Another spectacular day; another mesmerizing drive. The more you travel in British Columbia, the more you come to appreciate the province’s stunning natural beauty. The last leg of our journey finds us motoring south on Duffy Lake Road from Lillooet to Whistler. The winding highway veers past cascading rivers, glacier-capped peaks and turquoise lakes. We make several stops to snap [...]
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We are retracing our route back down Highway 97, headed for Lillooet. The landscape of rolling hills, lakes, river valleys and grasslands is improbably studded with huge boulders. Called “erratics,” they were deposited by the melting glacial ice sheets. Erractic is a good adjective to describe the activity in our van. I think all this driving [...]
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Tribal elder George Keener is about to demonstrate how to cook salmon in a fire pit. But before he does, we ask Rhonda Shackelly, the manager of Xats’ull Heritage Village, to pose with the sacrificial fish. Without hesitation, she gives the salmon a smooch. Keener then takes the fish and guts it with a knife, washes it and [...]
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The metric police have not yet got their clutches on Highway 97. The towns along the route are denoted by miles: 70 Mile House, 93 Mile House, 100 Mile House. Each was originally a roadhouse on the Cariboo Gold Rush Trail. Located within a day’s ride of each other, the roadhouses were most often built [...]
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Even though this is an aboriginal tourism trip and we are now deep in aboriginal territory, most everyone in our group has suddenly begun wearing cowboy hats. This morning, John Pierro gave a black one to Dannielle; Racelle is wearing a white one, which sets off her black hair; Leonard is sporting a straw model that [...]
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The drive from Kamloops to Cache Creek along Highway 97 packs a visual wallop. You pass shimmering aquamarine lakes, snow-topped mountains, craggy canyons, sagebrush-covered hills and even a few hoodoos. A few years ago, the area served as the backdrop for the movie An Unfinished Place, featuring A-list actors Robert Redford, Morgan Freeman and Jennifer Lopez. But the mind-blowing [...]
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Are we chasing the storm or is the storm chasing us? As we drive northward through the Okanagan Valley it is difficult to tell. Angry clouds are swirling overhead and rain is hammering the windshield in intermittent bursts. Up ahead the sky looks positively menacing. Leonard is at the wheel and we have our road tunes [...]
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Yes, I had planned to hit the hay, but there is a full moon tonight and those amazing Smoker Marchand sculptures are out there twinkling in the darkness. I was recently given a new digital camera for my birthday and this looks like a good opportunity to see what it can do. I have to admit that [...]
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The first thing that hits your eye when you drive up the winding road to the Spirit Ridge Vineyard Resort & Spa is a large metal sculpture of a Native chieftain sitting astride a horse. His arms are lifted skyward and resting on his open palms is a peace pipe. The warrior looks right at [...]
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We have left Rimouski, Suzie’s hometown and the place where Sidney Crosby played his junior hockey, and are motoring across the St. Lawrence in a ferry. It’s a small vessel compared to B.C.’s mammoth models, but this ferry has something that B.C. ferries don’t have–seatbelts. Now that’s a bit alarming. The boat is rocking today, [...]
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