Sometimes, you don't have to travel far from home to get away from it all and have a terrific holiday. You can be a tourist in your own town, and take advantage of the great amenities and activities around you.
That's what we chose to do during our Family Week of Awesome, which took place the second-last week of summer holidays in August.
Our galavanting was generously sponsored by Ford Canada, through the use of their 2011 Ford Explorer LTD, a seven-passenger SUV that took us around Metro Vancouver in style.
As I'd never driven an SUV before in my life, I was quite nervous about driving a larger vehicle around town. But after about 5 minutes, I quickly became accustomed to the automatic transmission, the power steering, air conditioning and Sirius satellite radio. The Explorer made our longer road trips and getting stuck in traffic in the hot sun a much more pleasant experience. The ride was most certainly a big part of our awesome week.
The Explorer also has a unique 'automatic parallel-parking' feature that literally parks the car for you - all you need to do is brake when you're nearly in position. Quite incredible, (even though I'm very good at parallel parking).
We toodled around Metro Vancouver, from up the Sea to Sky Highway to visit the incredible, historical Britannia Mine in Britannia Beach, just south of Squamish, to Lynn Canyon in North Vancouver, and Steveston Village in Richmond. We finished our Week of Awesome by dipping our toes into Birch Bay, across the border in Washington.
You can check out our photo album below.
