Starting at my place, we went to the Trans Canada Highway, and took it through Surrey, Abbotsford and the Sumac Plains on our way to Hope, BC. While in Hope we visited a local art gallery where I got some art work from a local artist, before continuing down Highway 3, going from Hope to Princeton, BC.
Shortly after leaving Hope we stopped for a little photo-op at The Hope Slide, the biggest land slide in Canadian history. This slide is massive, about half a mountain broke off and filled what used to be a valley with a lake in it, which is now a rather steep hill.
From there we went through Manning Park but didn’t have time to stop there for long. We will spend hours there later, on our way back though but more on that later. Near Manning Park we did manage to stop and take a few pics of the Similkameen River
before continuing on to Princeton.
After a large lunch and picking up some groceries at Princeton, we continued North along Highway 5A to Allison Lake. We were planning on stopping and swimming in some of the other lakes along the way but that got interrupted by a series of thunderstorms and heavy rain. At this point we just wanted to get to my friend’s cabin and hope the weather would let up in time to do something but it didn’t until almost dark. By that time we only had enough time to hack at some of the weeds and small trees that were starting to overrun the property.
So here’s what Allison Lake looks like:
On Saturday, we spent some time around the lake front, went in the water for a bit, before heading out to explore some of the area North of Allison Lake. We passed through beautiful rolling hills, forests, lakes and marshlands much like you see in the 2 pics below.
On our way back, just as we were arriving back at the lake, we spotted a hawk perched in a tree near the road.
That was quite a treat for me, I’ve rarely seen a bird of prey like this, and never got a chance to take such good pictures of one before. What a majestic creature, I’d have loved to get a shot of it soaring in the sky, but still, even perched in a tree it’s amaizing. We finished off our only full day up at the cabin with a short hike along some local trails, cut short by more thunder storms, naturally, lol.
On Monday we set out for the return trip about late morning. We hung around in Princeton for a while before continuing on to Manning Park and our next little adventure.
At Manning Park we took a narrow, switch-backing road up to a high lookout area were I got some spectacular shots of the lodge area far below us,
and the some of the local mountains.
Once we were done here, we continued up an even narrower, switch-backing dirt road to the high alpine area of Manning Park.
We spent a good 2 or 3 hours hiking around the area. Where we were greeted by views like this:
On our way back down we came across a deer hanging around near the road and I was able to take a couple of shots of it, including this, my personal favourite.
By the end of our high alpine wanderings we were getting pretty tired and hungry so after ordering some grub from the restaurant, we went down to Lightning Lake to have a picnic before continuing on our way back to Vancouver and our respective homes. After spending so much time at Manning Park, it wasn’t until midnight that I finally got dropped off at home, and my friend still had about another half hour of driving still ahead of him before he was home.
I didn’t get very many good pictures after Manning Park as it was getting too dark, but I had an amazing weekend, and we’re planning about a week long trip for this Saturday. I’ll post more about that trip when I’m back.
. I'm guessing all those places you went to are in Canada (since I know Vancouver is there)...anyway, it all looks very cool, lovely scenery and all that 
. But hey, you have very pretty countryside up there, with wolves and bears and all sorts of cool stuff - we killed off all our big wildlife (and some of the smaller stuff) a few centuries ago 
.
