Day 9

Movin’ day. Time to get moving again. The back felt pretty good, although if I dropped anything, someone else had to pick it up. Next stop, the Canadian Border.

We made it through customs and took our obligatory photos by the “’Welcome to British Columbia” signs. S had made us all a metric conversation strips and laminated them so we could tape them to the inside of our windshields. (Harleys are American made, and they obstinately do not include kmh on the speedometers.)

The first thing I noticed about Canada was the road striping. In the US, the road dashes are 10’ long with 30’ long spaces. Canada’s dashes appeared to be longer than 10’, perhaps 15’, with the same length space. I puzzled about the length for awhile until I remembered Canada uses the metric system. Ah, must be either 4 of 5 meter dashes with the same length space.

Yeah, I’m a geek. I’m pretty sure no one else was thinking the same thing. When your occupation is a traffic engineer and your major vacation each year involves a road trip, it is a bit of a busman’s holiday. Mostly, traffic control is about the same as the U.S.

It is highly possible, however, that my companions were also checking out the road signs. We saw a warning sign for some multi-antlered critter I assumed was an elk. Then there was a sign with a squat looking dump truck with a lumpy load. I figured it must mean either, “Caution – coal trucks entering road,” or “Warning – truck full of basketballs ahead.” It could go either way.

I was also thrilled to see all the signs in both English and French. In our area at home, most signs include Spanish, but we never see French. If only I had used some of my three years of high school French in the past 26 years, perhaps I would remember more than, “Je m’appelle Amy,” or, “Ou est la biblioteche (where is the library?).” (If I'm wrong on any spellings or French grammar, I didn't verify anything from my 26-year old memories of class.) I tried to figure out how to fit either sentence into casual conversation with a French Canadian and failed utterly.

It was lunchtime, and we were excited to feel cosmopolitan and dine internationally. We pulled into the first goodly sized town, and we saw the following Canadian restaurants to choose from: McDonald’s, KFC, Arby’s, and Dairy Queen.

Canada was by far our hottest day yet. “It’s July!” L and I heckled S and K. Bet you two now wish you had packed your swimsuits, don’t you? We’re not looking so dumb now, are we?” It is not our way to be gracious winners.

We stopped at a campground with only one campsite left available. S had called all our reservations to cancel them the day before, because our new trip plans couldn’t use any of them. Now we would be on our own to find what we could on the fly. The only site available in town was pretty primitive: bathrooms, but no showers. We took it. If there had been a pool or a creek, we would have immersed ourselves in it. Instead, we got water from the sinks in the bathroom, went outside, and poured it over each other’s heads to cool off. We dined on our freezer bag meals together while it was still light out, and then we played cards for two hours on the picnic table. Yep, this trip pace was going to suit us just fine.

We had been driving through pine trees all day. And heat all day. And when we stopped, we were besieged by mosquitoes. Here is L’s impression of Canada so far: “It’s hot, buggy, and smells like Christmas.”

Daily Recap: 250 miles, 1 province: British Columbia