Our Road Trips

6/7/14

Tonight about 8 pm. we completed the loop we started on Friday morning up through a corner of British Columbia, 675 beautiful miles. We started north in US 95 through Cranbrook, Radium Hot Springs & Golden, BC. We turned west on Canada 1 to Revelstoke, then yesterday, we headed south from Revelstoke on Canada 23 to Nakusp (which included a ferry boat ride across the Columbia River) where we picked up Canada 6 and a short detour on 3A to Castlegar and 3 to Salmo, then 6 again to the US Border. The US highway is 31, 20 & 2 back to our camper. What a beautiful, fun filled trip.

The scenery is breathtaking at times, very beautiful at others, never boring. There is always something to take a picture of, so one has to be a bit chosey about both what we take and what to post here. I took over 400 pictures in 2 days, so it is obvious they are all not here. We try to be representative of what we saw and we hope you enjoy. We imagine this task will get even harder as we go north...it may become ridiculous.

We spent a lot of miles driving along the Columbia River (which is 1243 miles long) and then Lake Slocan and Slocan River and finally Pend Oreille River in the US, so we were looking at water most of the trip, which makes some beautiful scenery. Then there are streams everywhere flowing into the main channels, usually by means of a rushing river, babbling stream or even a waterfall. It can be as interesting to find these sources as looking at the main channels, but we also find the infrastructures (bridges, dams, etc.) that attempt to harness the water flow to create recreation, control flooding and produce electricity to be as interesting as any of it. A lot of it was built in the early part of the 20th century, so some of it has been in existence for over 100 years...and how they built the railroads, dams and bridges with the limited amount of equipment available and replaced that lack of equipment with manpower...it is quite interesting. I think Barb enjoys it as much as I do, but she sure enjoys the beauty. It is stunning at times. So we may be looking at different aspects of what is in front of us, and enjoying the moment for completely different reasons...that is OK!

By the way, I saw a statistic the other day that I found very interesting. Idaho is the 11th biggest state in size. The state has 3100 miles of rivers either inside the state or part of its border. That is more miles of rivers than any other state in the US, including Alaska. No wonder I find this state so interesting...rivers everywhere, and most of them flowing very fast and through some very beautiful countryside. Makes for a lot of places to kayak, boat or raft. I bet the folks who sell boats of all kinds in this part of the world do very well..at least in the summer. Then if they also sell winter sports equipment, like snowmobiles, well, life is good.

Steve & Barb Larson