Well, we are now 6,000+ miles and 40 days into our trip, we’ve visited ten national parks, traversed thirteen states, visited with two of our children, and now we’re in southeastern British Columbia, camped alongside the gorgeous Okanagan Lake in a lovely wooded campsite. Today, we head toward Jasper, 475 kilometers north and east of here. With luck, we may find a vacant campsite at Mt. Robson Provincial Park, on the way into Jasper. In a way, we’re kinda rolling the dice by follwing through on our plans to visit Jasper and Banff, as the Banff area has just in the past two days been hit with record flooding, and the Trans-Canada Highway itself has been closed in several areas for repairs. Call it faith in the Canadian government, that by the time we are ready to pass through the affected areas next week they will have reopened the highway. Otherwise, we could be in for some pretty dramatic detours of hundreds of miles or more.
The past few days, since we left Scappoose and March and Steph (and Mooshi, of course), have been fun, as we drove straight to Mark and Karen Newman’s house just north of Seattle for two nights. As the years roll by, Mark and Karen have continued to be among our dearest friends, evven though we’re separated by several thousnd miles most of the time. Since his recent retirement from the Wasshington State Highway Department, Mark has been living a life of well-deserved leisure, spending a lot of time polishing his guitar-playing skills, which, of course, was a thrill for me. We really connected on some old favorites, as I played all the guitars in his impressive collection — two Webbers, a Breedlove, a Taylor and a couple custom Telecasters. We finished off our visit with a tour of the Seattle Sculpture Garden and a happy-hour visit to a great bar/restaurant on the Seattle waterfront, where we quaffed martinis and stuffed ourselves with oyster shooters, calimari salads and other great treats. We could have stayed in Seattle for a lot longer, as we have considered the area as a possible place to live out our summers when we leave Pennsylvania, but we had to push onward.
Our next major destination was/is Jasper National Park, in the Canadian Rockies, so we decided to head northeastward, through the North Cascades National Park, instead of northward through Vancouver and Whistler. We had traveled the latter route a few years ago and wanted to experience the territory inland. The North Cascades were gorggeous, even though our appreciation of them was limited by the rain and fog we experienced enroute through them. We considered staying in a motel in the Omak area of north-central Washington, but the decent places were full, so we pressed on to a National Forest area about 15 miles to the west, where we knew we could find nice dry-camping places for just a few bucks (with our Senior pass, of course). Sure enough, we were the only people in the Oriole Campground in the Okanagan National Forest. We cooked up a nice dinner and enjoyed it in the camper, then hit the hay and got up early for our foray into Canada the next morning.
So, after a couple stops to re-provision ourselves and take care of some business, we entered British Columbia around lunchtime and made our way to this idyllic campsite south of Vernon, in the Ellison Provinciaal Park. We were fortunate to find a site, as there were only a couple sites left when we arrived. Canadians are fervent about camping, and the roads are full of vacationing RV-ers and outdoorsmen of all types. This campsite had a unique feature that we hadn’t experienced elsewhere in our travels, a dog beach. Naturally, our hydrophilic pooch was delighted, as he could barely contain himself on the trip down the path to the beach.
Our next stop was supposed to be Jasper, but we learned of a great provincial park called Wells-Gray about 200 miles south of Jasper, so, since the roads through Banff are still closed, we decided to take a detour for a day or two. As I write this, we are about to go on a short sightseeing boat ride on this absolutely pristine lake at the end of the road. I’ll post views of the surrounding mountains next time I sign on. Internet connectivity is hard to come by up here.