The Road Trip to B.C.

Wyona and I took a road trip yesterday, one of our favourites, the trip out to B.C.  I wasn't much outside of the city limits when I could feel the roll of the foothills as we climbed toward the mountains.  There are favourite views every ten minutes or so -- the mountains as they get closer, Dead Man's Flats where I remember camping with Mattie Brown and learning how to leg wrestle. Skirting the Vermilion Lakes and missing Banff is always a choice, since going down mainstreet and visiting the candy shop is always a tug.

A favourite part of the trip is now Heather Hill, since there is so much construction there, trying to keep the mountain from slipping into the valley there.

My eyes were glued to the window the last two hours of the journey, through the pass. The water was crashing down the sides of the mountains in larger than normal steams because of the melt. The sun was glistening off of the glaciers. The sides of the road were lined with low banks of snow that were covered with the gravel that had come off of the road when the snow ploughs had lifted it because of snow, then gravel laid down, then snow, then gravel.

Photo: Trip Advisor - Rogers Pass

Wyona would slow down at the foot of the avalanche paths all of them filled with detritus.

It wasn’t until we got to Sicamous that we began to see that new green colour on the weeping willows — that early light green colour that means the buds will be breaking through at any time.

Wyona rolled down the car windows as we drove the first stretch of Pilling's Road, that redolent smell of growth wafting in the windows.

She was already looking for the buds on the twin-berry bushes, hoping to paint them in real life.

That is why she is here:  for a water-colour painting holiday.

My plan is to enjoy the spring sun from a chair on my south-facing porch.

Arta