Thoughts from the Road

JG and I have just completed a five week car trip from our home in Eastern Ontario to Vancouver and return. Although we did shorter driving days (average 6hr 30 minutes) and stayed in Vancouver for five days, we found the trip more tiring than previous similar long driving vacations. I am finding that passing three score and ten does tend to slow one down a bit. But we had fun and we had incredible luck with the weather. 

 I find myself taking unplanned naps, still dreaming of roads unrolling (and from time to time unravelling) before me. Since I have now done a first run through my photographs, here are some roads we travelled.

 Sun Across the Prairies

 The Icefields Parkway (between Banff and Lake Louise)

 More Icefields Parkway

 The top of Mount Revelstoke (we walked this one)

 Heading for Lillooet BC

 The Frank Slide (faint line is the road in the distance)

Chaplin, Saskatchewan

Leaving on Sept 21st after visiting JG's mother, we drove up to Tober Moray and took the ferry across to Manitoulin Island, then drove up to 17 (the Trans Canada Highway, friends from the US of A) and headed west and north and west and .......... All of the time from Sault Ste Marie until we re-entered Ontario on the homeward journey was almost completely rain free and sunny and frequently warm. The worst we encountered was some fog in the mornings and a few clouds, notably at Roger's Pass in BC, spoiling my last chance of great mountain photographs and causing me to miss the one group of mountain goats we saw (low visibility = no place to stop). And when we got back to Ontario on October 24th, the leaves were mostly still on the trees in their gold and crimson and ochre glory. Of course they came down with a whump two days later.

The most annoying thing about this trip is that, given the weather, all of the provinces had closed their interpretation centres, most of their parks and a good number of their wayside rest facilities. It is more than a little disconcerting to drive up to a marked wayside rest stop and find a gate across the entrance and the washrooms locked. Blessings on Manitoba, who, while closing down their western interpretation centre, left the bathrooms open. Blessings on whatever district administrator in Northern Ontario decided to leave the rest stops around the north shore of Lake Superior both open and clean. All through our trip you saw the occasional driver out of his (note, HIS) car standing dreamily, legs akimbo, beside the edge of the road. It's a long, long time between gas stations and fast food outlets in northern Ontario and across the prairies.

But I got lots of roadside photos.