In celebration of my 29th birthday, we headed north for some spring skiing in Whistler, BC over the weekend. We both decided that British Columbia was one of the prettiest places we had ever been. So pretty, in fact, that Josh had the idea of trying to persuade the Canadians to agree to a straight-across swap--they give us British Columbia, we give them North Dakota.
On the way up there, we realized that we are, like many Americans, completely ignorant about our neighbors to the north. Josh admitted that he didn't know who Canada's president was (actually they have a prime minister). We could only name the following provinces: British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec. We tried singing their national anthem, but only knew "oh Ca-na-da." And we had no idea what a Canadian dollar was worth compared to an American dollar (We thought $75 for skiing seemed like a lot).
We learned a couple of things on our brief trip:
1. First and foremost, the freeway heading to Vancouver ends abruptly with no apparent warning. If you go, don't plan on American-like freeways in British Columbia. Plan on a side-trip through downtown Vancouver and a random trip around the entire city.
2. Canada has 10 provinces and 3 territories: Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nova Scotia, Nunavut, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Yukon Territory
3. Canada's new prime minister is Stephen Harper. He is a conservative and was elected in February as the 22nd prime minister.
4. The exchange rate for $1 American is roughly $1.15 Canadian. That means skiing at Whistler is still very expensive.
Does this look like spring skiing? It snowed like six inches the day before we were up there.
We took these pics to try and show the scenery, but it was too cloudy and overcast, so you just get us standing there.
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