Pace on Earth

The day we hit the coast

Pictures don't really do justice to the drive we just made, but I will try anyway. After a great night at the K-Pub in Calgary with some NB ex-pats Jester and I climbed in our rental, dubbed the Blue Streak, for our run to the hills.From our 8am (groggy) start it was a beautiful day for a drive. If the weather held, which the forecast predicted, we would be in for an approx. 6pm arrival time in Vancouver. Once we hit the TCH toward Banff the mountains appeared in the distance, and as that distance closed they began to loom large.I had done the drive a couple of times previously but never in daylight start to finish. I did remember that the scale of the mountains around Banff to be hard to fathom and they were again this time. We took a quick ascent up Mount Norquay to snap a photo of the town and its surrounding peaks.From marvelling at the sheer size of the Rockies there was also time to marvel at the engineering needed to put a highway through them. For example this is part of the road near Kicking Horse Pass:As a history guy my thoughts turned to the incredible concept of men with 19th century tools traversing these mountains with the dream of a railroad to unite the country. They did it, with great adversity, and it became, quite literally, the ties that binded a country.

Once through Banff and Yoho National Parks and Kicking Horse Pass we descended into the Windermere Valley at Golden and our first pass over the Columbia River. The road then starts another ascent up to Rogers Pass in Glacier National Park and then past Mt. Revelstoke National Park where we meet the Columbia again, this time much wider, at Revelstoke. From there we passed throughh the Shuswaps at Sicamous and Salmon Arm where this is a typical scene:The mountains here are older and rounder than the Rockies and tree covered and this is most assuredly logging country.Shortly after our lunch in Salmon Arm we made it to Kamloops where 17 years earlier Jess and I both made out first trip there for the Canada Games in 1993. Kamloops is an almost desert-like landscape and is the start of the Coquihalla Highway that follows the Coquihalla River to Hope. Hope B.C. is the site of one personally-famous breakdown and the end of the Fraser Canyon. High Mountains surrond the town but, driving west, they quickly give way to the wide end of the Fraser Valley which essentially encompasses BC's Lower Mainland. So with the wide Fraser Valley by our side we made the break for the coast.The drive from Hope to Kitsilano took a little over an hour and a half. The afternoon in Vancouver was as beautiful as the morning we left in Alberta. It was a spectacular drive and I was happy to be able to enjoy acting as the Jester's co-pilot from start to finish. We made it to Kitts slightly ahead of schedule at 5:30 just in time for happy hour.

Much more to come.

Pace out.

posted by Vitamin S @ 1:19 a.m.