It was 3 days of hard driving to get Vancouver....we decided to drive back on the AlCan the way we came since the other road apparently had a lot of construction going on.....and oh my god am I glad that we did. There were signs posted everywhere warning people about the fires all around....KEEP DRIVING....DONT STOP. [Seriously....smoke was pouring out from the trees all around us as we speed along the AlCan. The animals had all sought the safety of the road as a natural fire break.]
We were able to stay one more night at Liard hotsprings [It was only a mile out of the fire zone, so we lucked out to find a campsite, as we arrived at about 10 pm]....nice dinner and another dip in the ol steam bath.... night soaking. This time I was not as frightened of the bears, so we stayed out past “dark”....it still didn't get completely dark....beautiful full moon. [twilight set in around midnight. The hot springs lay at the end of a long, meandering boardwalk that hovers above a swamp. The walk takes about 15 minutes or so, and the moon was illuminating the path, along with the surround trees and plants. We were in awe of the full moon that was floating above the treeline while reflecting light onto the water near our feet. We finally arrived at the hot springs, changed and hopped into the steaming waters.]
So I am soakin, soakin, soakin, floatin, enjoying the awesome sulfuric smells around me....mmmm. [There are three ponds in the area available for soaking. The first is near the changing rooms, and there are stairs that lead down into the hot steam.. This area is the hottest and the water slowly drifted downstream over a small man-made wooden waterfall. To the right, stairs lead downward into the second pond. We made our way down these stairs. The moon was slowly shrinking as it rose over the tall dark sentinels which encircled the pond. Twilight was fading into quasi darkness, and all was silent aside from the gurgling water.]
Then I noticed a streak across the sky...I jokingly said to chris that it must be Aurora Borealis since it is the one thing that I have been so bummed about not seeing. He looked up and said yeah right...its just smoke. [It did look like smoke floating by from one of the fires for about 20 minutes.] Then it became brighter and more pronounced...a solid streak of light..... “ I dont know Chris, I think it really might be....what else would make the sky look like that?” And lo and behold, the sky exploded into an array of colors....it was pure magic....I honestly cannot describe what we saw.
[I'll try. First, the single etherial white streak that was bounding across the sky began to widen and split into two streams. The center of the streams stretched and thinned the light into a soft pale white. This nascent magic energy delineated itself clearly from the ordinary heavens.. A defined shape appeared momentarily. An oval canvass perfectly situated between the darkened treetops waited for a moment, breathed in, and sensing it was in the proper place, it began the show.
Bursts of light and color exploded towards us from the center of the oval. Hues of blues, reds, greens and violets ebbed and flowed from the elegant pale light. One hundred and twenty seconds of transformed reality. We are blessed.]
Northern Lights....check.
It really was the coolest thing I have ever seen....ever. And I gotta say that experiencing it while in a hotspring is the way to go. Awe-some.
It still gives me chills to think about it.
[From Liard Springs to Vancouver was another 2 days of hard driving. 10 + Hour days were ahead of us with perfect conditions...But...]
We have learned that It is probably not the best idea to visit a place the year before they host the olympics. why you ask....
CONSTRUCTION. there will be road construction....and not just a little bit....a LOT. I swear they were repaving every inch of B.C. [Every 15 miles there was a 30 mile stretch of construction, repaving, regraveling, retrenching, retouching, re-everythinging the road.]
One thing that we noticed about the road workers in Canada is that they are all really young compared to workers in the states, and many of them were female....at least the ones holding the stop signs....we reckoned that they must be the girlfriends of the blokes on the heavy machinery.
And then they will be doing construction in the city to beautify it a bit. Oh what fun it is to wait in big long long long line. Real fun...
But you gotta love Canada for their lack of cops.....lets see....4,000 miles, and 4 cops sighted equals drive as fast as your little heart desires.....(but dont worry mom, we never broke 100....promise). [It was eerie how few officers of the law there were on the roads...Canadians really drive fast.]
[The night after Liard Hot Springs, we were told a nice campground to stay in by a visitor information center girl...Bear Lake. Sounds great right? A lake, with bears. Probably beautiful. Quiet. Well...Not so. We drove into the town of Bear Lake and it was a logging town. The kind that had stripped all the trees off the hills. Especially the trees nearest to town first. No worries though, we just cooked some tasty pasta, had a glass of wine, and moved on early the next morning.]
And we made it.....Vancouuuuver.
Downtown action, Amazing brunch, walks through Stanley park, garden brides, Yaletown dining, a bit of jazz, rejection salsa, drinks in gastown, Chris having a heart attach over seeing Gursky in the museum...he still wont shut up [GURSKY!}, Wall.E, good street food, interesting china town, crack heads, and sleep about sums it up.
Here is chris's impression [Vancouver has character. Art, music, life. Vancouverians seem to know how to live. Most were friendly, I enjoyed their numerous districts in the city, each with a different sub-culture and scene. Did I mention Gursky was shown at their very fine museum?]
Over the Bay.
After 3 days in Vancouver, we loaded ol sunnie up onto a ferry and headed to Victoria where we concluded our time in maple land.
Victoria was beautiful.....chris found this hostel online that had some pretty cool photos of the room we reserved. Well my friends.....don't judge a hostel by the photos on the web....they can be a bit deceiving, or Really deceiving....we felt like we were in a converted brothel. The Chinese woman running the joint gave us a 30 minute intro into the place including a remedial lesson on how to lock the door and how to prop the door open. Then she gave Chris the password to the internet...he glanced at it, looked at me with a lifeless expression and revealed it to me. It must have been 30 characters long.....we cracked up. [It would take the NSA 10 years to crack that code]
there was a sign in the bathroom that said...make sure to clean up your hair before leaving the bathroom....or the turtles will get you!!!!
Classy place. [So strange.]
We walked around the warf area, had a nice little organic dinner, walked some more, had some sunset cocktails at the Empress hotel, then found a pub that was offering 2-4-1 burgers....we were in like flynn. We ordered our food and beers and I popped off to the washroom and when I returned Chris has a mild shit-eating grin on his face....Im a bit confused, then he points over to the table across from us and says...guess where that guy is from?
I dont know....Austin? Nope, guess again. Houston? Guess again.
Not Big Spring. Bingo. What? Really?
Yep....we are taking over the world....one soul at a time. Anyone heard of one Skip Anderson?
He said he was only born there and moved on along....but kinda funny anyhow.
OH Big Spring.
And it was on to
Washington, where even the bridges are green.
Ferry time back to the US of A. Washin Washington.
So approximately 5 minutes into Washington we have already seen as many cops as the entire time we were in Canada.....hum. Welcome back.
We headed round to the Olympic peninsula for a little taste of the rain forrest and beaches in these parts. We camped out at Mora and headed down to Rialto Beach...right across from La Push...maybe you have heard of it? It was really crazy....Huge Huge logs everywhere.....Your driftwood, floating underwater, breaking into pieces, pieces, pieces.....just driftwood hollow and of no use......blah blah....silly Scots. [The driftwood there is really quite unique. Imagine miles and miles of beach covered with tree trunks smoothed over from years of erosion.]
Had an amazing sunset on the beach....there were all of these cool rock stacks just off shore that made for some pretty cool photos (if you happen to be shooting with a Nikon D2X).
You know what I really really love? The smell of the sea. That salty, sea-weedy, fishy smell all wrapped into one. I love that. I should have bottled some to take home. Instead I stole like 7 pounds of rocks. I also love rocks. They make me happy. [So strange. We have since lost .2 miles per gallon for our MPG.]
The next morning we drove up to the Hoh trail (passing a little town called Forks, maybe you have heard of it?) Who da Hoh, Chris is da Hoh.
Hey guess what it does in a rain forrest.....it rains. We got a little wet. I made chris hike in the rain since he revealed that he never had before. Ha, take that. [The nice thing is that it doesn't matter if it is raining in the rainforest because the trees don't let rain to the forest floor. So I didn't even get very wet. :)] It was beautiful. It was like being in the Ewak forrest...I was just waiting for Yoda to pop out at any time.
Giant trees. Giant mossy trees. Moss beards are cool by the way....I don't care what Chris says. [Fine I'll post it.]
Saw a few elk, but after seeing signs in the bathroom that said beware of elk, several people have been attacked, it kinda freaked me out a bit. My plan was going to be to trip chris and run if we were attacked....I think he could use a good elk lashing or two.
We then decided to have movie night in the tent. We browsed through my hard drive and decided on this Twilight movie.
Well looky there.....it turns out that it is based in exact area that we are in.....if only we had watched it the day before we might have taken the time to explore Forks and La Push. We were pretty impressed at how accurate everything was in the movie....La Push really is on an Indian reservation, and Forks is a real little town....I guess the author is from around here. Anyhow, it made the movie a bit more entertaining for us. Actually, that is the second time we accidentally watched a movie while almost on location...we watched the Proposal while in Alaska....funny that one.
Aberdeen.....think box potatoes. [13 dollar box potatoes. Get out of the 50's people! Especially if you charge $13 for something nostalgic like box potatoes.]
We then decided to head over to seattle, so we got on the computer and tried to find a room. Not gonna happen....2 hours later we still had no room. Turns out the Yankees were in town.....those damn yankees. We had to stay in a hostel in Olympia for the night instead. It was cute. Then we had our splurge night or 2.....mainly because we got the last hotel room for saturday and sunday....really.
Seattle....think mini NY with a cross of SF. Cool. Really Cool.
I saw the oldest book store, fleas in dresses, the space needle and a Frank Gehry building, Pikes market....which in my opinion was a lot more hype than product...but we didn't stay long, another art museum....with Imogen Cunningham, the Capital Hill area with a fine cup of joe, and last but not least.....a night of salsa dancing....Salsa Brava. Chris was one happy boy. And I only ran into and elbowed 7 people...it was a good night.....the band was fantastic, and it was all free! Go Seattle.
Now sadly, our time has just about run out. We are on the home stretch.
Chris's brother was very nice and hosted us for 2 nights while we gave Sunniebee a bath and went to sample some wines from the region. Eastern Washington is the new Napa. Thanks Chris's brother....
We are now quickly heading to Big Spring where Chris will get to meet “the crew” because apparently there are birthday festivities going on. Your in for a hoot Mr. And we will sadly have to part from Mrs. Sunnie.
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