(My solo road trip of western Canada – Monday 28th September)
Before visiting Whistler, I had seen photos of the place, it looked absolutely amazing in all weather conditions throughout the year, I was very excited about visiting. Whistler is a Canadian resort town in the southern Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It is only about 125 km north of Vancouver, the next place on my road trip. I was surprised to discover that it has a stable population of around 10,000, not sure how true this is but can’t see it being much more to be honest.
Over two million people visit Whistler annually, primarily for alpine skiing and snowboarding and, in summer, mountain biking at Whistler Blackcomb. Its pedestrian village has won numerous design awards and Whistler has been voted among the top destinations in North America by major ski magazines since the mid-1990s. During the 2010 Winter Olympics, Whistler hosted most of the alpine, Nordic, luge, skeleton, and bobsled events.
Downtown Whistler I found very beautiful, the scenery was spectacular, I really liked the architecture, the changing trees were fantastic to see at this time of the year and it was incredibly clean, and on top of that, my good fortune…truly incredible weather continued which made the whole experience even more memorable. Oh, and some of the houses were so stupendous, instead of taking photos, I just brought home a Real Estate magazine, prices ranged from $1 million to over $20 million!!!
I found out that Whistler does not have a garbage collection service as they have such a high concentration of bears, so the residents have to take their own garbage to a central location!
The drive down to Vancouver was fantastic, incredibly scenic and at time, literally took my breath away! I drove on Highway 99, the drive was so fantastic and was complemented with its really cool name: The Sea to Sky Highway! There was so much more beauty along the drive but there were not many opportunities to capture them because of the windy mountain roads. (The second photo is of my hostel accommodation which was by far the best hostel accommodation I have ever stayed in).
