Canada Day Weekend in Squamish with the Whole Family

My grandmother, cousin, daughter and myself travelled up to Squamish over the Canada Day long weekend. We spend time in Whistler every summer but this was the first time we took the time to explore Squamish.

Day One:

We arrived in Squamish just in time for lunch. We popped into the local Whitespot. I was very impressed at the service that we received considering how busy the restaurant was. We stayed at the Mountain Retreat Hotel & Suites. The hotel was clean and quiet. My cousin and daughter were very excited about the pool because it had a waterslide. We were planning on going to the Sea to Sky Gondola but the weather was uncooperative so we skipped it this trip but plan to visit in August. We decided to do dinner and stock up at the Tim Hortons that was in walking distance to our hotel.

Day Two:

We slept-in which is the best part of being on vacation. We did a late breakfast in our hotel room then headed down to Cleveland Avenue to explore the local Farmer’s Market. It was a rainy day so we decided to head indoors and visit the West Coast Railway Heritage Park. My cousin is a big fan of trains so we planned the attraction with him in mind, but I had so much fun exploring the inside of a variety of trains and looking at all the old artifacts they had. They also have a mini train that you can ride but due to weather we opted not to try it. We spent the rest of our afternoon playing at the pool.

 

Day Three:

Happy Canada Day! We slept in again so we missed the parade and cake cutting ceremony. We wandered through the local vendor market and listened to a variety of  performances from Carolyn Grass, Overcomers, The Wells, The Splinters, Will Ross and more. We also got to check out the classic car show. My daughter is a big fan of the TV series, Riverdale, which filmed scenes of season 1 at Alice Lake so we decided to pack a picnic and head there for lunch. In the TV show Alice Lake was known as Sweetwater River.

Day Four:

We took advantage of the sunny weather and headed out to Shannon Falls. We attempted to find parking in the Falls parking lot but was ultimately unsuccessful. I recommend just parking across the street and adding the extra 10 minutes walk to your trip. The falls are absolutely breath-taking both for the views. The website rates the walk as easy but travelling with a senior citizen the trails had more stairs than anticipated so only made it about 30 minutes up before ultimately deciding to continuing to go back. We headed back to the hotel to spend the rest of the evening at the hotel pool. We got lucky both times that we were at the pool we had it pretty much to ourselves. Our only complaint was that the hotel didn’t stock pool towels in the pool area so we had to use the ones from our rooms and when we asked housekeeping for additional towels we were provided with one extra. If we travelled there again I would bring my own from home.

Day Five:

We got up early and headed out to one last breakfast in Squamish before starting home. We started at Whitespot and decided to end our journey in the same place. On the way home we took a detour up to Cypress Mountain lookout. The views of Howe Sound was the perfect way to end our mini-getaway.

 

There was really so many more hiking trails and lakes in the area to explore that I recommend adding Squamish to your summer bucket list.

 

**This is not a sponsored post**

 

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