We've Covered a Lot of Miles

Hi friends,

I am back from my recent travels to visit elderly relatives.

We started our journey at 5 a.m. on Thursday, May 10, 2012.  About 75 minutes later we came upon the scene in the photo below.  I felt it was a symbol that we would have a nice trip.

Entering Kamloops, BC where I visit my mother.

About one hour north of Kamloops and we are well on our way up the Yellowhead Highway.

You can see the outline of our journey on the map below.  Our northward journey took us north east from Vancouver to Kamloops on Highways 1 and 5. We continued along the route shown by the upper purple coloured line which is primarily along the Yellowhead Highway. The route went through Kamloops, Barriere, Blue River, Valemont and on to Mount Robson at Jasper.  We continued through to Hinton where we stopped for dinner.  After a delicious dinner of calamari and caesar salad at L & W's, we drove on Highway 16 east to Edmonton and spent the night in St. Albert, north west of Edmonton at the St. Albert Inn which was very comfortable.  The room rate was about $117.00 Canadian.  (You can click the link in the previous line, to see the hotel rooms and amenities.)

On Friday, we drove on to a small community near Calais, Alberta, along Highways 43 and 34, where we stayed with my aunt (more about that later). If you click on the map, it will enlarge. Locate Edmonton (about the middle of the map) and move your finger/eye along the line that goes northwest until you get to Valleyview. Calais is the first stop to the west of Valleyview.

On Saturday we journeyed north along Highways 16, 43, 34 and 2, to Hines Creek, Alberta, and visited with my uncle who has recently been diagnosed with colon cancer (more about that later). From there we drove along a secondary road west to the town of Ft. St. John, BC.  There we decided to have a late lunch and skip contacting more relatives to visit.  Instead we drove south on Highways 97 and 2, through a town called Taylor and stopped in the City of Dawson Creek, BC, to visit another uncle.  We then drove back to my aunt's place along Highways 2 and 34, in northern Alberta for one more overnight stay.

Early the next morning we drove back to Edmonton, Alberta, along Highway 43.  There we visited with a third uncle who I haven't seen for about 17 years. I've been wanting to visit him because both he and his wife have suffered a lot of health challenges in recent years and they are in their late 70s so you never know what happens. After visiting for a few hours we made our way south on Highway 2, turning west at Red Deer on a secondary highway.  We made our way to Highway 93 so that we could pass through the town of Rocky Mountain House and travel back to British Columbia through the Rocky Mountains.  We connected in BC with Highway 1 and drove back to Kamloops, passing through the towns of Field, Golden, Revelstoke, Salmon Arm, Sicamous, Chase and then finally Kamloops. We visited mom for several hours and then headed home on Highways 5 and 1 back to Vancouver. I was glad to get home as the long trip over a short period of time always tires me out.

This map shows our route beginning at Kamloops but we drove to Kamloops from Vancouver. It takes about 4 hours (includes stopping for coffee/gas).

We were surprised to run into snow just before we got to the Rocky Mountains.

You can see it is snowing at the mountain top.

Snow capped mountains are always so beautiful.

We are entering the Town of Valemount. We are still in British Columbia.

The town is in a picturesque area.

Another shot of the mountains at Valemount.

Here were are nearing Mount Robson which is on the border of British Columbia and Alberta. This day it was shrouded in mist and snow.  Apparently the top of the mountain is often obscured by clouds and/or fog.

A sign tells us we are now entering Mount Robson.

Here we are passing Moose Lake in Alberta. It looks so cold.

If you are a cross-country skier there is a wonderful ski trail through the Upper Moose Lake Loop and the trail is supposed to take you through some interesting terrain with inspiring views

In fact Moose Lake is still very much frozen.

These big horn sheep were grazing on the side of the highway.

I was lucky to be able to capture an eagle flying overhead.

The photos above end in Jasper National Park. The park is one of Canada's oldest and largest national parks.  Established in 1907, Jasper was once seen as an island of civilization in a vast wilderness. More recently, it has become a popular getaway from urban life, and a special place to reconnect with nature.  There are nearly 1000 km of trails in the park, thousands of campsites, tons of wildlife and the largest Dark Sky Preserve on the planet.

Our total travel distance was  2585 miles or 3514 kilometers in 5 days (excluding time spent driving around finding the places we were to visit or doing some shopping).  I will be sharing more scenic photos from other parts of my journey in future posts. Some of them are even more spectacular than those I've shared in this first post.

Click here for Our World Tuesday and more scenic photos from around the world.

The Journey Begins - Vancouver to Hinton

Many of you will know that I recently went on a road trip to attend the funeral of my aunt. It was a very long road trip with my brother doing all the driving.  Along the way we visited an my mom, her elder brother and a sister; all of whom live in different towns and cities.  Part of my decision to go so far at this time was so that I could visit my uncle (mom's brother) since he hasn't been well for some time and he is getting on in age.

Funerals can be very sad occasions, but for me it is also a time I like because I get to see relatives I haven't seen for a very long time. In this case, my aunt had just celebrated her 81st birthday and while that is not too old, she had been unable to speak for about 20 years after having suffered multiple strokes. In the last months, cancer had taken over and she stopped eating 21 days before passing. We look upon her passing as helping her to now enjoy better health in heaven.

We kept good records of the length of our journey and we covered just over 5000 kilometres.  I'm going to be doing a series of posts about our journey so I hope you will come back and travel with me. I will try to post some factual information of the different places we pass as well.

The first photos are maps. On our way north, through the province of British Columbia we passed through the town of Kamloops and then carried on through Vavenby, Avola, Valemount and  the world famous, Rocky Mountains past Mount Robson.   We stopped at Hinton for the night.  You can click on any map or photo to enlarge.

 

Here is a map of Canada so you can situate British Columbia and Alberta. They are Canada's two most western provinces.

The first photos I took were about an hour out of Vancouver. The scenery is always spectacular with the luscious looking and plentiful trees.

There are lots of mountain tops as we pass through majestic mountains which are part of the North Cascades.  The Cascade Mountain Range spans the border between the Canadian Province of British Columbia and the U.S. state of Washington.  They are predominantly non-volcanic but there are certain parts which are volcanic like Mount Baker, Glacier Peak and Coquihalla Mountain. 
Officially these mountains are called the Cascade Mountains in Canada.

We are travelling northeast on on Highway 1.  This highway originates on Vancouver Island.  See the map at the top and you will see a large island to the west of the mainland of British Columbia. That is Vancouver Island.  We will pass by but not through many municipalities:  Port Coquitlam, New Westminister, Surrey, Langley, Cloverdale, Abbotsford, Chilliwack then Hope. I am not completely sure if I have these in order of location but they are more in order than not.

As we reach the town of Hope, the highway separates to take you to various points north and east.

North of Hope we are travelling on Highway 5 or the Coquihalla Highway, often referred to as the "Coq", pronounced "Coke".  I've captured a sign for you in the photo below so you can see one of the many warnings given to driver. I also wanted to capture the wild alpine flowers for you.

These mountain peaks always makes me catch my breath due to their sheer size and beauty.

The photo belows show an avalanche shelter. Fortunately I've never experienced any avalanche when passing through here in winter.  Currently there is a  lot of road widening and improvement work being done between Vancouver and along this stretch of highway. You can see some of the signage just to the right of the shot.

Another hour or so of driving and you can see the geography has changed quite dramatically.  We are now approaching the town of Merritt, British Columbia.  The town of Merritt is nestled in the Nicola Valley and has a population of about 7000 people. Glacial lakes are nestled amongst the grasslands where cattle also graze uninterrupted. This is pure cattle country and quite beautiful too if you like the semi-arid type of landscape.

I tried to capture a photo of the town as we passed by but we were going too fast.  Merritt is always our last stop before we get to Kamloops. Here we take a short break stopping at an outlying place to grab a drink of coffee, water or soda for the final hour's drive to Kamloops.

We are now in our final approach into Kamloops.

I always love arriving for it means a good portion of the journey is behind us!  We are making the approach into Kamloops from the northwest and we are at the top of the valley.  Kamloops is located at the confluence of the two branches of the Thompson River (north and south).  The population of Kamloops is about 87,000 people. I've noticed a tremendous amount of building going on over the past decade or more and one would think the economy was booming in the city. However doing some research I've read that the population actually declined in 2010, along with population declines in the town of Merritt. The reason is that people have had to migrate to larger cities to find work. Nonetheless Kamloops is a much bigger city than when my family first settled there.

The scene below is one of my favourite scenes of the city as it gives a panoramic view of the two rivers and the main part of the city. At night, the sparkling lights make this a very pretty approach.   Here we stopped and visited with my mom for an hour or so before heading north on the Trans-Canada Highway.

We pass a few very small places like Rayleigh as we head north. The first real small town is called Barriere. I took a photo of the surrounding hills.  There was a huge wildfire a few years ago now which almost wiped out the town .  You can see from the photo that the forest is still recovering.

Barriere, British Columbia is located 66 kilometres north of Kamloops on Highway 5 which winds along the North Thompson River.  The community is 375 meters above sea level.

Legend has it that 
"during the early days of the Cariboo gold rush, an old trapper named MacDonald, hailing from Scotland, was plying his trade in the central North Thompson Valley. Each winter he would stockpile his pelts at Little Fort. In the spring of each year, he would load up his pelt on his old mare, and with the help of a young Chu Chua Indian, he would set out on the old highway for Kamloops.
On one of his annual trips, the old man and his young companion stopped for lunch at the site of what is today: Barriere. Following lunch, the old mare refused to start up again. The old Scot gave her the buggy whip and she suddenly keeled over and died. His Indian companion said to MacDonald: "What  are you going to do now?" to which the old man replied: "Bury her". From which Barriere got it's name.
from a story re-told by local authority: David Baines

A photo of the North Thompson River.

The beautiful and majestic Mount Robson rises before us as we approach the border to the Province of Alberta.  The air was quite cold but there were still a lot of mosquitoes.

I took a lot of photos of this lake you see below.  It is called Moose Lake. I think it is very beautiful. The lake went on for miles and miles.

We saw some cars parked along the way and stopped to see what was going on. People had stopped to look at this huge mammal, the spectacular elk. The light was fading and most of my photos did not turn out but I think you can make it out due to the lighter skinned coat and it's big rack of antlers.   The photo doesn't do justice to the size of this creature.

A fabulous moon guided our way.

We stop off at the Howard Johnson Motel in Hinton, Alberta for a room. It was difficult to get a room in the city. This place was the only one with rooms available. It turned out to be quite comfortable.

The beds were super comfortable. The weight of the duvet was perfect. Not too light and not too heavy. There was air conditioning in the room also to keep it nice and cool.

In most Canadian hotels and motels you will find a coffee maker, complimentary tea and coffee, an ice holder for getting ice from the ice machine, a soda pop machine, a desk for working at and often a mini fridge but not always.  The cost of the room for the night was $109.00 Canadian dollars plus 10% tax.

Well that concludes the first part of my journey. Please join in again for the next part of the trip through Alberta.

You can also join in for Scenic Sundays from around the world by clicking the badge below.

On Holiday ~ Tuesday 4

 Welcome to Toni Taddeo's Tuesday 4.

Summertime means travel time for many people.

Let's talk about travel and holidays.

1. Will you be traveling this summer at all?

I will be travelling up country to Kamloops two or possibly three times to visit my niece.  We generally don't overnight on these trips but it makes for an extremely long day there and back.  On one of those trips we hope to carry on and keep on going to Edmonton, Alberta and possibly even farther north to visit some relatives.

I've posted a few very old photos of Kamloops and a map from Kamloops to Edmonton.  Vancouver to Kamloops by car is a distance of 354 kilometres or 220 miles.  It is an additional 807 kilometres or 501 miles from Kamloops to Edmonton.  From there we would likely carry on to other northern towns and cities before returning to Vancouver.  You can get a better look at the map if you click on it to enlarge.

A view to North Kamloops and Bachelor Heights

2. Will there be day trips in store for you? visits to the beach, evenings out?

A true day trip to local area probably won't happen but there will be some visits to different venues at least once or twice with friends.  I'll likely post about it on this blog and share some photos. I always like to go to the beach as well and take some photos there though I'm not sure I'll get there until autumn this year.

I love going to the conservatory but don't get there so often. Here you can see a lot of tropical birds and inside the conservatory is very nice, warm and tropical so it mimics the natural habitat of the bird life.

Another nice location is the rooftop garden at the city's main public library branch downtown.  In the photos below the sky looks overcast. I remember the day well and it was alternately hot and cloudy/windy. I hope on my next visit there it will be a day of sunshine.

There are a great many places to visit but sometimes it's difficult to find time to be a tourist in your own city.

3. Do you eat out more in summer ...  do you go for ice cream or treats more?

I probably eat out a little more in summer though not too much more. Eating out is just too expensive but if I'm out and about and I feel too hungry then I will have a sit down meal most often rather than a snack on the go. I do like ice cream treats too, especially Banana Splits at the DQ on summer days.  But they've become very expensive so a McD's soft ice cream treat is often the alternative.

4. What is your favorite place to visit and what is the most exotic place you've been to?

My favourite place to visit is Kenya, East Africa for the scenery and the people. I also love Australia for the spectacular scenery and the informal nature of the Aussie people. 

Green Island, Australia (Great Barrier Reef)

Sydney Harbour, Australia

I've forgotten the location but it's near Nakuru, Kenya

Typical huts in the countryside & laundry hanging to dry

Wildlife freely roams the park while you dine nearby.

Fisherman on Lake Bogoria

A buck peeks out at me

Water buffalo with pink flamingos in background, Lk. Nakuru

One of many food distributions we did near Kericho, Kenya

Both of these countries are exotic with their unique flora and fauna and their people are very hospitable. I'd love to visit these two places again but more than likely will get to Kenya before I make it back to Australia. I'm hoping that I'll be able to travel to a new country on my next visit to somewhere but we'll have to see how things go.