We need to interrupt this blog with a brief rant. Jon and I are of the firm opinion that road signs should be unambiguous. Ever since we set out on this road trip we have been seeing signs that we can’t figure out. The best one so far was in Vancouver – it was an octagon shape (a stop sign I guess?) inside a circle with a line through it, and a right pointing arrow below it. I mean, what the hell is that?
Okay, now that I got that off my chest, back to our travels. We left Vancouver early this morning, and unfortunately spent most of the day driving through rain and fog. We were a little apprehensive about this day’s drive, as it took us on the Coquihalla Highway, nicknamed the ‘Highway to Hell’. Apparently the stretch between Hope and Kamloops is famous for bad weather, rock slides and avalanches which strand motorists all the time as you go through Coquihalla Pass, at about 4000 feet. Even with the bad weather we were surprised that the drive was fairly easy – I guess that’s the difference between driving in May versus January.
After a stop for lunch at a totally hippy cafe in Kamloops, we continued on. We finally started to see serious mountains a couple of hours away from Jasper, and they just kept getting bigger. We stopped to check out Rearguard Falls:
and then Mount Robson:
Just before we hit the Alberta border, Jon felt compelled to take goofy pictures of me yet again – I don’t know why I keep letting him do this:
We finally hit Jasper Provincial Park, and I promptly saw an eagle – my first one! Then we ran into a couple of elk and some deer:
Tomorrow we FINALLY get to go hiking – we’ve hired a guide for the day as we thought it would be cool to go out with someone who could tell us about local flora and fauna. Hopefully we’ll see some more wildlife as well.