Two Hams on the Road

Sunday, May 24, 2015

And we’re in a foreign country!  We’re in the Canadian province of British Columbia.

We left Bellingham, WA, on Thursday and headed east.  We could have headed north, but then we would have ended up driving through Vancouver before heading east.  By heading east first, we bypassed a major city and crossed the border at a typically uncrowded border crossing.

Bellingham is a hilly coastal town, having great views of the ocean and/or Mount Baker, which is snow covered year round.  As we left, we headed straight for Mount Baker.  Shortly, we were in a wide flat valley, surrounded by mountains.  Even though everything is green, many of the fields were being irrigated.  Diana had commented that they hadn’t had much rain and that the weather was more like summer than spring.  Mount Baker had only about a third of the snow cover of a usual year.  The road to the summit, which usually doesn’t open until July or August, opened in early May this year, the earliest ever.

Soon, we headed north, to Abbotsford, British Columbia, to cross the border and stock up.  Canada doesn’t let you bring in any type of weapon (hunting rifles require extensive paperwork) and very little fresh food, so we planned to stock up in Abbotsford.  Steve also wanted to pick up an air card for internet access.

Unfortunately, that did not go smoothly.  In spite of advanced planning, finding the right store for Steve proved difficult and we ended up spending 5 hours in Abbotsford.  But, mission accomplished finally!

The Walmart was my first wake up call that I’m in a foreign country.  While some brands, etc., are different from state to state in the US, there are a lot of differences in brands and layouts in the store here.  And there was no deli!  Since I was hoping to pickup a premade sandwich and salad for lunch, that was unexpected.

The other slightly unexpected touch was that most items had English and French on them.  I had gotten used to the English/Spanish of the west and should have expected the French, given that one of the provinces is mostly French speaking.

Almost as soon as we crossed the border, we were out of the flat valley and into a hilly area with houses climbing the hills.  As we left Abbotsford, we headed east to catch the highway going north through Fraser Canyon.  There aren’t many ways north and Canadian Highway 1 through Fraser Canyon is one of them.  The highway follows the Fraser River and was one of the main routes to the gold fields.  It winds its way along a steep canyon, with the walls of the canyon covered with tall pine trees wherever the terrain is not too steep for the trees to grow.

The Fraser River seemed high and swift, which it should be in the spring.  We do see some snow on top of some mountains, but most snow has melted.

We found a nice campground nestled among very tall pine trees.  No satellite reception!

And being our first night in Canada, Steve updated our map on the side of the trailer to show we’ve been in British Columbia, Canada.

The map shows all the places we’ve been with the trailer.

The next day, Steve headed for Hell’s Gate, which we had driven through on our way north.  Hell’s Gate is the narrowest point on the Fraser River, being 115 ft. wide.  As you can imagine, the water is very swift there.  It was the worst place to get supplies through before roads and railroads and the worst place to build a railroad.  There are actually 2 sets of tracks, one on each side of the river.  Since the visit included an aerial tram and suspension bridges, I decided to stay with Obi at the trailer and get myself organized after our stay in Bellingham.

Steve took some wonderful pictures.  We took the Rocky Mountaineer train through part of Canada several years ago and it turns out that it followed the Fraser River for awhile.

We thoroughly enjoyed our Rocky Mountaineer trip and highly recommend it.

We left our lovely campground the next day, Saturday, and headed north again.  Soon we noticed a change in scenery.  The pine trees started to thin out and open meadows appeared. 

We start to see some farming, mostly what we would call truck farming with most of the farms having farms stands along the road.  Many have irrigation equipment.  All are closed at this time of year.  In fact, a lot of things are closed, as tourist season doesn’t really start until June.  Many of the roads along here require snow chains October to March and there are many towns that have gates north and south of them to block passage when the roads are closed.

Some vintage cars at a rest stop.  Note the thinning trees.

We finally reach our destination for Saturday night and are settled in when a storm moves in, first with hail and then rain most of the night.

One of the towns we had driven through, Cache Creek, received 10 inches of rain and suffered severe flooding.  Luckily, all we had was a very noisy roof and some standing water outside.  It’s days like these when we are glad we each have a pair of Crocs to wear for wet conditions.

The campground owner suggested the Edelweiss Restaurant in Lac la Hache, just up the road from us.  I’m glad he did – great German food and a lake view!

Tomorrow we are headed north and west again.

But that’s all for now.

Take care.

Deb