Canada Day 5 - Calgary to Vancouver

On day 5, we said goodbye to Calgary and drove along the Trans Canada Highway to Vancouver. The drive was filled with beautiful scenery the entire 11 hours. It started out rainy but we got to see a double rainbow, that ended in the Rockies. We stopped to get gas just outside of Banff at a place that just happened to be on Native land, which came with the fun surprise of free roaming cattle. It was wild to see cows walking around a hotel parking lot! Our drive took us through multiple national parks and just confirmed that we need to come visit again to explore even more of this gorgeous country.

Before reaching Vancouver, we made a slight detour to MacInnes Farms, the home of another one of our favorite TV shows, When Calls the Heart. We just barely made it in time for our tour of the Hope Valley set. It was amazing to see all of Hope Valley. We got to go into the buildings and see all the main sights like the row houses (there are only 2 in real life, the others are CGI in the show), the jail, the mercantile, Abigail’s cafe, the Queen of Hearts, the Coulter’s office, and of course the school. We also got to see the cabin in the woods, the kissing bridge and the mine, which was constructed inside an old milking barn.

After our tour, we headed to our AirBnB in White Rock, a beach suburb of Vancouver. As we were driving we noticed the sunset over the water and found a little park to pull off for some incredible sunset photos. Walking back to the car, I turned around to get some pictures with the boardwalk too and we had a bald eagle fly over us. Western Canada is just incredible!