Road Trip Across Canada Part 1

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Ok, so the first day of life with Hell's Gate Airtram. Micha and I picked up our car from Vancouver airport and drove into the city to meet up with Jenn and Heidi for breakfast. Driving on the opposite side of the road and car was really different, but I think I'm picking it up ok. There was a few times that I turned onto the wrong side of the road and maybe even ran a red light as I didn't see it lol. Oopps. Anyway, we found our way to Jenn's place and went to Denny's for a late breakfast early lunch before leaving. I was planning to be in Kelowna on the first night, but as we got away late, we decided to stay at res. So, when we left Jenn and Heidi, I was crying cos I didn't want to say goodbye, Heidi's going to New Zealand to work for a year so I won't beable to see her in Ontario. So I drove straight to Chilliwack so we could get a few supplies for our trip, I also got a couple of cards and parting gifts for Brian, Kathy and Ken, a kind of thanks for everything.
So then we drove to Cultus Lake in Chilliwack as I hadn't been there before and I wanted to, I'm glad we did, it was really beautiful, I didn't realise what was there. Swimming lake and water sports and even a huge water park. After that, we headed into Hope, so I took Micha out to the Orthello Tunnells as they are really nice then headed to Brian's place so I could give him his parting gift and card. He wasn't there so Tara called him and he came home. Yes, again I cried, but I feel better that I actually got to say goodbye to him, and he gives really good hugs too lol. After he signed my book, we jumped back into the car and headed to res. When we got there, no one was home so we had some dinner, I still had some left overs that we could finish then headed into Boston Bar to see if we could find some bears, no luck unfortunatly. When we got back to res,
Elbie was home, we watched a bit of TV then went to bed.

Day 2. We left res around 9:30. I didn't want to cry again, so I gave Elbie a hug and told her that I'd see her in Jasper and as I'd already said goodbye to Ken and Kathy, I just yelled out, "Goodbye for the tenth time." And told Kathy to check my room, if I gave the presents to them face to face, I would've cried, so I left them on my bedside table, I couldn't handle anymore crying. After we left, we headed up to Lytton and I showed Micha where the Thompson River meets the Fraser River. We then headed to Spencer's Bridge then across to Merritt where we got some lunch. Kelowna was next, on I way, the fuel gage started flashing about seventy kilometers away from the Kelowna and that was the next gas station. Thankfully we made and I pulled into the next gas station I saw. After that little bit of excitment, we went for a walk along the marina and up the main street for a little while, it was still early in the day, so we decided to head to Vernon where we went looking for a hotel to stay and and ended up at the Silver Star Ski Resort. Nice place, wouldn't mind getting myself a job there. We eventually found somewhere that was really nice, had a comfy warm double bed. It's been a while since I've slept in a double bed, it was soooo nice. Noodles for dinner, eaten out of the kettle pot as we didn't have any bowls, we improvised lol.

Day 3. From Vernon, we went to Armstrong the Salmon Arm, went for a walk through Salmon Arm and took some pictures of the lake there. We then head to the Granite Creek Winery, tried a very nice wine that we then bought. I was told how many wineries were in the Okanagan Area, so I thought, we couldn't go through there and not go to at least one winery. We then found Adams River. It was the biggest Sockeye Salmon run in one hundred years this year. I saw them all coming through past Hell's Gate, so we went and saw them in their spawning grounds of Adams River. Thousands upon thousands, or should I say millions upon millions as the fishery guy at Hell's Gate told us they were expecting between 32 to 40 million salmon. That was pretty exciting, to witness the biggest run in a century and I managed to get some pretty good photo's of them too. When we reached Kamloops we went for a walk through the town, unfortunatly we couldn't find one souviner shop, so I had to go without. On the way out of the town, I managed to take a wrong turn and we headed out passed the airport and up a dirt road, on the map, it showed that this road went right around a lake and back onto the highway. When we stopped at a lookout to stretch and take some photo's, we asked a guy and said that there was nothing ahead of us but bush, so we then had to turn around and head back to town and find out way out again.
We made our way to Cache Creek for dinner and a break, we decided to keep going to 100 Mile House where we thought we'd stay in the car to save some money. That was a HUGE mistake and we DEFINATELY won't be doing that again. When we got there, we saw a sign saying the temperature, 1 dergree. We got out our sleeping bags and watched a movie on out laptop before trying to get some sleep. There was no way that I was going to get any sleep, it was freezing, by the time we finished watching the movie, it was saying -1, every hour I kept opening my eyes hoping that it'd be later then it was, but no it wasn't and it only got colder, it got to -3 through the night and that was actually at dawn. Micha was lucky, she got a fair bit of sleep, so she had to drive till I got some more sleep. I ended up with a maximum of two hours sleep that night. My sleeping bag is supposed to keep me warm even if it was -4 degrees, well I guess that one missed being tested. Thinking of buying a new one.

Day 4. After our freezing night in the car, I wasn't going anywhere until I had a nice hot breakfast and a hot chocolate. When we'd finished breakfast, we got back in the car and cranked the heat, I slept for the first hour or so, but then couldn't get back to sleep. From 100 Mile House, we then headed to Williams Lake, which we basically just drove straight through as we didn't see anything there worth stopping for. We stopped at a place called Quesnal and went for a walk through Walmart, used the bathroom and contemplated whether to but a new sleeping bag. I decided against, knowing that if I do use the sleeping bag again, it'll be inside, where it's heated. I took over driving after that, heading for Barkerville. 81kms off the highway, we finnaly arrived to the small historic town that was closed. There were no signs up or anything. We were still able to have a walk through the town whch was quite cute, even had it's own Chinatown.
So we drove on to Prince George. I thought Prince George was gonna be a small city with the amount of people that say they live there. We went for a walk down one street that looked like it was the Main Street of town, nothing seemed to be opened and there were no cafe's or anything that you'd usually see on a main street. I asked a girl that we past whether it was the main street, and she replied by saying, "nothing happens in downtown Prince George." Ok, well what to do. We walked some more, of all things to have in a town that nothing happens was a Gold's Gym, probably the best thing in the town lol. I bought some souviners and we left, we stayed at a place called Burns Lake.
Micha took back over driving as I was feeling pretty tired again. I slept for about another hour. I woke up in time to see my first Moose. Unfortunatly, we didn't get a photo of it. Not half an hour later though, being dusk, a deer wonders out on the road in front of and we nearly hit. I guess they're as bad a Kangaroo's back in Australia. When we found a hotel, I went for a long hot bath, after my freezing cold night, I needed warming up. When I got out, I had some dinner and called mum on skype before going to bed.

Day 5. After getting a nice warm long sleep, we headed of in the direction of Prince Rupert. 486kms from Burns Lake. We made a couple of stops, came across a rest area on a lake which was really nice. A random old man pulled up next us and asked if we were from around here, I said we won't. He then asked if I knew why this highway (highway 16) was called the 'highway of tears', again I said no. He then told me it's because so many women have been murdered along the highway. Gee, thanks for that old man, I was feeling pretty good about our road trip until you told me that. Well, I've googled the whole highway of tears, and I feel a little bit safer, only aboriginal/indians have been murdered, so we should be ok.
We stopped in Terrace for lunch around 2pm, had Tim Hortons and got some souviners then back on the road. Hit our first lot of rain just before Terrace and it has been raining ever since. We arrived in Prince Rupert around 5pm, so we set ourselves up in a very nice hostel called Pioneer Hostel, bright colours everywhere, clean bathrooms, compfy beds, friendly people and the right price. We already met one guy, Shawn, he moved here from Prince George, not a huge distance away, but still far enough, he's an actor and works in screenplays. We went to a pub for dinner called Breakers, really nice atmosphere, good food and good beer. When we got back to the hostel, Shawn showed us some video's from one of the plays he was in, a local Chicago musical they put on just in Prince George. It was pretty good. He actually rode his bicycle here, it's over 600kms between Prince George and Prince Rupert, they are some insane people here in Canada and I've noticed in Australia too. The other week I met a couple of brother and they were riding from the same route as Ashley, Kelsey and I did when we went to Whistler, it's a long way, it's just crazy.

Anyway, that's the first five days of my road trip across Canada, plenty more places to see, roads to drive, food to eat, beer to drink and people to meet. Oh and of course have lots of fun. Enjoy the read.

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