Day 1 - Calgary to Nanaimo

The day started at 5 a.m. Daorcey was extremely excited to leave while I could barely get out of bed.

Since I'm not a big fan of early days, I rarely get to see the foothills and mountains at sunrise. The light creates an orange hue which the camera is unable to capture properly.


After three hours we were close to Golden and grabbed these pics of giant cement pillars. They are planning a new road with two lanes in each direction but like 10 storeys in the air. It will make driving that stretch of road less stressful. There's something perverse about going around sharp corners with a two-trailer truck coming towards you.


We stopped in Golden for McDonald's which we shouldn't have but I wanted eggs, bacon and grease.

Maybe 3 hours after Golden we briefly stopped at Rogers' Pass. Daorcey had never been since his family always took the Yellowhead. There was a museum but we didn't visit it as we had to purchase a park pass and we're cheap. But we ended up playing with the ground squirrels who have no fear of humans. They are fat and cute mainly due to steady stream of tourists eager to feed these animals.


More driving to Sicamouse, our only non-Superstore fill-up. We love Superstore and its gas stations so we made it a goal to only gas up Superstore and collect Superbucks. But between Calgary and Kamploops there's nothing so we settled for the sick moose. We put in $10 continued on.

We arrived in Kamloops and did a proper gas up. I started driving and I figured I drive to the beginning of the Coquaholla and then let Daorcey drive. I don't drive much anymore since I take the train to work and live near stores, libraries, gyms, etc like God intended. This is a total switch from when I lived when my parents.

Driving isn't bad and we get to the toll booth and I thought, this was probably due to the heat, "Wow, driving the Coquaholla was totally easy." and I continue driving, thinking we'll pull over and switch.

It wasn't until the car was grinding up its third hill that I realized we're on the Coquahalla and I was going to drive it. If any of you have ever driven on that road, you know that it's on the side of mountains and me and mountain views don't get along very well.

We pull into the Abbotsford Superstore and I'm very grateful to hand the wheel to Daorcey. It's about 4 p.m. and our ferry doesn't leave until 7:30 p.m. but we decide to head to Horseshoe Bay just to be safe. As we are approaching the ferries, a sign helpfully points to a "Village" and we decide we could kill time there. However Daorcey misses the turn for some reason and we're heading to the ferries. But a nice ferry employee points us to the exit. Except his directions put us on this winding road along the harbor. We see the marina and some very nice houses but not places to eat.

We make a stop at some sort of park and hike up to a lighthouse where photos ensued. We drive back to the ferry and use our reservation to get a get spot in line (first in, first out).


Neither of us have done a ferry ride for a few years, and this is our first ferry trip on our own without parents. So, we're excited and take some photos and are quickly reminded that it gets windy and cold when the boat leaves the harbour. So we ducked inside and played a dice game that Daorcey's not very good at.


We also came across an pictorial explanation for what we have to do should the boat sink. Apparently, we all jump into a big cube and float to safety. Not sure why, but we found this is hilarious.


The ferry seemed to go quicker than we remembered when we were younger and we pulled into Nanaimo at around 10pm. The sunset was amazing! We weren't far from Uncle Fred and Aunt Barbara's place (thanks again!) where we quickly realized how tired we were.


For a 12-hour drive straight through, it was a fairly eventful day. More eventful news of our trip to follow...