The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #139666   Message #3207025
Posted By: Bob the Postman
12-Aug-11 - 10:59 PM
Thread Name: BS: Best Time Of Year To Visit BC
Subject: RE: BS: Best Time Of Year To Visit BC
If you like a good walk, try the six miles of sea-wall around the perimeter of Stanley Park at the edge of downtown Vancouver. Also in Vancouver, the campus of the University of British Columbia is home to a Museum of Anthropology which IMO is the foremost cultural shrine in the city. UBC and the adjoining Pacific Spirit Park offer plenty of good walking. And I second fretless's recommendation of the Tofino/Uclulet/Long Beach area on the west coast of the Island--nothing but sea between you and Japan. According to B. C. hippie lore, it's one of those mystic soothing renewing spiritual refuge places. Some of the beaches are ten miles long.

If you go to Prince Rupert, you might see many cars pulled over beside the highway at Moricetown. Their occupants are watching Natives spearing and netting salmon from precarious perches above the churning waters of the Bulkley. Further down the road, the Ksan Historical Village near Hazelton is an interperative center about traditional Indian life operated by the Gitksan people. It's a fairly class act, not cheesy like you might expect. There are several villags you can visit along the Skeena, Kitwanga for instance, where totem poles are still part of everyday life, not museum pieces.

Banff and Jasper are not in B. C., thank goodness. There you will find many many people from those bus tours you abhor, but the scenery along the Icefields Parkway is as good as everyone has already said.

One good thing about June is long days--but not as long as on Eigg which is more than 1 degree further north than Hazelton, the most northerly point on your tentative itinerary.