December 29th, 2016 - 8pm
We are now back in Vancouver and starting to recover from the world's worst flu! It ended up wiping 5 out of 7 of us out, with Leigh and Lani being the lucky ones to skip it! Leigh headed back to Aus on Tuesday while the rest of us returned to Vancouver. Mum and Waz are here for another two days before flying back New years day.
We managed to have some fun on Christmas day in the snow in Golden, and even got to see the tracks where Santa's sleigh landed!! Ella was very excited as she heard Santa arrive.
We left Golden on boxing day and headed to Calgary, stopping at Lake Louise on the way to check out the newly erected Ice castle! Then stayed overnight and caught our flights to Van the next day.
So that's about it for now. The next week and abit will be spent in Vancouver and then the second week in January we head down to Portland, USA for a week so I will pick up the travel journal there!
December 23rd, 2016 - 1.30pm
Well, our adventures for Golden haven't quite worked out as planned due to half of us coming down with the worst flu I have ever had. So far it has taken out myself, mum, Jamie and now little Ella :o(
We are all hoping that the rest stay healthy and that everyone is feeling better by Christmas. So no updates Im afraid.
December 21st, 2016 - 3.30pm
We have arrived in Golden where we will be staying for a week. I think I will just update the last week with some photos, so here they are.
Frozen falls near Lake Louise
Our little christmas tree that Waz cut down and we all decorated with homemade decorations
December 17th, 2016 - 5.00pm
Whoopsie, I have been abit slack in updating this travel blog, having too much fun.
We have now left Jasper and are in Lake Louise and this is the view out our window - AMAZING!!
We had a great four days in Jasper exploring the little town, doing a wildlife tour and the Maligne canyon Icewalk tour. Amazing sights all around. I will post a few pics later when I am more organised, this is just a quick update. Once we get to Golden for the week I will have more time to sort through all the photos and update properly.
December 13th, 2016 - 8.00pm
We have arrived in Jasper, my favourite little town in Canada!
The last two days have mainly been spent travelling - leaving Whitehorse, Yukon and arriving in Calgary for an overnight stay and then catching the bus today from Calgary all the way to Jasper along the amazing Icefield Parkway. This is one of the most scenic drives in the world, winter or summer. We didn't get a chance to stop and take many pics as it was just a transfer bus, but here are a few we managed to capture.
Mum, Waz, Jamie, Lani and Ella are hopping on the overnight train to Jasper tonight and will be joining us here tomrrow afternoon.
December 11th, 2016 - 8.00pm
Oh what a night! We got our Auroras!!
It was almost 2am and I had almost given up hope of seeing them when Leigh looked out the window and said "I think I see them, it's like a feint rainbow in the sky". So we got dressed in our hundreds of layers and rushed outside to the amazing lightshow that Whitehorse put on for us. So for all those Northern lights newbies like myself, the human eye doesn't actually see the colours of the auroras as brightly as is captured on camera. It is however still an amazing display of dancing lights across the night sky and one of the most AWESOME things I have ever witnessed!
Here are a few of my fave photos, taken with just my iphone and the Northern lights app. Not the best equipment but Im pretty happy with them.
After our late night we had a pretty quiet morning packing up and checking out of the Northern Lights Resort (I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to check out the Yukon and go Aurora hunting). This afternoon we went snowshoeing with a guide who walked us across a frozen lake, up a mountain and back down again - Totally buggered! And frozen (see a few pics below). So tonight we are having a quiet night and will hopefully catch up on some sleep before leaving Whitehorse tomorrow and heading to Jasper (via a brief stopover in Calgary) where we will meet up with the rest of the fam on Wednesday.
December 10th, 2016 - 2.00pm
No Auroras last night!
The sky was too cloudy to see much of anything, but it is looking clearer today so fingers and toes crossed that tonight is the night, as it's our last night here at the resort.
Last night Leigh and I decided to brave the cold and go out in the hot tub! It was about 5pm, -20 degrees and surrounded by snow. Lucky the hot tub was toasty warm. Here are some before, during and after photos!!
It's fun to feel your hair freeze! I was brave enough to get out of the hot tub, roll in the snow and then make a mad dash to get back in and warm up. Apparently its something you just HAVE to do here. No photos of that though :oP
Today we went for a walk along the Wolfcreek trail to the Yukon river. It took about 2 hours and was AMAZING!! Very Beautiful. It was about -25 degrees while we walked but we had about 6 layers on top and 3 on bottom so we stayed pretty toasty warm except for the gap around the cheeks, eyes and nose which were quite literally frozen!
Such amazing scenery, so different from Australia and hard to capture with a simple iphone camera but here are some of our faves.
Then back to the resort for massages, finnish saunas and an afternoon nap before a long night of aurora hunting ahead. Its a pretty clear day today, we got to see sundogs!!
December 9th, 2016 - 2.00pm
We made it to the Yukon!
Leigh and I arrived in Whitehorse last night to a temperature of -20 degrees. Brrrrrr. We were transferred to our little cabin amongst the snow and spent our first night aurora hunting, without any luck. It was too cloudy to see anything and today doesn't look any better so may not have any luck tonight either.
This first picture was taken at 8.30am on our way to breakfast. Daylight made an appearance at around 9.30am. Our cabin in the snow is very cute and warm and I could stay here forever.
The teepees are set up by a tour company that rents the property for Northern lights tours. They bring people out here where there is very little light polution and they sit in the teepees with a fire going and look for Auroras.
Apparently Vancouver got a nice dumping of snow last night so the rest of the fam back there will be having fun!!
December 6th, 2016 - 10.00pm
Greetings from Vancouver, Canada!
Its day two of the vacay so I thought I better post the first update to our holiday blog.
Yesterday was mainly spent recovering from the 14 hour flight over (soooooo long), catching up with Lani and Ella and enjoying the snow show that Vancouver put on just for our arrival! Everything looks so much better covered in a light dusting of snow!
Today we had abit of an early Christmas since we didn't want to lug all our presents around while travelling. Then tonight we headed off to the Vancouver Christmas markets for some "Potato thingies", mulled wine and strawberry and nutella crepes!! We even rode on the carousel. So yep, feeling pretty good right now!
