Our First Day on the Road

Sunday, June 21, 2010
We are on our way. We spent our first night on the mainland at Ed's mother's house, aka "Club Ed", in Richmond. After a light breakfast we were off to an early start. Our plan today was to be in Nelson around 6pm. That meant that we had about 737kms to travel.
Today's journey turned out to be a trip down memory lane. Over the years, Ed and I have driven that stretch of the highway many times for many reasons. Starting in 1976, the road to Hope. That is where I had my first job teaching and in August 1976 Ed drove me to my interview at the Hope School board for the position of Grade One teacher at Coquihalla Elementary school. I got the job and spent the next year taking that same road back and forth from Hope to Richmond/Victoria almost every weekend.
When we drove past Bridal Falls, we remembered the time when the girls were small and we took them to visit Flintstone Village. It was pouring rain that day but the girls were so happy to be there that the weather didn't matter. Today, as we drove past it was grey, cloudy and dreary looking. Flintstone Village isn't there anymore. Now it is Dinotown. We arrived in downtown Hope for a much needed break to stretch our legs and buy gas. On a whim I bought a Gold Rush lottery ticket in honour of the Gold Rush days along the Fraser River and was thrilled to win $2.o0. I think I will buy a ticket in every town that we stop in. Let's see if my luck holds out. Also in Hope, I did my first "Body Break" - 25 jumping jacks and 10 curb push-ups.
We stopped at the rest stop in Merritt - 2 bus loads of Chinese tourists and 2 working toilets - we spent more time at the rest stop than we had planned.
We took the turnoff for Peachland, Penticton, Oliver, Osoyoos looking for a fruit stand and a place to stop for lunch. The highlight of this part of the trip was listening to CBC's Stuart McLean's Vinyl Cafe and hearing our good friend Maureen's story being read on air as part of his story exchange. We applauded after the reading and I felt so proud to be her friend.
Just past Oliver we stopped to take a picture of the aftermath of the recent slide. As I was climbing up an embankment to get a better shot of the slide impacts, I too had a slide and landed with the digital camera in the mud. We are not sure how this will effect our future photos. We haven't uploaded any shots yet so hopefully the pictures will still be the same.
On the drive from Osoyoos to Castlegar, Ed was remembering his years working at for CPC. When the weather was bad and they couldn't fly in or out of the Castlegar airport they had to take a bus or drive the 4 hours to get to the Penticton airport.
We got to Castlegar and stopped at the Brilliant Dam Expansion project. Ed can look back with pride at the time he spent helping negotiating legal and finance agreements.

We arrived in Taghum, just outside of Nelson around 6pm and were warmly welcomed by Pam and Russ, our hosts for tonight. Pam and Ed worked together at CPC, and they said we could set up our tent in their backyard or if we preferred, they also had a spare bedroom. I gratefully accepted their offer of the comfy bed over our camp cot, Ed also choose this option. They took us on our tour of their property, accompanied by their four legged family, Gracie & Chester, then back to the deck to enjoy a much welcomed cold beer. We enjoyed a delicious dinner of bbq chicken, greek salad, rice pilaf and strawberry/rhubarb shortcake and ice cream for dessert. Ed and Pam had lots of stories and laughs sharing their times working for the good ol' power corp.
Choosing the indoor sleeping option proved to be the right choice - later in the evening, while writing this post, a thunder storm passed over, lots of rain, thunder and lightning. We have had a good variety of weather today, from sunny skies, fog through the Coquihalla Pass and then the light show in the evening.
(We lost our modem connection for the night so I am posting this Tuesday morning.)


Tuesday, June 21, 2010 - Summer Solstice
I was awakened this morning by a four-legged alarm clock - Gracie the 2 year old West Highland Scotch Terrier came into the bedroom to say hello. She reminds me of the Westie I used to have, MacDuff. I took her on her morning walk around her neighbourhood. There are beautiful views of the Kootenay River from the the top of the street. This is really beautiful country and I can see why Pam and Russ love it here.
We are on our way in a little while. Next destination, Fort MacLeod Alberta.