Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Day 1: Sunday May 6, 2012


Vancouver is in the Coastal Western Hemlock zone. Fairmont Hot Springs is in the Interior Douglas-fir zone.

Leaving our house in Vancouver at 7:49am, it took nearly 12 hours to reach our final destination at the Resort. Driving through mountains for hours was amazing and the scenery was ever changing and dramatic. I definitely took way too many photos of the snow-capped peaks. Here's two of my favourite!



Along with going through mountain ranges, we constantly followed the Fraser and then the Thompson Rivers for most of our drive. 

Fraser River

The first cool wildlife we saw was several Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus), followed by two Bighorn Sheep (Ovis canadensis), then a Chukar (Alectoris chukar) and lots of Mule Deer (Odocoileus hemionus).

Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep

When we went to the store later to buy dinner, we saw some Brewer’s Blackbirds (Euphagus cyanocephalus) that are closely related to the Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus), but surprisingly quieter.

Going to a different time zone meant we got there an hour later than we expected. The Interior Douglas-fir zone obviously has a lot of Interior Douglas-fir trees. These trees are nothing like the Douglas-fir we have on the coast and it will take a while to get used to seeing such small DBH and short trees. We went to bed early, as we had to go to the Dawn Chorus the next morning. 

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