Whistler so far.....

We arrived in Whistler on the 1st December and it will be our home until the end April. During our RV trip, we had been keeping an eye on the weather and we were delighted to see that November was the snowiest month on record, where over 5 meters of the white stuff fell. This meant that the season was going to be one of the best yet for snow!!!! We are now only 1/2 way through the season and we have already had over 10 metres, which is more that the average.

The house we are staying in we are sharing with 5 - 6 people and it comes with all the mod cons with the best thing about it being that it's only 5 mins walk from the slopes. Perfect.

Whistler is very different from the resorts you find in Europe. There are 2 huge mountains here, Whistler and Blackcomb, with a purpose built village at the base. The difference is that the village has a much more familiar feel about it. I know that sounds so English, but if you are here for 5 months, it's nice to be able to grab a Starbucks, a McDonalds or a Domino's Pizza when you feel the urge.

There is a huge bar scene here too, which again is different from Tignes. In France the bars are small and you are able to strike a rapport with the owners and bar staff, but the bars here are the same size as you'd expect to get in Manchester or London. It does mean, however, that there are some great parties and some electric atmospheres!

But we have come mainly for the snowboarding, which has been excellent so far. One thing that is huge here is the HeliSkiing and Cat Skiing. This is where you get taken to a different mountain where there is no resort or ski lift and the company you use either takes you up the mountain in a helicopter or a Snow Cat. This means you get fresh, untracked powder all day long, and because there were only 12 of us on the mountain on the day we did it, we managed to get 9 beautiful runs in! There was a dump of snow the previous night which meant we were riding on 30cms of fresh powder. Overall, one of the best day's boarding I have ever had.

There are 1000's of Australians here in Whistler, which meant Ozzie day here is one of the highlights of the drinking calender. The place to be on this day is Longhorns Saloon, located at the base of Whistler mountain. Ozzies are queuing up from 8am, and are mostly drunk. Andy, Pezza, Paulie and Karen had scheduled their trip to see Cazzie and I so that it coincided with Ozzie day. All dressed up, we arrived at Longhorns at 1.30pm and walked into the expected carnage. Everyone was in full Ozzie gear, totally smashed and dancing to the plagiaristic Men at Work, John Farnham and Midnight Oil. All the pics from when the guys where here are here.


Another great tradition here is Superbowl Sunday, which means sitting in Tapleys Sports Bar and getting very, very drunk. During this sporting spectacular, I invented "shot pot", which involved putting $20 each into a pint glass and every time there is a touchdown, the waitress brings over shots for us all of her choice and takes the cash out of the pot. Genius. The pics are all here.

The Winter Olympic circus has rolled into town now which last for 2 weeks. Whistler is a host city for the Vancouver 2010 games, with events such as the downhill (the main event), bobsleigh, ski jumping and alpine skiing taking place here. The village has been transformed by the media with huge TV screens, broadcasting booths and music stages. There are performances every afternoon and evening with acts such as Usher, Estelle and The All American Rejects playing. It's going to be a great place to be for the next 2 weeks and there is a terrific buzz about the place.

Overall, this is a great ski resort. The snow was better in Tignes last season, but Whistler has the whole package if you include the restaurants, bars, shops and nightlife.

As I write this, there is a fresh storm cycle starting, which means we should be waking upto 25cms of fresh powder!!

Stuoobs

xxx

Our journey begins

I won’t bore you with with our plane ride to Vancouver only to mention that it was the smoothest flight I have even taken. 1 minute of turbulence in the entire 9 hours. Brilliant.

We arrived in Vancouver airport at 6.30 local time tired and a little hungover. The Gin fairy had been good to us on the flight. There wasn’t much we wanted to do on the first evening, so we checked into our hotel, showered, went to the bar for a drink and a late night snack before retiring to bed where I enjoyed half of “Secret Of My Success”.

The RV rental people picked us up the next day at 11.30 to take us to their rental depot. This was huge and had over 400 RV’s parked there, most of which looked massive. This was the part that we were both a tad worried about – the size of the vehicle we were going to be driving for the next 2 months. Upon arrival we were shown into reception where we we told that we had been upgraded to a better RV. Normally I love hearing the word upgrade but this time my only question was “is it going to be any bigger?”, to which we were told it was 4 foot longer, but with more stuff. Yes, that’s right, we were going to have to drive around in a 30 foot long, 12 foot high and 8.5 foot wide monster truck!

Anyway, once we had gotten over our fear of driving this thing, one of that chaps showed us how everything worked from turning the lounge lights on to emptying the toilet tank. All pretty straight forward stuff. After about an hour we were off on route to Whistler. We stopped on the way to collect 2 bikes and stock up on food at Wal-Mart (which by the way is surprisingly crap compared to Tesco).

The drive to Whistler took a couple of hours and we were getting very excited to spend the first ever night in our RV at our first ever RV park! After a night’s rest in a very comfy bed, we were up at about 6.30 (still jetlagged), and headed towards Whistler village for a wander. It was great to see it in summer time with stunning greenery and snowy topped mountains.

The main purpose of the visit here was to drop off our snowboards and luggage and get our discounted season passes. We will be back here in 2 months, and I will no doubt have a lot more to tell you!!

We left to head towards Vancouver Island and this is where I am writing this blog from now. I see this as the proper start to the trip as it’s all new and unplanned!

Stuoobs

xxx

Mountains, Bears, Deserts and Vineyards.

As most of you will know, Cazzie and I have been planning a 7 month trip to Canada and America and it’s my pleasure to tell you all that it’s now sorted.

We leave for Vancouver on Monday 5th October, flying with BA from Heathrow. As we will no doubt be arriving in Canada very drunk, we have decided that it’s probably best to pick the RV up the next day.

Here’s our RV and internal view. It comes equipped with hot shower, flushing toilet, full kitchen and double bed!

We then have a rough plan to follow the blue flags on this map.

I couldn’t get names on this map, but you get the idea!!

We start in Vancouver and the highlights are Banff,Jasper, Calgary, Yellowstone, Las Vegas, Death Valley, Phoenix and right back up through California taking in San Diego, Los Angeles, Yosemite and San Fran (not forgetting the Napa Valley for some wine tasting) before driving back to Canada through Portland and Seattle. If we were just to visit all these blue dots we would cover over 6,500 miles, but we have our Lonely Planet guide to take us off the beaten track if we so desire!! We do have to be careful of bears who have such a keen sense of smell that we need to lock our food up in bear-proof containers in the RV parks!!

We have the RV for 56 nights so we should be able to cover all these places. I have taken Andy’s lead and splashed out on an SLR camera to capture all the stunning views I am reading about.

After the 56 nights are up, we arrive in Whistler on the 1st December until 29th April for the 2009 / 2010 ski season, which includes the 2010 Winter Olympics. I don’t think we could have picked a better in time to be there. We have used the same company that my two friends, Foe and Easty, for our accommodation – SeasonIT.

A view of our house and our outside hot tub.

This place is fab. 300 metres from the Blackcomb slope and 10 mins walk from Longhorns. Perfect!

So that’s the plan. I fully intend to post blogs from where we have been as most of these RV parks have wifi as well as supermarkets, spas and laundromats. I also fully intend to perfect skiing this year as well as snowboarding!

Lots of love

Stuoobs

xxx