Friday 14th April – Capilano Suspension Bridge and beyond

The Baileys get up close and personal with a totem pole

I had been feeling unwell in the night – I’m sure it was nothing to do with the beer.  So, I wasn’t very keen to get going but we had to check out at 11am. It was only 5 minutes’ drive to Capilano suspension bridge – there was no room in the car park but this went to our advantage as we had to park in the street instead - for free!  This tourist attraction is somewhere else that I visited nearly twenty years ago - but they have added lots of other things to do here.  That’s why it now costs CAD40 to get in!  Instead of the twenty minutes that we intended to stay, we were now going to extend our visit to get our money’s worth.  We crossed the bridge first, along with the masses of others that were visiting for the long Easter weekend.  

 

The view from the suspension bridge

The bridge is 70 meters above the river – brace yourself for some facts – that means it would take four full-sized Tyrannosaurus Rex, standing on each other’s shoulders in a stack to reach the bridge. 

We then explored the skywalk, which was basically a walkway up in the tree canopy, very much in the style of the Ewok village (below). There was also an area dedicated to birds of prey (my favourite). Then a cliff walk took us out over the river valley in a totally different way.  There is lots to do there, for all ages, all in the interest of nature and conservation, but maybe not for those with a severe fear of heights.

As we’d taken longer at Capilano than we’d intended it was definitely time to eat again!  We found a Denny’s nearby, which is somewhere we had missed out on so far on our travels.  After a tasty lunch we had an hour and a half drive north to reach Whistler, which was extended after stops for gas, Walmart and a lovely waterfall – Shannon falls, a Vancouver cab-driver great recommendation:

We drove to the RV park nearest to Whistler but it was full for Easter weekend (which we’d forgotten about so we’d failed to book).  Instead, we had to back-track 10 miles to Whistler RV park, a bit of a misnomer due to the distance from the town itself! We got hooked up but it was gone 7pm by now.  We made a quick bite for dinner and had a movie night, watching a Tom Cruise film - Live, die, repeat – which was good but owes a lot of it’s ideas to films of old like Groundhog day and Starship Troopers to name only two. 

The snowy mountain view from our campsite