Day 7 and 8: Drive Across B.C.

The drive across B.C. was uneventful. In the good way and in the boring way. We stayed in a town called Smithers to break up the trip. That entire day there was hardly even a house, let alone many businesses. There were only a few small towns but other than that, desolation. And there wasn't even much to take a picture of. Except a bear!!! Those are in my big camera. That one didn't seem to mind us looking at him, just went about his business. We followed his along the highway for 5-10 minutes. It helped that we were the only ones staring at him.

Not many pictures today. So I guess I'll talk about our experience in Canada. It really depended on who you talked to (mainly workers) whether they were nice and hospitable or not. Like I said, the girl at the very first visitor center was super nice and helpful. But the lady at the border was not nice. She must have been having a tough day. 

Most workers spoke English and most had an accent of some kind. Whether it was the stereotypical Canadian accent (Eh?) or Australian (the guy at the Banff campground had an Aussie accent), some were British because I think they were actually from Britain and moved to Canada (why??). And then there were others accents. Maybe regional. Like St. Louis vs. Boston vs. the Deep South kind of thing.

And then there were tons of international visitors. We see international visitors a lot in the nation parks we've been to over the last number of years and I thought America was alone in this. Nope. Canada's got 'em, too. Lots from Asian countries when we were in the national parks like Banff and Jasper, and lots of Germans and north of there, Dutch and the like, all over. A bunch on the ferry down the coast. And then LOTS of people that spoke French. Many more than I expected. And they seemed to not speak English. And I don't think they were French. I think they were from Quebec or Ontario. Which made us question if people in that area learn English and French or just French? What about the rest of Canada? That would frustrate me if I went to another state in America and they learned another language exclusively. But I guess it sort of already happens here.

Also, a TON of people in Canada rent campers. Having traveled a lot on this side of the country I've now seen a lot of rental campers that I never saw in Missouri (as a friend once questioned me when I mentioned this: why would you? Why would foreigners rent a camper to travel to Missouri? Sort of has a point...). But you see rentals quite a bit here. NOT like you do in Canada!!! Holy cow! I would say a good 2/3 of the campers we saw in Canada were rentals. It was crazy, we saw them everywhere we looked.

See? Rental. AND these Getmans ended up staying in our campground 2 nights before the ferry AND sat right next to us on the ferry. Kind of weird. They carried around these 3 stuffed bears. And they were big! Who does that?! And they took pictures with them! Maybe it's a Gwrman thing, but I don't remember learning about that in class... They also ended up on the excursion we took on Father's Day the day before the ferry. 

Here's a few pictures from day 9 when we got to Prince Rupert to prepare for the ferry. When we got to town we rode our bikes from the campsite to downtown to explore. And we saw these!! I thought I hit the jackpot!

There were 4 of them. I only got a couple because the other two were hiding, we just heard them. But as you'll see, this is NOT the jackpot. That was yet to be had.