He was comfortably resting by the porch when I showed up, then ambled up to the picket fence where he just wanted to be petted and get some attention. This was on the main street of Clinton, BC, which happens to be the highway. We stopped here for gas and it seemed so much less spoiled by strip malls and chain stores that we walked around. I'm going to do a whole photo portrait of Clinton. This is just a preview.
We began after breakfast at the Provincial campground at
Lac La Hache. We're clearly getting into civilizations. The campground bathrooms had flush toilets and and granite counter tops.
Compared to three years ago, Thursday (Day 5) and Friday (Day 6) went
much faster because there was less traffic and almost no
interruption due to construction. And this last day was mostly sunny
and warm - about 20˚C I would guess.
The landscape was getting more arid. We were passing what almost looked like semi-desert, with these bunches of yellow flowers topping gray-green foliage. I don't know what they are, but they were everywhere.
And then we got to the Fraser River and Canyon. We followed this passage for several hours. The train seemed endless and was there whenever we looked. One side of the canyon was dry and the other side lush with evergreens.
At this point we're closer to the water. We couldn't see the end of the train in either direction.
And there were lots of tunnels along this route. Most, so well lit up, I didn't need to take off my sunglasses.
Along this route we got to Devil's Gate, where we had lunch and took a short hike in the beautiful weather, which I'll do a separate post on.
Eventually we got out of the canyon and onto a freeway - Canada Highway 1. At Abbotsford we got off the freeway and headed south a couple of miles to the US border. I just checked now and found there's a
cam at the border you can check online to see how crowded the customs line is.
Crossing into the US here was easier than when we crossed into Canada in the relatively remote Beaver Creek crossing into the Yukon. Then we were back on small rural road heading west and then south into Bellingham where we caught the I-5 to Seattle. It was here, in the middle of five lanes of southbound traffic, as it was getting dark, that it started pouring. But by the time we got to the ferry terminal, the rain had ended. Below is a view of some of the Seattle skyline as the ferry took off for Bainbridge Island.
This is a great road trip and I wish we had more time to poke around, hike, and just enjoy the beautiful country. Driving through Canada does require us to think differently - the signs are in kilometers and the gas comes in litres. The dollars are pretty close to equal so that's relatively easy. It's generally good when the things we take for granted get skewed a bit and we have to think about them and realize our world is not the only possible world. (Just not too much at once.)
Our grand daughter has grown a lot, is crawling and pulling herself up to a standing position, and picking up bits of food and stuffing them into her mouth. She's also a lot more cautious about straying far from Mama.