August 8: Williams Lake to Hope, British Columbia
Bob: Mother Nature put on quite a show for us, as right after dawn one of those quite young, spotted fawns started bounding around in the yard right outside our picture window. The fawn's Mom was watching nearby as the fawn hopped around, chased butterflies, and tried to get acquainted with an old crow! The crow let the fawn get quite close, when the fawn started to sniff him, the crow had apparently had enough and slowly took off, flying up just far enough to perch on the nearest available branch above the fawn's head. With that game ended, the fawn suddenly discovered it was hungry and went back to Mom for a drink. Monika was busily trying to get pictures of all this, but we waited to go outside on our verandah and have breakfast until the Mom slowly shepherded her youngster down the bank toward the river. The fawn resisted going away from the interesting play place in exactly the same manner as a 2-year-old would resist leaving a playground, which I thought was hilarious. |
Monika: We woke up when I saw some animal on the lawn. We quietly walked to the window and there was a little fawn playing on the grass. Mommy was a little farther having breakfast. We watched enchantedly. The little guy actually hopped having all four legs of the ground. Sometimes he would come back to Mommy for a bit of breakfast himself but then be off again chasing a crow or a butterfly. When we made a sudden move, mommy would look up and stare at us, but when we did not make any threatening move she went back to grazing. For a long while we watched until Mom and fawn left the area. We had breakfast out on the terrace and then had to leave our nice hotel. Today's goal was meeting up with Chris in Hope, British Columbia. |
Bob: We continued following the Fraser River due South as we were scheduled to meet our old friend Chris in Hope, British Columbia, that evening. The land seemed to get more and more arid as we traveled South, until finally the only green fields I saw were irrigated, while non-irrigated land looked dry, parched, and almost desert-like. |
Monika: We kept driving south and I was intrigued by little towns called 150 Mile House, 100 Mile House, 70 Mile House, etc. I kept wondering were the 0 Mile House was. |
Bob: Gradually we followed the Fraser River into a mountain gorge that had clearly been carved by the river in previous eons of time. Although some scattered trees still grew, the mountains looked very dry, about like the large dry areas of the US in the valley between the coastal mountains and the Rockies. I suspect the coastal mountains also tend to squeeze water out of the air at this latitude, leaving the dried-out air to cross over to the Canadian Rockies. Although the landscape was rather barren, we did see some mountain goats grazing peacefully along the side of the road, at least until some idiot leaped out of his car and started chasing them with his camera. He was just lucky they were not grizzly bears!! |
Monika: We drove along the Fraser Rive into a river gorge. On the side of the road we saw some mountain goats grazing. We stopped to take pictures. When someone finally jumped out of the car to get even closer pictures, they ran away. |
Bob: the gorge of the Fraser River became progressively narrower as we continued South, until the highway was cut into the mountainside and far below we could see the river and the train tracks right beside it. |
Monika: The scenery became more picturesque as we drove more and more into the gorge. |
Bob: But finally we made it to Hope and found Chris was already there, checked into the hotel! Hurray! We really are very fortunate to have some of the best friends in the world, and Chris is one of our oldest and dearest friends. He's the kind of guy that we can just sit down and start talking with, no matter how long it has been since we have seen him, and it's just like we had chatted with him yesterday. We wandered around the small downtown area of Hope, having a nice convivial dinner together and then seeing some of the intriguing wood sculptures scattered around the town--products of a local chain saw artist--and enjoying the nice views out over the Fraser River. |
Monika: At Hope the road widened. We met Chris and had a very nice dinner together, talking as usually forever and forever. |
August 9: Hope, British Columbia to Seattle, Washington
Bob: We spent the day winding our way South through the mountains to the US-Canada border and continuing on into the northwestern part of Washington state. The mountains on the Canadian side of the border were quite pretty, heavily-wooded, medium-sized mountains, but once we crossed the border the land became noticeably flatter with much more farming and pasture land. Crossing the border involved a tedious, hour-long crawl in bumper-to-bumper traffic to get to the official crossing kiosk, but once in Washington we stayed where possible on rural roads where the traffic was again light. It was nice having Chris for company although his was, of course, riding his motorcycle and we were in the car, but whenever we stopped to eat or look around we all could talk about the trip. We made one detour over to Bellingham, Washington, the port for the ferries to Alaska, as I had an idea that to go back to Alaska some day we might take the ferry back up and cut out some of the driving. That turned out to be feasible, but it would be quite expensive and we would have to disembark in an Alaskan port! I was surprised that the ferry did not stop at ANY Canadian ports, but I guess that would involve complications for the operators that they did not want to incur. Curiosity satisfied, we continued on through Seattle to a suburb on the southern edge of the city where we all put up for the night. |
Monika: The next day we had planned to drive to Seattle. First we had to take the interstate, but the we found a two lane rode that led us to a border crossing. This one was rather crowded and it took us an hour to get through. But after that we stayed on small two-lanes and wound our way to Bellingham, the endpoint of the ferry to Alaska. We were curious about the expense and the general feasibility. We had a nice lunch with Chris and then pushed on to Seattle. Saturday afternoon traffic around Seattle was like in any other large town, yucky. We finally found a hotel at the southern end. Checked Google for a grocery store, and bought evening eating stuff, that we consumed in out hotel. |
