We had a lunch time flight to Vancouver from Gatwick Airport to begin our 2 week road trip around British Columbia and Alberta. Our itinerary was Vancouver 4 nights, Whistler 2 nights, Kamloops 1 night, Golden 1 night, Banff 5 nights, Jasper 2 nights and Kamloops 1 night before flying home from Vancouver.

We landed in Vancouver mid afternoon and were told we had a two hour wait or our hire car – which was not ideal as we were all quite tired. Luckily it arrived within 15 minutes so we drove to our Airbnb and then found a supermarket to stock up with supplies and chilled for the rest of the evening.

Stanley Park

We were awake quite early the following morning so had breakfast and headed straight to Stanley Park – an urban park on the coast in Vancouver. It was a beautiful day and we parked by the sea and watched a sea plane land and then take off again in the harbour.

^{Views from the car park!}

We then wandered over to the totem pole viewing area – where there were 9 totem poles from British Columbia. There was also a small gift shop so I bought my first Vancouver fridge magnet!

^{The totem poles}

We then walked along the sea walls where we were able to make our way down to a rocky beach which was full of starfish sitting on the rocks. It was the first time we had ever seen wild starfish on a beach!

^{Star fish on the beach}

We made our way back to the car walking through Brockton Point Lighthouse on route.

We could have hired bikes to travel around the park but we were all a little jet lagged so we decided to just use the car instead. We drove to our next location – Beaver Lake. We parked on the road and it was a short hike through the woods to reach the lake. It was very quiet and there was no one else at the lake whilst we were there.

We then drove to the northern most point of the park – Prospect Point Lookout where we had views of the Lions Gate Bridge. We watched as a massive shipping container sailed under the bridge and tracked where it was from on marine traffic – it had sailed from California. Stu & I also walked to the viewing point of the bridge as we wanted to see who could take the best photo!

^{Views from Prospect Point Look out.}

Lighthouse Park

We went on to google maps and could see that on the other side of the water was a lighthouse park with walking trails so we decided to drive to it and have a look. There was a hiking trail which took us towards the lighthouse although not to it – but we were able to climb down on to the rocks on the beach for a good view. It was a really nice way to spend an hour.

^{Lighthouse Park – The Lighthouse was built in 1912}

Even though it was only early afternoon we headed home as we were all very tired from our travelling the previous day.