway 504, you will get to Mt. St. Helens visitor center at Spirit Lake first. At the visitor center, you can read about the history about Mt. St. Helens and understand its eruption history. It would also be wise to grab a map from the visitor center. There is also a short 1 mile hiking trail around Spirit Lake. It is a very easy hike. When we drove to Mt. St. Helens, a deer actually ran across the road right in front of our car! We almost hit the deer! So make sure you pay extra attention when you drive on highway 504 since there is a lot of wild life in the area.
From Mt. St. Helends visitor center, Johnston Ridge Observatory is another 45 minutes away. On the way to Johnston Ridge, there is a lot of look out points and museums such as Forest Learning Center and Science Learning Center. If you have a binocular, make sure you bring it with you! You might be able to spot elks resting in the region. There is also a helicopter tour ride that you can take, but personally I don't think it is worth the time and money. I think it is much better to use the time to hike around the region and enjoy the nature.
Coldwater Lake is also a popular location for people to spend their afternoon. You can bring your canoe or kayak to the lake and enjoy peddling your kayak. There are also hiking trails around the region for people to hike around. The scene is just amazing! Like I mentioned before, you will be able to spot elks if you are lucky!
Once you get to Johnston Ridge Observatory, you need to purchase permit if you want to hike the trail on the ridge. If you have Northwest Forest Pass, that counts toward a free permit for a person. You can either pay cash or pay with credit card for the permit. It is just that the credit card processes very slowly due to slow internet connection. There is also amphitheater at Johnston Ridge Observatory. It usually has shows every hour and you can choose to watch it.
The hiking trail on the ridge is about 2.5 miles long. There is a lot of wild flowers along the trail. There isn't much elevation on this trail so it is quite easy to walk. You will find a lot of good spot on the trail to take amazing photo of Mt. St. Helens. The end of the trail is a look out point long the cliff side. Before you get to the look out point, you have to walk long the cliff for about 300ft. This section of the trail is very windy and the trail path is very narrow. So please be more cautious when you are walking on this trail to avoid falling down the cliff. Once you get to the look out point, you can enjoy the beautiful view of Mt. St. Helens.
Lastly, make sure you put on sun screen since there isn't any tree around!
Note: dogs are not allowed on the ridge trails unfortunately.
Bora Bora is one of the most romantic travel destination in the world! It is part of Polynesian Islands in the Southern Pacific and belongs to the country of Tahiti. It is known to have the clearest water in the world and have a calm lagoon, which allows many of the resort to build the world famous over water bungalows.
The only flight to Bora Bora is from Papeete, Tahiti. To get to Papeete, Tahiti, the only flight from North America is from L.A at around 11:30pm. Air Tahiti Nui leaves at 11:30pm and arrives at Papeete, Tahiti around 5am. Then you take Air Tahiti at around 7:30am to get to Bora Bora at 8am. This means that you will have to spend 2 hours at Tahiti Airport. The Tahiti Airport is quite small and most shops are not open this early in the morning. You can use this time wisely to read some tourist guide about Bora Bora. If you have already done your homework and know what you want to do, make sure you bring some games to entertain yourself during these 2 hours. Remember that when you board the plane to Bora Bora, make sure you sit on the left side of the plane. This will allow you to have a aerial view of Bora Bora when the plane flies over the island! Most people don't know about this and missed the amazing view of Bora Bora from the sky!
Once you get to Bora Bora airport, the hotel resort that you are staying at will be giving a warm welcome and picking you up at the airport. Essentially they will be checking you in at the airport and carry your luggage for you. They will load your luggage onto the boat and take you to the resort. We chose to stay at Four Seasons Bora Bora, and it did not disappoint. The boat is new and more fancy than most of the other resort. When we arrived at Four Seasons Bora Bora Resort, there were already hotel employees waiting at the dock greeting us. There was 1 hotel employees serving each family. The hotel employee also served us mango slush! It is so good! Remember that when you arrive at the resort, it is still early in the morning and the hotel may not be able to check you in yet if the resort is fully booked and people have not checked out yet. If you want to freshen up and take a shower, you can use the shower at the spa. It is a very nice shower room. Then you can head to the beach and also go to the restaurant for brunch. I recommend that you go visit Vaitape on the first day when you get to Bora Bora and have a walk there.
Vaitape is the largest city on the main island of Bora Bora. All the resorts should provide free shuttle service to Vaitape. There are usually 3 shuttle services each day. When you get to Vaitape, make sure you go to The Farm Bora Pearl Company for a real pearl diving experience! The Farm Bora Pearl Company has few pearl farms located 3m under the sea and allows guests to dive under to fetch the oyster themselves. This activity costs around $300 but it is definitely worth the experience! Once you fetch the oyster, you can pick one to be opened up and you will get the pearl that is inside the oyster that you chose. Tahiti is known for breeding large black pearls. If you are lucky, you will be able to find a big one! If you happen to find a small one or one that doesn't look good and you dont like it, you can choose to trade with the store for a pearl that has an equivalent value to $300. Note that if you plan to go to The Farm Bora Pearl Company, make sure you call them first and tell them that you are coming. They will send someone to pick you up from the dock and take you back to the dock afterwards.
Once you got back to the dock, you should still have more than enough time to take a walk around Vaitape. You can visit all the different pearl store and look at those gigantic black pearl! These pearls are extremely expensive but people still buy them! On the side of the street, you will also find a very old Coca Cola vending machine and a very nicely painted church. There is also a super market there where you can buy some snack and drinks if you like. In addition, most of the stores at Bora Bora accepts credit card, so you don't have to worry about having not enough cash. Just keep in mind that most stores only accepts Visa and Master card. Most of them don't accept American Express. Moreover, most restaurants don't expect you to pay them tips. But if you insist, you can pay tips as well.
The resort also offers many different cool excursion experience. The one we did is a package for jet ski and shark/sting ray snorkeling experience. In the morning, the boat took us to a location that has tons of sharks and string rays. You might be worried about the sharks, but these are reef sharks. They are not aggressive and don't even go near you. Just make sure you don't go too close to them and never try to touch a shark! The sting rays do go near you however, and you can choose to feed them too! Sometimes the sting ray would lay on your foot and even lay on your back! Don't panic if the sting rays does do lay on you since they are not aggressive. Just swim away slowly and they will just swim away as well. Please do remember not to grab sting ray's tail!
After visiting sharks and sting rays, the guide took us to the coral garden for a bit of snorkeling to look at all the beautiful fish out there. The coral garden was beautiful. The best thing is that there aren't many people there. So we get to snorkel around the coral garden ourselves. There were a lot of beautiful fish swimming and hiding around the coral. If this is your first snorkeling experience, I suggest you to practice breathing through the tube first. Also, be careful not to get scratched by the coral since they are actually quite hard and can cut you.
At noon, the boat took us to the main island and have lunch at Bloody Mary. It is a pretty cool restaurant if you ask me and it has a lot of characters to it. The ground of the restaurant is filled with white sand, so don't wear your sneakers with you! The bathroom at Bloody Mary is also kind of unique. It has some adult contents there, but it is still interesting! Bloody Mary serves mostly fish burgers and fries with pineapples. The burger actually tasted different than what we used to in North America.
In the afternoon, we went for a ride on jet ski. You get to ride the jet ski and go completely around the lagoon! 2 people share a jet ski, but you do have a chance to switch the pilot in the middle of the tour. If this is your first time doing jet ski, I recommend you to put more strength on maneuvering the jet ski. It actually gets harder to turn as the jet ski goes faster. Also, if the weather is windy, it will create small waves on the lagoon. This might make the jet ski ride more bumpy. During the tour, the guide also took us to a private island of his, and showed us how to open a coconut when you don't have any tool. He also explained to us the difference between coconut milk and coconut juice. I didn't even know what coconut milk is!
Other than drinking cocktails and laying on the beach to enjoy the sun, the spa is amazing at Four Seasons Bora Bora. It is the best experience we have ever had. When we got to the spa, the hotel employee first asked us to select the type of ingredient that we want to use. There is like over 20 different ingredient! Once we have selected the ingredient, hotel employee led us into a small room that is built on top of the lagoon. It has glass floor beneath that bed that you lay on, and there are coral reef right under it! The massage service is about an hour to relax your muscle. You can choose the intensity of the massage as well. After the massage is done, they told us we can have this room for an hour for ourselves. They also brought in fresh fruit and served us cocktail drinks. There is a Jacuzzi on the balcony of the room that we can use to enjoy the view and feel the breeze of the wind. It made me feel like I was living in paradise! Sadly, good time always passes by rather fast. An hour later, we had to exit the room and head out. If you would like to do the spa, make sure you call them and make reservation before hand because it gets full very quickly!
The overall experience at Bora Bora is just amazing. We feel like it is what paradise is like. During the day you have the view of azure blue lagoon and perfectly green mountain. At night, you have the view of milky way in the the starry sky. Unfortunately the good time always pass by very fast. The recommendation I have is that if you are concerned about spending too much, Bora Bora may not be a place for you to go to. It is definitely considered as a luxury vacation destination. Also, when you go to Bora Bora, June to September is that best time to go when the probability of precipitation is the lowest. In addition, although almost all the shops take credit card at Bora Bora(Visa/Master), make sure you still carry around $500-$1000 USD of cash with you just in case.
Summer is a great time to do a road trip, especially in the great North West. For a 4 day July long weekend, we did a road trip to Victoria and Vancouver. It is an amazing road trip to drive through the mountains and getting your car onto the ferry is a quite an interesting first time experience.
The route of this road trip is making a loop on the Pacific Northwest and stop by Victoria, then to Vancouver, and back to Portland. This route will pass through Port Angeles, which is where you will take the ferry, and also passes through Seattle. You can also make the choice of staying few nights at Port Angeles and Seattle if you choose to. Due to time constraint, we just drive through Port Angeles and Seattle. Besides, Seattle and Port Angeles are only 3 hours away from Portland, we can always do a weekend getaway there.
When planning for this, make sure you make reservations for the ferry online. Most of the time, they will charge $15 for making reservation, but it is worth it. If you don't make reservation, you may not be able to get onto the ferry if there are too many people. To get to Victoria, first you need to drive for 4 hours to go to Port Angeles in Washington state to take the Black Ball Ferry to Victoria. While you are on the road to Port Angeles, one of the worth mentioning attraction that you will see on the way is Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe. There is a museum and a gift shop there giving you history about this native American tribe. It is also a good pit stop to take a break and rest.
After you pass by Jamestown S'Klallam Tribe, you are just about an hour away from Port Angeles. Make sure you plan to arrive at Port Angeles 1.5 hour before the departure time to line up for the ferry. We got there around 70 minutes early and there are already so many cars lining up at the gate. Especially if you didn't make reservation for your ticket, you may or may not be able to get on to the ferry. There are only 2 to 3 ferry rides each day, so you definitely don't want to miss the ferry! If you have extra time after arriving at the Port Angeles ferry terminal, you can take a walk around Port Angeles water front and pay a visit to farmer's market. The Black Ball Ferry terminal does offer free WIFI for its guests; however, once you are on the ferry and the ferry is in the sea, you will start to lose WIFI connection. The ferry ride is about 1.5 hour long and it will arrive at the inner Victoria Harbor. You can read more about the experience at Victoria here.
Getting to Vancouver require you to go to a different ferry terminal at the opposite end of Vancouver Island. You will need to drive to the end of Highway 17 to Swartz Bay and take BC Ferries. The BC Ferries offer ferry ride almost every hour. So even if you missed your ferry ride, you don't have to panic! The next ferry ride is coming right up! This ferry terminal is much larger than the previous one you took and the ferry is much bigger. There are even buses and RVs going onto the ferry! The ferry terminal also have gift shops and restaurants to provide you snacks. Similar to the ferry you took earlier, make sure you make reservation online and arrive early if you don't want to miss the ferry. This ferry ride takes about 2 hours. The best thing is that there is a buffer restaurant on the ferry! Can you believe that? You can enjoy your food while enjoying your view of the sea! The downside is that you must leave your lovely and adorable pet in the car. You cannot bring them to the seating area. About 2 hours later, the ferry will arrive at Tsawwassen terminal and takes about 30 minutes to drive to Vancouver. You can read more about the experience at Vancouver here.
Driving back to Portland is much easier and you can leave whenever you like. The closest border entry is at Peace Arch. At times, there will be a lot of people who want to cross the border and head back to US. So be prepared to spend an hour at the border waiting to get to US. Once you have passed Peach Arch border, it will take approximately 3 more hours to get back to Portland.
Note: Since you are going to Canada, remember that the speed limit sign you see is in KM! Not Miles! Also, make sure you bring your passport with you!
Victoria is the capital city of British Columbia in Canada. It is located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island. The city can be accessed via boat ferry or flight. Unlike Vancouver, it is not a metropolitan city. It is a beautiful city with a lot of Victorian cultural influence and also has a parliament hill located.
This time we took the ferry from Port Angeles at Washington state to Victoria and arrived at inner Victoria harbor. We stayed at Days Inn and the rate is around $120 per night and parking is complimentary. However, I am extremely disappointed with Days Inn. It is probably my worst experience with staying at a hotel. The AC does not work in the room. Although AC is most likely not needed at Victoria, it could still get hot during the day. The edge of the window of the room is very dirty as well. Also, there is only 1 elevator for all the hotel guests. Although it is a small hotel, I think there should be at least 2 elevators to share with hotel employees. In addition, the staircase is very dirty. The carpet on the stair looks like it has not been cleaned for years! I would not recommend this hotel if you go to Victoria. There are other hotels to stay at in the region.
When we are at Victoria, we only spent 1 night here. On the first day, we walked around the inner harbor of Victoria and there is a lot of interesting street performers. You can also pay a visit to the parliament building. There is usually a guided tour at every hour. If you want to have a perfect view of Victoria Inner harbor, you walk to Laurel Point. It is only about 10 minutes walk distance from Victoria Inner harbor. Laurel Point is on the South side of the harbor. If you want to have the view from North side, you can go to Marriott Hotel on the North side.
For dinner, you can pick a restaurant around the Downtown area. There is a lot of choice and many of them offer Patio seating. Some restaurants even have life performers playing music. However, I recommend you to go a bit further and dine at Sen Sushi. Sen Sushi is a very authentic Japanese restaurant. The sushi at Sen Sushi is extremely fresh and juicy. The color of the salmon makes me think that it was just freshly got! If you go to Sen Sushi, don't forget to try their Udon as well! The soup base is so clear and yet so tasty!
On the next day, you can visit Buchart Garden. Buchart Garden is a world class well known garden. It is one of the largest garden in the world! You must pay a visit to Buchart Garden when you go to Victoria. When you walk into the garden gate, you can feel that something magical is going to happen. It feels like you are about to enter one of those castles that you read about in fairy tales.
The landscape of the garden is amazing. it has variety of gardens from different cultures such as French, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese. The largest section at Buchart Garden is Sunken Garden. It is also the one that you see on their advertisement. It is definitely by far the best garden in my opinion. There is also a little look out in the middle of the garden that offers you a panoramic view of the garden!
If you go to Buchart garden, I recommend you to go there early to avoid the crowd. You don't want to take pictures while there are many people walking around you! The whole experience at Buchart Garden takes around 2-3 hours. I would recommend you to take your time and walk slowly and take lot of photos! Also, please don't step on the grass and stay on the path. Although there are many signs telling visitors not to step on grass, there are still people walking on the grass and ruin the garden landscape.
