Garibaldi Lake, Whistler & Thanksgiving Fun!

We've gone on a few hikes since we've been here but over thanksgiving weekend we wanted something more hardcore so we settled on Garibaldi Lake.  It was a 6 hour hike in total and one of the last really sunny days we had so it was certainly hardcore and I'm not sure I had been accurately informed abut how it was uphill the whole way! But it was worth it once we reached the lake and saw how beautiful it was!

It's about an hour and a half drive from Vancouver so we had our first car 2 go adventure as the buses don't go there.  We got to ride on the Sea to Sky Highway which I was pretty excited about, with the ocean on one side of you and the mountains on the other it makes for a pretty scenic drive!

It was such a gorgeous day to be out and about exploring! And we had so much fun zipping around in our smart car!

The night before we had road tripped to an even bigger Wal Mart Superstore in a town called Surrey and I had managed to by this patriotic water bottle, I was pretty happy about getting to test it out (yeah I know, I'm such a tourist!)

I love how still the water was, it made for some awesome reflections!

There was a dusting of snow on the mountains which made the view even more amazing!

and you can just see the fall colours starting to peek out! 

We walked around the lake for a while until we found the perfect spot for a picnic...

and managed to work some self timer magic!

By was brave enough to dip his toes in the water! It was super cold!

I'm not sure if you can see in this picture but By is wearing his UBC Forestry t-shirt!

Even as we left the lake and started our hike back down I kept turning to look over my shoulder and take in that view one last time! 

Since we were only 30 minutes away from Whistler, we thought it would be rude not to pay it a little visit!

There was actually some dirt biking going on and it was pretty busy, it was funny to see the runs with no snow! and funny to think in about a months time when we're next there we will be skiing down those runs - it's SO exciting!

We browsed around the shops, they were having a 'turkey' sale where loads of the clothing was reduced, it was still pretty pricey though so we enjoyed some s'mores ice cream instead from one of the cafe's, it was delish! 

and mostly I just LOVED soaking up all the colours of the trees!

and whipping the camera out every corner we turned!

By snapped this pic on our drive home as the sun was setting.  It was a great ending to the day!

The next day we started our Thanksgiving celebrations a little early at Cassie and Peter's, some friends from church.  Last year we celebrated American Thanksgiving in England, the year before we did it in the Caribbean so it was fun this year to be celebrating our first ever Canadian Thanksgiving!

Here we are with the whole group: Jen and Sterling and Mercedes and James too.

Cassie and Peter cooked up an absolute feast with all the trimmings! and we had some yummy bread rolls from Jen too.

Mercedes and James wowed us with the drinks and made these tasty virgin mojito style drinks!

and of course no Thanksgiving is complete without pie! Cassie, outdid herself by making a trio of pies: Coconut Cream, Apple and of course Pumpkin! We rounded off the night by playing some competitive scattergories!  

and we enjoyed it all so much that we decided to do a part 2 the next day on actual Thanksgiving! By cooked us up our own Turkey dinner complete with Kabacha squash which may just be my new favourite kind of squash! 

and of course we talked about the things we were thankful for...number one being that we get to live in this awesome place! and for all the super cool people we have met!

So now we've celebrated our first holiday here I'm crazy excited for the next one...people have already started decorating their porches and the front of their houses and there's halloween things popping up in every store - I can't wait!