Roberta, Lisa and Michelle in Heidi's living room
(Heidi was the cruel person who snuck up on us with a camera first thing in the morning)
The Geobabe's Great Canadian Adventure
British Columbia
It all started with a housewarming at Heidi's new place in Vancouver. Michelle, Lisa and I piled into the jeep on Friday afternoon in downtown Victoria at the start of the May long weekend, and battled it out with all of the other cars trying to make the ferry to Vancouver. The ferry personelle were in lovely holiday spirits, refusing to grant us our ferry reservations since, according to them, we were two minutes late. By our clock we still had a minute and a half to go, but hey, I guess we can't all run on ferry time.
The evening was an eventful one. Heidi's homemade sangria (a must-try) was flowing liberally. Many yummy snacks were brought as offerings to the hostess. We only had one small incident, when the curtain in the dining area caught fire and began to melt, but that was solved by a quick-thinking guest putting to use the "stop, drop and roll" tactics taught to all first-graders.
We piled into bed after assisting in clean-up, and caught a few precious hours of sleep before heading out the next morning. (It should be noted that it is a tradition among the geologists at UVic to send off any travellers with a solid hangover.)
Unfortunately, Michelle was unable to accompany us on the rest of our journey, so we dropped her off at the bus station the next morning to catch a ride back to Victoria. In the end, it turned out to be better that we only had three people, since a Jeep TJ does NOT have a lot of extra space. If there had been four of us, one of us would probably have had to have been strapped to the roof!
After stuffing the jeep - by now it was around lunch time - Heidi, Lisa and I were on our way. We drove that night to Halcyon Hotsprings, located a quick free-ferry ride across Arrow Lake, just south of Revelstoke. The campsites were rocky roadways full of goose, deer and bear shit, but the view was wonderful and the hotsprings were a good place for a weary traveller to soak thier bones. Or in this case, three weary travellers. Three weary travellers still fighting their hangovers from the night before. (Did I mention before how good Heidi's sangria was?) A soak that night, an extended soak the next morning, and we were off, smelling of sulfur and with tarnished silver jewlery, but ready for our next adventure.
The next day was one of the longest drives of the trip. We left the hotsprings around 12:30, but got stuck waiting for the ferry to get us back to the other side of the lake. From Revelstoke we drove to Banff and then up to Jasper, a scenic drive that required frequent stops. We made it to Jasper in time for a late dinner (around 9pm), and then were off again, booting it into Edmonton as fast as the little jeep could carry us - around 140 kph. (We finally made it to Edmonton just after midnight. Unfortunately, our hosts had prepared dinner for us at six that evening. Oops!)
