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
