Alberta, BC and the Yellowhead

Wow that has been a long pause between blog updates, hasn't it? I have been a busy man but blogging has not been one of my activities. 

I moved in November, 2007 to Edmonton Alberta for a software job that only lasted three months. In the meantime this did give another chance to explore some icy and snowy roads as I got everything packed away, sold and or moved to Edmonton. I ended up driving the 2500 km round trip to Surrey BC twice since I moved here. 

The trip down at Christmas time was especially hairy. North of Kamloops I must have seen a dozen vehicles off the road in just an hour or two. (In the first photo on the right those black portions of the road are covered in very slippery ice). It is hard to believe that I hitch-hiked that lonely road so many times. Thank god for winter snow tires! 

On the way to the coast at Easter -- when I did the final cleanup after selling my mobile home there -- I screeched to a halt near Jasper town site to take pictures of the elk feeding beside the highway. Visitors always sees elk in Jasper Park in the winter though they are much rarer in the summer when the tourists are around. But this is the first time that I have seen close to 50 all in one location.

On the return from that trip I got this nice mountain view west of Banff near the BC border. Yet another boring mountain photo but they are so easy to take in the Rockies when the weather is good. 

I have taken a few local trips near Edmonton and posted a lot of the photos on my NotSorry.com web site. I am particularly proud of my Ukrainian church photos from this area. [2020 Note: No photos on that saved version. Flickr versions are here]. So now I am making my summer travel plans. Perhaps someplace local in July and then a long range trip in late August. 

I am leaning towards going all the way to Ontario, NY state and perhaps even the New Jersey shore and Philadelphia. 

I bought a little Trillium camping trailer this past spring and am looking forward to the trip. I recently added brakes to the trailer and did the trailer controller installation myself. (Would you believe that the thieves around here wanted $400 installation fee for a job that took non-mechanical me just 2 hours?) I have making spreadsheets and studying Google maps. I am afraid that travel is no longer something that should be done casually without planning. The average price of gasoline in Canada this summer is near $1.40 litre and about $1.08 litre in the USA. Plus the trailer adds nearly a 50% penalty to the amount of fuel used. So I do not think that this is something that I will be doing every summer!

Northern BC and Totem Poles

Most of the past year has been spent close to home but there was one big exception. In early June I finally drove into the far north of British Columbia. I have often visited the center or BC but this was my first time driving up the Alaska Highway to the Yukon. I took a lot of photos and put a many of them online. 

After my trip I added more than 10 pages to my web site. You can access them at my Northern BC and Totem Poles index pages. The Alaska Highway drive was nice and I saw some great animals posing beside the highway. I was reminded once again just how big and empty my home province is. British Columbia is bigger than the combined area of California, Oregon and Washington states. The surprise and highlight though was the drive from Watson Lake south to Kitwanga and Stewart. The population was sparse, the weather was great and the mountains were simply awesome. I was constantly stopping in the middle of the to take photos. I think that the results were impressive. 

I also spent a couple days driving around the totem pole villages of the Kispiox, Bulkley and Skeena River valleys. Each town has an impressive collection of totems. Each town has a different style and manner of displaying their cultural heritage. So far I have only created 'under construction' pages to hold the results. 

I was lucky with the weather on most of my trip. I once worked in Kitwanga and I know just how dreary the weather can be in those mountain valleys. 

I am still doing research on the local totems. One of the best places that I have found on the net is from Sweden! The Cathedral Grove web site holds to some strange mystical concepts about large trees but they do an excellent job on BC totem poles.