It was with a weird sense of excitement and relief that I crossed back into Canada. The time in the States was awesome, I had so much fun, but it never really felt like MY country - it always felt like it was a little too different to be normal.

Canada, on the other hand, feels like home, and so it was a sense of homecoming that I crossed the border back to the Great White North.



Click read more to see just how flipping rad Canada is in summer!



Having spent a bunch of time in cities towards the end of the US portion of the trip, I was keen to escape the people and the concrete and get back to nature (not in a nudist sense). Luckily, Canada is pretty well equipped for that, so I headed straight to Kelowna after crossing the border.

Kelowna, ah, umm.. yeah. Beautiful town, has loads going for it, on a magnificent lake, really warm and generally sunny, all this good stuff, buuuuut the hostel was swarming with Australians. That's not a bad thing in itself, but it was the kind of Australian you're like 'man, how did you get through customs?'. The permanently drunk, talking up the accent to sound cool, generally dickhead-like type of Aussie who sometimes decides to travel.

Regardless, Kelowna was fun, and although I only took one photo from my week there, I liked it (especially the bagpiper):



From there it was a quick stop in Revvie, back to our old stomping grounds, and some serious nostaglia as I went back to our old house and all the places we used to hang out.

Barry Rd:



The ski hill in summer:



After Revvie it was time to cross into Alberta to what is pretty much the hub of awesomeness in the world, the Banff/Lake Louise area. I said earlier that Yosemite had few equals in the world, this area is definitely one of them. I don't really have the words to describe how amazing the hiking is in the Banff National Park, except that it can and will change your life, but where words fail me (lucky I'm not in the communications business) pictures will do the job.

First, Lake Louise:



And again from along the Plain of Six Glaciers hike, with the ski hill in the background:



And gratiutous self-takey with a bit of a glacier (top right) and mountain and stuff in the background:



Aaaand a marmot:



What the pictures don't really convey is this remarkable turquoise colour that the lake has. The higher up you get above the lake the more the turquoise shines through - apparently it has to do with the rock the glacier scrapes off as it shifts, and the tiny rock particles are carried in the glacier rivers into the lake. It's science and stuff.

Anyway after Lake Louise I headed to Banff, and met Julia who became my hiking buddy and recipient of many anti-German jokes (I still wasn't over the World Cup thing).

I hiked Johnson Canyon by myself, then headed up Sulphur Mountain with Julia later in the afternoon.

The Canyon:



Waterfall in the Canyon:



Julia & me at the bottom of Sulphur Mountain (little did we know what a slog it would be to the top):



Success! Probably 99.9% of the people at the top had taken the Gondola up - the lazy buggers carried Starbucks up and were wearing thongs. They didn't appreciate it the same way we did..!



And the view from the top out across Banff:



And a squirrel chilling out on top of the world:



Fast forward a day and we went to Moraine Lake, just near Lake Louise, and we agreed by mutual vote that Moraine Lake is even cooler than Lake Louise, despite being the far less famous of the two:



We hiked from there to Eiffel Lake, which was awesome because we had it to ourselves, and, well, see for yourself how beautiful it is:



Oh and it turns out marmots like to do this in the snow:



Breather. Fewf. Cool, so after all this we decided to drive up to Jasper for a couple of days, see the sights and drive the fabled Icefields Parkway. It's called the Best Drive in the World or some other similar marketing slogan, and it's pretty flipping radical. I don't know how many drives you've been on with glaciers oozing down the sides of mountains, but I personally hadn't done many.

Anyway, the Icefields Parkway:



Athabasca glacier:



Bear!:



So, Jasper. Um, it was cold. We couldn't do much because it was raining and miserable, so we stayed a couple of days, walked around a bit, camped, went to a (very cool) wilderness hostel, and left. On the way back we began a hike to Nigel's Pass, got about 500m in and found some lovely, fresh bear poo, also known as a DON'T GO THIS WAY sign:



Fast forward a bit, stayed at a really cool hostel near Salmon Arm (on the way to Vancouver) on Shuswap Lake, the rooms were in train carriages, the hostel had free canoes to use, aaand best of all there were pet llamas. Yes, you read that correctly, llamas:



Hostel rooms:



Sunset over Shuswap Lake:



And a wee bit more fast-forwarding, I arrived in Vancouver and went to stay with Deckers, who promptly took me up the Grouse Grind. The Grind is a not-for-the-faint-of-heart type thing, also known as the Stairmaster From Hell, or Nature's Stairmaster, whatever you prefer, which is a hike up a ski hill (Grouse Mountain). It's hard, sweaty, unrelenting to the point that it actually gets steeper the further in you go, which is delightful.

Halfway point (as noted by the halfway sign.. duh):



Success in 51 minutes:



The view from the top:



And that is pretty much stumps on the wrap-up, covering nearly three months in three posts. Whoa. It's been an epic, epic journey, there's been so many amazing people, so many amazing places, and so many awesome memories. As I write this there's about six days left on the trip, it's scary to be heading home so soon, but no doubt it'll be another awesome adventure.

Keep an eye on the blog over the next week, there's a bunch of things I have coming to wrap it all up!