Hope everyone has had a wonderful couple of weeks since our last chat. Hard to believe it's already the middle of August!! Where is this year going so fast?! Time flies when...
We're back from our vacation to hot & sunny South Eastern Alberta, in the heart of the Canadian Prairie. We had a leisurely drive to and from our destination, racking up 3209km (1994 miles) start to finish. A few crochet projects did make the trip... but... new cameras for both Hubby & I... and such beautiful & interesting scenery to see!!
DAY 1: We left Vancouver at 4:45am, headed east over the Coquihalla Highway to Merritt, where we took the scenic route over the 5A through the Nicola Valley before continuing our journey on the Trans Canada Highway to our first night's destination.
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| A little roadside waterfall along the Coquihalla Pass |
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| Farms and Nicola River, Nicola Valley |
DAY 2: Up & at 'em and on the road by 5am. Watching the sunrise peek over the mountain tops at the Rogers Pass Summit was absolutely breathtaking, despite being dressed in summer clothes in single digit temperatures.
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| Sunrise at Rogers Pass Summit |
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| Rogers Pass Arches |
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| Mt. Rogers, Selkirk Range |
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| One of the many active glaciers in Glacier National Park |
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| Richardson's Ground Squirrel waiting for the sun's rays |
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| One of many tunnels built to protect the roads from avalanche damage |
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| Wild Alpine Strawberry. So very juicy & sweet for a morsel no bigger than the tip of your pinky... |
Another long day for Day 2~ Lots more stops for photo shoots {there will be future blog posts for a couple of those stops} Wow!! That Alberta heat!! I'd almost forgotten what dry Prairie heat was like compared to the humid, hotter- & dryer-than-average summer we've been having in Vancouver. Normally, a 12-hour trip, give or take, we again took a scenic detour via Highway 22 over to Highway 2 South, stopping for supper in some air conditioning before connecting with the #3 at Fort Macleod to Medicine Hat, arriving at my parents' shortly before 9:30pm.
My parents' house over the next few days was certainly memory lane while we all poured over photo albums dating back to 1959 and fading school report cards. We even managed to pull together a mini family reunion for the first time since 2008, with myself, 2 brothers, 3 spouses, 4 of the 6 offspring, our future son-in-law and his son. Our grandson, by the way, was tickled that we brought him a new blanket for his new bedroom ~ "And it's soooo soft, Gramma" ~ talk about melting Gramma's heart <3
Have you had a vacation this year? Or a special stay-cation (stay-at-home-vacation)?
Keep well. Safe travels. ~ Join us next week for Part 2: The Scenic Route Home
*Photos by, property of ccthompson.
Information borrowed from various sources.
